The news drips on, dystopia creep, a Fire that sounded just like a fire that just happened. Except it's not. Previous one was Philly, this one is in the Bronx. 19 dead. 9 kids. Reminds me of the fire in England, the one that killed 72 people. That one was easily blamed on austerity (Tories, but I'm sure labor neoliberals played some part), a fire like this less so, though in that thread some speak of over crowding caused by shitty housing that keeps rising. This is certainly a Dem (yes Dem, even if conservative, in these blue cities, like Seattle, it's really too hard to build and not enough affordable housing etc) thing and one that has yet to be fully rectified [1].
I do remember a similar fire about 5 Years Ago, or a few years ago. The one in Oakland, also many who died and in overcrowded conditions. Pretty sure nothing came out of it. And so, one by one, people get picked off and die off as well. Just sad and, yes, crazy.
Like I said, a dystopian creep or dystopian drip and it's gonna be this way, not an all at once death blow (like in the books, because that's just a very good plot method), though I'm sure all the tensions being raised will make something like nuclear war happen.
Meanwhile the pandemic continues apace, people now fully giving up, even if the medical field has points like this, where they are shocked at how many people don't care. Indeed, there are some issues with this being a milder variant (but still, if it's 5x more infectious, that means even if 1/2 as deadly it will cause many issues, nevermind long covid etc), but not doing the bare minimum is nuts.
Again, dystopian drip that you get used to.
But not flattening the curve will not be good for any of us. That thread shows how bad things are getting (though note that insurance companies etc made plenty of $) in terms of who's winning (money) and who is actually putting in work to keep the system alive. Mere positioning makes the difference, not the actual work done or the "importance to society". Essential workers in grocery stores know this. They could have striked in the middle of the pandemic but unlike the superrich they aren't sociopaths.
And since 08, when those who caused the crisis were rewarded while others were punished, we've been getting this in very very obvious doses. I sense, also that the older generation who bought the propaganda (and actually had social democracy for themselves growing up) are leaving us, thus making those who don't believe the lies all the angrier.
For example, in that thread (hospital workers leaving to work at Walmart):
Honestly its time for the current hospital model of administrators as middlemen making millions to symbolically get covid and die.
Something new needs to be created. This can't continue.
Banner ceo makes 11 million I thinkDoctors and nurses care about others. They will always go the extra mile for their patients. This can be exploited for profit. If we tie reimbursement to patient satisfaction they will work even harder. It's all pure profit. We'll use computer algorithms to "decide" that low pay is necessary for health care to break even. They'll use this across the nation to uniformly suppress wages.
Every so often give them a t-shirt or water bottle with a "hero" emblem printed on them. They love that shit.
Travel nursing reveals the deception and shows the true wage. Don't worry about physicians. They've been anchored with $500,000 debt. They can't leave the profession. Make sure there are patient abandonment laws in place. Just in case.
The thread goes on to give examples of people (nurses) leaving for other jobs. And even I can add a nurse I know who left. Like wtf are they being treated like shit during a pandemic? Makes no sense. Made no sense before and doesn't now. The rest of the thread talks of CEOs and admin making far too much money. Whatever those are (legit solutions vs anger) it does speak to the odd ethos running through the country. Remember how trillions were printed and given to the superrich at the start of this thing (and billions in corporate debt wiped out, nary a single article against that, while other forms of debt aren't given such leeway *cough* student debt [2])
I've mentioned this before, but the cries of a bureaucracy that works for a god or ideology that does not match up to Reality reminds me of socialism and how there institutions seemed completely unable to react to reality and collapsed. Here we're talking money. Money makes things happen but something has been lost along the way in the way someone is making profit from the panic, specifically in health, but not those who are actually doing the real work of saving [3] people in the pandemic.
Now, there's plenty of money that the system, our system, to keep it hobbling along, but the "after us, the floods" attitude of our rich, their broad daylight robbery of everything might get to be too much, morally speaking, and we'll see something snap (more so than even the BLM protests we saw).
I don't know, reader, I know this blog has devolved from something about writing and what I've read and the chemical reaction between those two things and reality... gone from that to something like a rant about our horrid reality, but that is something that slows me down, you know? That the reality is much crazier than the fiction I've written.
For example, a short story I wrote 3 years ago was relevant and beautiful and dark and prescient and I keep sending it out and now it's almost yesterday's news. You dig? Watching that happen over and over is annoying af. Not like it changes anything, right?
trying not to be misanthropic, either, but man are we a set of crazy apes. Then, I see a fan being used as above (to blow bubbles) and I think, well maybe there's hope. Yeah, short story collection and stories coming at you soon.
peace.
[1] Too bad the GOP isn't a legit party and only wants to be insurrectionist cause they could easily win if they had decent policies and not go bat shit all the time.
[2] And so when ^%$^%holes like Summer try to cry about student debt being canceled, know why they were silent before and not now.
[3] Apparently if you become a travel nurse you can get plenty more (upwards of 3-5xmore) but not if you stick to a single place. Odd thinking, again, that doesn't seem to make sense.
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