I can't turn my brain off, even at night or asleep. It's always asking: what's next. Last night, in the early morning it was doing the same thing, and I realized something that I hadn't thought about before because of my privilege: and it concerns food and COVID. 1/n

We know the mortgage moratorium is expiring. Same with the $600 per week benefits. We know that jobs numbers are stagnating, and unemployment probably rising again above 11%. We know that COVID numbers are bad. We can only assume opening schools will hurt. 2/n

We know that climate change is causing crop failures. Supply chains are disrupted. We know that the cost of staples like rice are rising. We know the people getting hammered with unemployment and COVID, eviction, and unemployment don't have a lot of reserves. 3/n

We know there's a possibility of a lot of loan defaults rocking the economy the way it did in the Great Recession, and we know there's been "bundling" of these loans as a commodity. So what's my point? 4/n

What we see now, without action by the GOP controlled Senate, is likely to spin out of control VERY quickly. As poor people get poorer, end up homeless, have their only income reduced or eliminated, and as the cost of food rises due to COVID and climate... 5/n

People are going to get desperate fast. There's even a non-trivial chance that this is what the GOP wants (mass homelessness), because voting is WAY harder when you're homeless, and the people affected by this skew blue. 6/n

But, speaking as someone who has dealt with destabilized governments both in practice (Iraq), and in theory (my post grad work + staff work), when governments fail to provide the most basic services and people are desperate, very bad stuff happens. 7/n

Protests, riots, using military against them, continual escalation as the government digs in and people get more desperate. It spins out of control VERY quickly after governments lose legitimacy or ability to do anything for the public other than incarcerate them. 8/n

Communist Romania is a good example. In the past of the US, the closest we've come before in the past 100 years is the bonus marchers. 9/n

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army 

Adding to this toxic stew of potential hunger, COVID, unemployment, and homelessness going is the uncertainty of how or if Trump leaves office. If he refuses to go, or pulls electoral college shannanigans with the help of GOP govs / legislators... 10/n

It's going to make the public response burn even hotter. The bonus marchers more or less took a deal extended by the Roosevelt administration after Hoover was defeated. If people feel like the only hope they have left is a change in administration, and it's being stolen... 11/n

I can't forecast what happens next, other than to say it's ugly in a way I don't think the US has ever seen before. The Warsaw Pact nations (Hungary, Poland, East Germany, Romania, Yugoslavia) all went through massive spasms of violence and uprisings between 1956-1992 12/n

dealing with a corrupt, unelected government incapable of providing basic needs, while wealth inequality soared and standard of living plummeted for the bottom quartiles. 13/n

I can't say what WILL happen, but I can say that if this keeps going the direction it is (no relief for unemployed, evictions, more COVID, food prices rising, attempt at stealing the election), it creates the conditions very bad things are nearly highly likely 14/n