Preemptive apologies for the odd formatting of this post, wordpress seems to be struggling with depicting spacing as it appears in the writing box when posting. Getting paragraph breaks appears to be haraam today.
I would hardly consider myself a coronavirus alarmist. I am far more concerned about the public panic and response than the disease itself. Still, it is already having real effects on global markets so it is worth talking about why some countries respond much better than others.
Not a peep about HoW aRe We GoInG tO pAy FoR iT to once again bail out the stock market from the ‘fiscal conservatives’, Paul Ryan Pie Chart Dipshits, and SensibleSerious Neoliberals. Imagine my surprise. Never enough money for bailouts and the Pentagon, but god forbid we have a healthcare and pandemic testing response system…or modern infrastructure, or name any issue here.
Meanwhile as our dogshit healthcare system collapses the worlds largest economy is shown more and more to be based on a house of cards of 70% consumer spending. The supposedly all consuming power of the American economy rests on people being consoomers. The utter hollowing out of civil society means that this tottering pre-Punic War Carthage model of empire cannot even sustain this fragile economic balance when push comes to shove.
Joe Biden, who I generally regard as doomed in a general election against Trump, might even have a shot now considering how badly mangled the Trump administration’s response to this issue is.
That malignant little weasel may have slunk out of the public limelight, but we very much live in Paul Ryan’s America. Nowhere is that more clear than in the pathetic U.S. government response to coronavirus. This is not to say that he himself is solely responsible by any means, but as the hollow empty cipher for the model of hard-right neoliberalism and austerity embraced by the most complacent countries on Earth he is as good a hate symbol as any. Almost universally beloved by the mainstream press for most of his career, he was by any objective standard, an utter failure as a politician.
Kind of like the ‘free global markets’ ideology, Paul Ryan was a vapid nonentity who existed only to serve massive upwards wealth transfers with slick superficial ideological excuses. This required huge cuts to programs that increased societal stability and group cohesion. The privatization of civil society turned everything into a consumer good, but its OK, because its chief acolytes were edgy.
But Reagan and Thatcher are dead, and the Clintons and Bushes are dying. Paul Ryanism is being rejected left and right not because he was rational and they are extremists, but because, under the time of the Ryan-wonks, it was the center that became the true extremists who lived and breathed for the dismantling of society. Meanwhile, the organized and disciplined responses to pandemic from non-austerity practicing countries are well on track to put us to shame.
For the body politic to recover we need immunization from the virus that is Paul Ryanism. We have let this pandemic of pie charts run rampant for far too long. Meanwhile, the young fogies who take after his lead continue to fill corporate boardrooms and government offices all across the United States, the United Kingdom, and other similar countries, striving to defend the dystopia they themselves made. Right now Pence is probably having a conversation just like this, but with more snake handling.
The Trickster's Guide to Geopolitics 
I’m loving these cultural references XD
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