nearly done

[mellowtigger]

I think that the USA is nearly done.

"We really are just peasants again... bake bread... avoid plague... revolt..."
- twitter

In order to use up all of the tomatoes that I got from the volunteer gig on Thursday, I decided to make salsa. I went to my (newly reopened!) Cub Foods grocery store to get the missing ingredients. Across the street from Cub is where they've had massive distribution of food and supplies in recent weeks, pictured here as I left the grocery store on Friday.  Even with this crowd, though, it's not as bad as the stories from New York.

I've heard that black unemployment in my Jordan neighborhood of north Minneapolis approaches 50% this summer. I can't find any sources for this rumor, although it's easy to find that black unemployment throughout Minnesota is 2.5X the white rate. Daily life is bad everywhere, though.

"Data collected by the Census Bureau capture the financial pain. For the week that ended July 21, the most recent numbers available, roughly 29 million U.S. adults — about 12.1 percent — said their household sometimes or often didn’t have enough to eat the preceding seven days, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Nearly 15 million renters said they were behind on rent during the same period."

"Last week, Smith said, one desperate mother admitted she had resorted to stealing to feed her 5-year-old boy. 'What do we do at this point?' Smith said. 'They’re living on air.' "

- https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/08/23/economy-federal-benefits-low-wage-workers/

In other local news, the shooters are getting more accurate in my neighborhood. Last night, there was a quadruple shooting about 3 blocks from my house. Normally, it's just bullets flying everywhere, but nobody gets hit, therefore the violence never reaches the local news. Now, though, they managed to hit 4 different people at one incident. I'm certain that it really doesn't help when police carry rifles while riding through Minneapolis on the back of a truck. I'm pretty sure that practice doesn't make anyone feel better except white racists.

I see that conservatives are touting how average income is rising under Trump, even during the covid economic meltdown. It's funny how the average improves when you dump the low-wage jobs, isn't it? Brilliant. Just lovely.

And COVID-19 continues. You can compare countries that together match the USA for population, and their infection rate is minuscule compared to ours.

And it's an election year, and not a single word from Republicans or Democrats gives me any hope at all. The voting logistics are so bad that the National Basketball Association announced plans to help by turning their arenas into polling sites. Seriously. Basketball players have to save the election for us, because our elected officials are bent on either destroying government or sitting idly while it happens.

Republicans keep claiming that Democrats have moved "too far left". As if! The Democrats just removed their previous ban on fossil fuel subsidies from their platform, because like Republicans they couldn't risk upsetting their corporate donors. The Democratic platform of 1960 is so far left that today's DNC looks like the center-right platform that progressives like me keep complaining about!  Democrats are as bad as Republicans now at rejecting the peaceniks.

Too far left?!?!

"The civil unrest is a byproduct of the collapsing state, not the cause of it."
- twitter, Bree Newsome Bass

I've nearly reached the point where we can just let it all burn down. If getting some attention for the bottom quartile of society can happen only when the top 3/4 are dragged down too, then maybe it's about time. Do it now, before someone brings out the real guillotines instead of the fake artistic ones.

There's still time to talk our way through these troubles, but it requires facing some unpleasant truths.  I'm ready.