Read on Twitter
I think many of our respected institutions and media commentators are deeply struggling to grasp this moment, because it represents the end of the neoliberal project. What exists on the other side of this immense collapse is socialism or fascism. There are no other options.
We will emerge on the other side of this pandemic with many graves, a ravaged economy, permanently shuttered businesses, and millions who've lost jobs & homes & savings, and at least one failed political party. Meanwhile the catastrophes of climate change get worse every year.
Imagine communities already devastated by their losses in the pandemic, as many as 30 percent unemployed, facing a hurricane or a flood or a fire. This is instability and chaos and deprivation are our future.
Our old way of life simply cannot exist in this world. There will be no dangling carrot of eventual riches. So either we create a society that protects people as best we can in the here & now, or we submit to a government that cracks down with violence & repression.
Everyone we look to now to save us is heavily invested in the world as it once was. They want to pretend that it will go back to the way it was in 3 weeks, or 6 weeks, or 3 months. It won't. That world is gone forever.
If there were not the looming threat of climate change underlying everything? It's possible that things could go back to the way they were. But there is. And what we are experiencing now is just a tremor, a foreshock. There are more waves to come.
So I am asking you now to begin thinking about what this future really looks like. Outside the fog of inertia & complacency that allows us to cling desperately to a past that's already slipped away. We're at a pivot point. What kind of world are we going to build?
