The Isolation Diaries No. 28

“In the twenty-first century, the geography of voter suppression had clearly changed. It was no longer only a phenomenon of the Jim Crow South.” Carol Anderson, One Person, No Vote 

I feel a sense of foreboding. My thoughts stampede toward darkness and dystopia; I can’t shake them, they dog my every step, and I feel like I’m trying to escape while wearing size 16 boots. Something’s coming. More deaths from Covid-19? Economic collapse? Civil war? 

I come across this quote about the real economy and the stock market from a piece by Hamilton Nolan in In These Times:

“The glaring disconnect between the real economy, of working humans with jobs and bills to pay, and the investor class economy, embodied by the stock market, is one of the most brutal and devious political issues of this age of crisis in which we’re living. Though free marketeers like to boast of the fact that more than half of Americans now own stocks, the fact is that most of them own too few stocks to matter to their day-to-day economic lives.” 

Unemployment claims soar, jobs are lost, some forever, rents and mortgages go unpaid, states like California and New York blow gaping holes in their budgets as they battle Covid-19, and through it all the stock market rises, as if it operates on a completely separate plane. 

In the midst of this pandemic, with all its strangeness, isolation and fear, one thought lodges in my brain: we’re murdering the planet, poisoning the air and water, decimating one species after another, clear-cutting vast tracts of the Amazon. Our leaders and institutions are heedless of the many warning signs, and when the next global crisis arrives, it’s the most vulnerable who will pay the toll with their lives. 

Don’t kid yourself, we’re fucked. 

Trump is intent on one thing and one thing only: his reelection. This is the singular impetus behind his maniacal push to re-open the country, even if it means more deaths. The Orange Menace can’t afford to lose, so we can also count on election fraud and chicanery, massive, systematic voter suppression. The Dems, hopeless and feckless, must somehow focus their energy on voter registration and turnout; not only must Trump be defeated, the Dems need to increase their majority in the House and decrease their minority in the Senate, and make significant gains at the state level. 

We live and work and play and fornicate and argue and scheme and plot and create and destroy in the shadow of grinning, smirking death. 

Listening to a Mahler symphony, music that matches my mood, as I sort these tangled emotions of insecurity and fear, resignation and submission. I don’t have rosary beads to play with and no god to pray to. I’m sure that the only thing that can save someone like me is Art -- writing, poetry, sculpture, painting, music, drama. 

In a bad way. OK, Mr. Mahler, I’m in your hands for the moment, paddling a leaky raft down a dark river, with dead trees lining the banks, and only one faint star visible in the sky.