Fallout

It's not all 45*'s fault. He didn't personally bring COVID-19 to us, and he didn't spread this contagion across the country all by himself. Don't be daft.

But he failed to recognize the emergency, and it's possible that part of the failure was deliberate - because he wanted desperately not to have it reflect badly on him.

And then he fucked up the response by trying to monetize the thing, and let his radical Shock Doctrine devotees take a crack at demonstrating how much more efficient and effective "the private sector" is when compared with dumb ol' gubmint.

(Remember, dear - Karma's only a bitch when you are)

So, it's not unreasonable to say that the worst of the pandemic - and the worst of the fallout resulting from the pandemic - are, in fact, his fucking fault.

WaPo:

The U.S. unemployment rate jumped to 14.7 percent in April, the highest level since the Great Depression, as most businesses shut down or severely curtailed operations to try and limit the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

The jobless rate was pushed higher because 20.5 million people lost their jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday, wiping out a decade of job gains in a single month. The staggering losses are roughly double what the nation experienced during the 2007-09 crisis, which used to be described as the harshest economic contraction most people ever endured. Now that has been quickly dwarfed by the fallout from the global pandemic.

- and -

“This is pretty scary,” said Lindsey Piegza, chief economist at Stifel. “I’m fearful many of these jobs are not going to come back and we are going to have an unemployment rate well into 2021 of near 10 percent.”

The sudden economic contraction has forced millions of Americans to turn to food banks and seek government aid for the first time or stop paying rent and other bills. As they go without paychecks for weeks, some have also lost health insurance and even put their homes up for sale.

Also WaPo:

Louise Lara apologized for crying as she told her story. The 54-year-old single mom had just listed her home in the Florida Panhandle as “for sale by owner,” the latest sign that her middle-class life is slipping away amid the nation’s worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Lara’s saga, like that of so many other Americans, began March 20 when she was furloughed from her longtime job at a spa. The furlough was supposed to be temporary, but it doesn’t look that way now. The resort she worked for just notified her that her health insurance will terminate at the end of the month. She has spent hours on Florida’s deeply flawed unemployment website. She hasn’t received any money despite six weeks of calls and daily log-ins. She even mailed in a paper application. With money running short, she’s putting her home on the market and applying for food stamps.

“It’s a terrifying, terrifying situation,” said Lara, who tried to get a grocery store job but was told there’s a hiring freeze. “I am at the end of my finances.”

Millions of us have been sliding down the ladder into "the lower classes" for a very long time.

Up until now, that descent for most folks has been slow enough that they've been able to adapt fairly well.

This is the big drop - sudden and precipitous.

Maybe now we get an idea of how bad we've been getting fucked - and for how long.

But maybe now is not the time to start feeling the burdens of it all. Because that's what the Daddy State wants. They slam us in the head until we're dazed and confused, and then they "lead" us into the worst fucking aspects of plutocracy and dictatorship anyone can imagine.

Maybe now we get up on our hind legs and really start fighting back.