Well, it's March 16 as I lay here on my couch writing this post. It's exactly four months until my birthday; I'm 28 and 2/3 years old. More pertinent though, I guess, is the worldwide pandemic and impending economic cataclysm.
Myself, I'm rather miraculously on two weeks paid leave. That's something I wouldn't have expected. My work is very low-paid, despite working for an enormous entity with vast reserves of wealth. However, the day after it was announced we'd be taking the hiatus, I talked with a co-worker who knew someone high up in the organization. He said that high-level employee was one of the most genuine people he knew, someone who'd gone to bat for countless co-workers before this whole thing, and that that person would almost certainly be advocating for us lower-paid employees to receive pay on our leave. It wasn't solely their decision, but having one voice in the room at least bettered the odds. I think he may have been right. A few hours later, we received confirmation of our continuing pay.
I keep forgetting to mention this -- and it seems fairly trivial now in the grand scheme of things -- but I've been playing a small part in getting my workplace unionized. The effort is small but mighty, and we have a powerful ally on our side that's won many David and Goliath labor struggles before ours. We were hoping to hold a vote in the next few months; obviously, things are up in the air now. But I'm mentioning this to give context to my surprise that I'm being paid at all, given how hostile my employer has historically been toward labor rights. We were advised that they'd fight "tooth and nail" against any attempts at unionization (a parallel effort in a different branch seems to have stalled or at least gone under the radar), so we'd have to push back just as hard. I don't know that that's a battle I can really fight. I feel really awkward at work, and that ambient threat of retaliation is intimidating. But I got two people to sign on -- or at least, I got one person, who then passed along a form to her sister when I mentioned that her sister had expressed interest before. It's a small thing, but I'm really proud! I wanted to talk to the previously mentioned co-worker as well, but I've heard he's a little more reluctant despite general pro-union beliefs and left-leaning sympathies. It's just risky no matter your politics. And I totally understand that, 100%.
So we'll see where all that goes. Two weeks of paid leave is very reassuring right now. However, I don't know what will happen if things continue as they have been...or if they get worse, which is very possible. The work I do is especially sensitive to health and hygiene concerns, and I personally can't see any way I could resume work after two weeks when *more* people are going to be infected. The mere possibility of *risking* infection was what shut us down in the first place. What happens when there's a near-certainty of it? Just today (now 03/17), I read a Baltimore Sun article suggesting that my particular employment situation could require several months to stabilize. I have no idea what that will mean for me, as much depends on my employer, the Maryland state government, and the US federal government, none of whom I trust very much. The impact is too far on the horizon for me to clearly discern now.
This is also the case for everything going on right now. I find myself frantically keeping up to date on so many different variables in this crisis through Twitter, and though I've been successful at moderating my Twitter usage for over a year, I don't feel guilty or unhappy about re-engaging with it now. I believe I would feel far worse without trying to construct a detailed understanding of this strange, emergent world now taking shape. Reading, bookmarking, and writing are helping me process the tsunami of information with which we're all being flooded. In that spirit, I want to divide this blogpost into three parts, as it's likely to grow huge and unwieldy very soon. With the first segment, I want some space to interpret my own thoughts and feelings about my immediate circumstances. The second segment will deal with the virus' ripple effects. The third will be miscellaneous items that I still want to engage despite their seeming superfluity. We may be undergoing an unprecedented global crisis, but one ironic feature of it (for me, at least) has been the abundance of time now disconnected from the frantic rhythms of a disappearing status quo. How best to use it is a question I will need to figure out slowly, bit by bit.
*
I am okay. I am writing on March 24th, a Tuesday, and we are now a week and a half into the new times. I am shocked at how automatically I adjusted to this rupture. Part of it has to do with the shape of my life: I am at home, armed with my phone and my laptop, able to watch movies on our TV, able to read books on my Nook. Without imposed deadlines weighing in -- namely a scheduled return to work -- this feels like some kind of semi-permanent weekend. I can't deny there's pleasure in such an arrangement, but that's not all there is to it. Beneath the relative freedom and security, I am disconcerted. For the first few days I felt a truly vertiginous sensation of not knowing what to do. The world had changed overnight, and I'd been cut adrift from the life I only thought I knew. In some ways I was forced to confront the deeper conditions of my existence, to re-situate myself in a broader context than the one that had tranquilized me through habituation.
I don't consider myself a complacent person. I even like to think I'm willing, in general, to re-examine parameters I hadn't thought to question before. But there's a contradiction that I always find hard to resolve, and that is my opposing tendency toward habit, routine, and repetition. I have trouble admitting this to myself sometimes because it feels like giving in to autism, which I've fought against so hard throughout my life in vain pursuit of normalcy.
I am not normal. I am not bragging when I say so. Saying so doesn't make me proud. I have always been ashamed not to be normal, and I have spent gargantuan reserves of energy trying to remake myself into a normal person. I can't even rightly claim a victory in abandoning that goal. More than anything, I think a deep collapse into depression stole my willpower and ability to pass as normal. I drifted away from normalcy without meaning to, and no amount of panic could push me back in its direction. I had to come to terms with the forces that had structured my life and, therefore, my subjectivity. Race, gender, class, and things of that nature. None of that was easy, and I am always struggling for better understanding, better orientation toward a world that has harmed me in the name of 'helping' me, which I could not understand for so long despite carrying the damage deep inside.
Something feels different about my struggles with autism. I keep trying to conceptualize it, but I can't seem to put my finger on it. Perhaps it's the low profile of neurodiversity in broader struggles around privilege and difference. Maybe it's my fault for not seeking out resources and movements that engage it more directly. But in my dealings with art, politics, and history, I just don't see much reckoning with neurodiversity, let alone autism. Awareness has certainly increased over the past decades, yet this aspect of myself feels invisible and inarticulable to the world around me. Nobody seems to be experiencing what I am. There are neurotypical people who don't get it, and there are neurodiverse people whose concerns are as idiosyncratic as my own. I guess that's part of neurodiversity, recognizing that interior sameness shouldn't be assumed. But that's what frustrates me so much. Where are the people who know how I feel? How do I find them? Why haven't I come across them in the many years I've devoted to radical solidarity?
It's lonely work trying to figure all this out. I try to be as open and introspective as I can be in all the areas of my life, expecting insight to arrive from connections forged through honesty. With painstaking slowness, I have redefined my approach to interconnection, strengthening my online friendships and real life relationships. I am very happy with the progress I've made. It still doesn't feel like enough. I feel weary and discouraged. I wish I knew what to do.
None of the above was what I came here to write. I wanted to explore the way I've adjusted to an extraordinary situation as if it were just another threshold between life stages. Now I'm just feeling dispirited about my own learned helplessness, how a lifetime of feeling powerless has dovetailed with a neurological predilection for safety and familiarity. I'm worn out by it all. I'll be okay, but I don't know if I know what "okay" even means. It just seems to mean resilience at this point, a zombie urge to persevere without vitality or spontaneity. Better than nothing, but not by much.
**
The recession is already here. Our lost decade between 2008 and now has seen exorbitant CEO pay, trillion dollar tax cuts, and delirious amounts of stock buybacks, but very little real benefit to workers. As discussed here and in the above Jacobin essay, there was an under-publicized catastrophe in the US repo market late in 2019 that the financial system survived, albeit in poor health. With horrific timing, the coronavirus has arrived as a black swan, not disrupting a thriving economy so much as exposing every one of its structural flaws simultaneously. What do we do about it?
Denmark is among the more ambitious countries confronting their economic danger, though as Bue Rubner writes, this subsidizing of the social democratic tradition will eventually need to adapt to a post-recession global economy. It's a start, but it doesn't go far enough. A US stimulus package would need to be very large and well-targeted, though Congressional efforts so far have been pitiful. China has already attempted to stimulate its recovering economy, but its government is pessimistic about the chances for a multilateral response, and I can see why. The ridiculous trade war that Trump has doggedly pursued against China has grown into a bigger and bigger obstacle, with this now the unavoidable result. Plus, China's economic woes may foretell the rest of the world's, and they look to be steep so far. The supply-chain there has already been disrupted, as a freelance reporter predicted almost two decades ago. This is the result of a neoliberal obsession with monopoly and (misjudged) efficiency, and the cost will be measured in human lives prematurely ended. Between China's trouble re-integrating into the global market and the waves of economic turmoil now spreading across the globe, there is much cause for alarm and little room for hope.
Outside the world's two biggest economies is an intricate latticework of fault-lines; Serbia's outright rejection of European unity, quoted in the first SCMP article above, is one striking indicator of this geopolitical challenge. National economies will have to be fundamentally reshaped, most likely one by one. Quantitative easing will not return things to normal, as the US Federal Reserve seems to be hoping. The issue is that people themselves are unable to work, which was not the case in 2008's crisis (reminder again: it could be months before I return to work, and I'm not even sick!). A public health emergency is not the same as a breakdown in speculative finance. A labor shortage will affect goods and services, and unemployed workers won't have money to re-insert into the economy. While I disagree the current system is worth preserving, I do think Branko Milanovic is right to say that social collapse is a genuine possibility. This is as real as it gets. Nothing will ever be the same again.
I'm heading off this series of sub-sections with Mike Davis' essay from 03/13.* Though it focuses largely on the US healthcare system, one point glaringly protrudes: few have written about developing nations of the Global South, whose efforts to impede the virus could be severely constrained by a lack of resources. East Asia has had its turn; the West and Southeast Asia are, as of 03/17, the main areas of focus; but will attention be paid to Africa, Latin America, the wider Middle East and Central Asia when their time comes? The world has really only begun to deal with this unfolding disaster. The next days, weeks, and months will be crucial in tracking international progress, or the lack thereof.
(*Here, however, you can find a crucial rebuttal from inside China to Davis' praise of the Chinese state's COVID response.)
The best analysis of global pandemic threats you're likely to find will come from reading Mike Davis' book The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu. Short of that, you can listen to an excellent interview with Davis here, which is what persuaded me to buy the book. Mike Davis has been on my radar ever since Gavin Mueller called him the best living political writer in the US -- no small praise!! I'd been circling books like City of Quartz and Planet of Slums for a while, but between availability issues and other items on my reading list, they slipped down a few rungs on the ladder. Luckily, the current situation galvanized me in his direction, and my reward has been some of the most lucid writing on neoliberal globalization that I've ever encountered. I tore through The Monster at Our Door in a matter of days and am quickly vaulting into Planet of Slums, a natural follow-up given the conditions described by Davis as creating pandemic-level diseases.
(By the way, I'm not a doctor or anything close to one, but it looks like we should beware aspirin and ibuprofen, which can aggravate symptoms; Tylenol, a.k.a. paracetamol, is the best bet.)
Africa has a head start on managing the coronavirus, and the best lessons are coming from Asia. Right now South Africa appears to be hit hardest. I dearly hope the lockdown slows its spread.
Ethiopia is testing and quarantining its confirmed cases, with 117 potential contacts as of 03/17.
(I'm also seeing rumors of an unusually early arrival in Burkina Faso, i.e. back in January when things were first heating up, possibly due to Japanese nationals who'd arrived in the country around that time.)
Singapore considers a stimulus combination of surplus and "past reserves" for the first time since the financial crisis.
Big trouble in Malaysia. A large-scale religious event has infected a sizable percentage of its 16,000 attendees, but only 7,000 have come forward for testing. Meanwhile, participants have travelled to Brunei, Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand, where cases are now proliferating.
There are parallels with the situation in South Korea. Religious gatherings seem especially prone to infectious spread (this has been the case in Iran too; see below), and it only takes literally one person to cause a massive spike in transmission. I'm sure no one thinks they'd be Patient 31, but then neither did Patient 31 before she went in for testing. Now 80% of new cases can be traced back to her....which must be a horrible weight on a person's conscience. At least South Korea has been proactive in combatting the virus through nationwide, government-subsidized testing. (Here's one US American's quite smooth experience with it.) Other countries could face similar crises with worse results.
Iran releases 85,000 prisoners, though it appears to be temporary. About 60% of the population are now in self-isolation. Sanctions have been devastating the country's coronavirus efforts, and the US stands firm in its refusal to loosen its obscene strangehold. Although China has helped some, I wouldn't be surprised to see death tolls higher in Iran than much of the outside world by the time this is all over. A terrible tragedy that could easily be avoided, were it not for US imperialism.
The Red Nation issues a call to end all US sanctions on Iran (as well as Venezuela and the DPRK), in addition to other demands that will protect the poor, the vulnerable, the sick, the elderly, and Indigenous people living in rural, isolated areas, among others. A group of First Nations in the territory known as Manitoba have considered partnering with Cuba for treatment and training, though nothing formal is yet in place.
As for the US itself, what is there to say at this point? "Failed state" seems like too generous a description for a nation whose lack of preparedness has been in plain sight since 2018. Even the minimal attempts at crisis response expose its status as an illegitimate enterprise. Rick Santelli, a prominent conservative who helped kickstart the Tea Party, would like to apply the same social Darwinism to the vulnerable in 2020 that he encouraged the government to adopt in 2009. He may not need to lift a finger. Thanks to a privatized healthcare system whose drug providers are operating on public money, the US may not see a vaccine for some time, and who knows what the cost will be then? Price gouging was deemed permissible under a bipartisan effort led by Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich in the mid-90s (note: then-House member Bernie Sanders successfully created an amendment to reverse this. Then-Senator Joe Biden successfully killed that amendment). Tests for the coronavirus also appear unlikely to arrive anytime soon.
Until then, Charles Mudede is one among many arguing that rent/mortgage freezes are necessary to protect personal finances. Unemployment has spiked at record-high levels, leading to backlogs in processing benefits (I will probably need to sign up on Monday, March 30th, after I'm furloughed). In Milwaukee, a hypersegregated city, middle-aged black men comprise the majority of coronavirus victims. I understand there's also a racial disparity in Detroit. New York has just days to prevent an outbreak as awful as Italy's (let's not "augment police" though please). But provisions for frontline nurses are dangerously inadequate. And just to add insult to injury, the EPA is now suspending enforcement of regulations.
Still fragile from the US' unforgivable neglect, Puerto Rico will face challenges in containing the coronavirus.
Ireland is offering unemployment benefits for six weeks, which also applies to self-employed people and people who are still employed but can't be paid by their employer.
Italy prepares to let people over 80 and people in poor health die, should need outweigh resources.
Spain has been a virus hotspot rivaling Italy, but its government has responded forcefully to the rapid increase in cases. (Lots of miscellaneous info on international measures in that link too.)
One global issue (that's covered locally here) will be an increase in abuse and domestic violence. There will be a lot of trauma burdening people once they can leave their homes again. Coupled with widespread deaths of family and friends, I anticipate a lot of fragile emotional states in the coronavirus aftermath.
What about when things stabilize -- if, in fact, they ever do? We'll need more than nudges to rebuild in the aftermath. This excellent interview with evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace clarifies some root causes of modern pathogen transmission. They are about what you'd expect: Western land theft in the Global South, agribusiness, and deforestation all play a part. Also crucial to note is that the Wuhan food market is not fundamentally responsible for the outbreak. Rather, any point in a supply chain that deals with potentially infected animals and brings them into contact with humans could produce a similar effect. One last time: Mike Davis synthesizes Wallace's book, his own reseach, and the emergent coronavirus information to produce a picture of 2020 clearer than anything else I've encountered so far. Nothing will improve unless -- and until -- the world itself changes course.
Natasha Lennard writes of the ways we choose our boundaries, but also the ways they are chosen for us. The Care Collective provides a framework for systematizing care locally, nationally, and globally -- I only shrink away from their use of the word "overcrowding" to describe the movement of people towards the end, which hints in the direction of eugenics despite the general validity of their point. Rob Horning on trying not to "pose with the flag" and cities without people. Beautiful words from Anne Boyer on the evil of those with power, and the love of those without. (Have some more for good measure.) Subscribe to Momtaza Mehri's TinyLetter if you want to keep up with another of the most vital poets currently at work.
I've been liking Anton Jäger's writing and perspective lately...but there are some weird undertones in this that I don't like, despite agreeing with a lot of it. The 'class first' rebuke to identity politics ignores how vivid experiences of identity-based oppression often lead people to a broader anti-capitalism. His distaste for a "post-paternal" move toward an "infantile," "maternal" state of complacency feels gendered in an ugly and masculinist way. A linked essay by Benjamin Fife and Taylor Hines only doubles down on this sneering dismissal, despite introducing the useful concept of "claustrum." I find it very strange that anti-capitalists see no utility in building mutual understanding between oppressed people, as if that is some luxury distracting from a class struggle which always-already involves people of infinitely varied backgrounds and conditions. "Exclusion" isn't just a petty grievance over not being coddled enough by revolutionary movements. It's a legitimate risk and has been across time, with the experiences of black women in the otherwise very admirable Black Panther Party just one example among many. Should we just expect the excluded to put up and shut up? Or are these strategic flaws that a greater devotion to outreach can help ameliorate? I wouldn't share this if I didn't think it had some analytical value -- I think Jäger is right that history will probably need some time to begin again in earnest -- but there are some red flags here I'll need to think over.
Peering out from within this amorphous blob of time, the real-deal capital-F Future seems impossibly distant -- but it will arrive, one way or another, whether we want it to or not. There are still big plans being made, and they come from the same people who made them before COVID-19. Malcolm Harris brings a stunning piece of undercover journalism that, in fact, wasn't so undercover after all: Shell paid him to participate in a conference about how Shell can adapt to a greener economy while remaining profitable short- and long-term. No strings attached. They have no concerns about their business practices showing up in print, and they seem just as sanguine about the emerging progressive generation who would, in theory, count them as enemies. Co-optation has blunted many social movements before, so I consider this a very real threat to climate justice. Let's not allow their scheme to succeed.
Maybe the longest view yet taken has been Will Davies'. I feel he's right that the most pertinent comparison is neither 2008 nor the 1970s' financial crises, but something like 1945, or even his example of Lisbon. While COVID-19 is certainly an economic cataclysm beyond imagining, I expect we will also look back on this moment as an existential reckoning that altered the course of our lives forever. Davies' citation of Kant is profound and moving: faced with a world in collapse, we must allow ourselves to be reshaped by it, rather than clinging to what we once thought unbreakable. The future belongs to those who find new possibilities within themselves.
***
SubStack post from Kelley Dong about the complacency engendered by the film ecosystem. Genuinely hope I can live up to this gauntlet that they are very right to lay down. (While reading, I recognized that those structural pressures were a big reservation I had about the idea of formally entering that world, which makes me value my independence as a fairly anonymous Letterboxd presence.)
Nick Pinkerton (who has also started a Substack, btw) on the subtle complexities of RICHARD JEWELL. In a similar vein, Sheila O'Malley sizes up Nick Nolte's career of implosive masculinity. Though I've only seen a few of these selections -- WARRIOR, a perfectly fine sports film on the whole, is deepened by Nolte's committed work -- I like the description of him as someone who finds inner ugliness only to hide it from his self-destructive characters. That's a tricky balance, actorly skill and the unthinking flaws we make visible to everyone but ourselves. Film Comment did a podcast a while ago on Robert Mitchum, maybe the quintessential "man who was never young," his reticent presence an invitation to know the sorrows and failures that seem always to be lurking in his past. THE LUSTY MEN is a big favorite of mine for this very reason. Mitchum encapsulates Ray's air of heavy melancholy with a line reading I'll never forget, one that compresses life's smallness and futility into a distant, occluded moment of reflection: "I was born in that room." Haunting like little else I've experienced in art.
A series of novels about young professional women and their unsatisfying lives. There's something in the air, and this seems like part of it.
From Cinema Scope's top-of-the-decade list: Blake Williams on ADIEU AU LANGAGE ("Abstraction is the closest we can get to reality" -- yes).
Few things I look forward to more than the next installment of Rosenbaum's Global DVD Column. Here's 82, and I'm going to add a link to the Ronnie Scheib essay on Ida Lupino, though I haven't read it myself yet. I caught a screening of NOT WANTED a little while back and very much enjoyed it, but I haven't yet followed up on Lupino's other films, which I understand are a bit more troubled (outside consensus favorite THE HITCH-HIKER...I'll go ahead and add that to my Netflix Queue so I don't let things slide again).
A book I'd like to read.
Who better than Adam Nayman to survey a decade's worth of Canadian cinema? His Cinema Scope essay is worth savoring just as a remarkable piece of writing. But as criticism, it reminded me how wide a gap exists between Canadian films I know and Canadian films I've seen. Cronenberg, Dolan, and Villeneuve were easy enough to follow; TAKE THIS WALTZ I caught early on (and even passed along to a friend, forever ago); and then there are the stray works I've been lucky enough to catch, like 88:88, THE BODY REMEMBERS WHEN THE WORLD BROKE OPEN, and OUR PEOPLE WILL BE HEALED. Outside those stray encounters? I recognize many names and many movements from reading Cinema Scope religiously over the past decade, perhaps the film magazine I know best after Reverse Shot. I couldn't even count up the debts I surely owe to their critical guidance. Yet as much as I've sought to keep up with Canadian film in return, two near-misses feel indicative of how little it takes for these films to fall through my fingers. Ashley McKenzie's WEREWOLF came to the Maryland Film Festival a few years back, but for one reason or another it didn't make my viewing schedule -- even though I managed to catch a talk between McKenzie, Nick Pinkerton, Stephen Cone, and other film folks later on. I regret missing it then because I can't find it now, and I already lament the absence of ANNE AT 13,000 FT., Kazik Radwanski's breakout film that managed to secure distribution south of the border....only to find itself in limbo, I presume, after COVID-19's decimation of the film ecosystem. While that can't be helped, nor could it have been foreseen, such a sudden disappearance after years of incremental gain proves the art world is far more fragile than most had assumed. Now I can only bide my time while I await the chance to finally see one of Radwanski's films (having already waited the better part of a decade to do so).
Lovely discussion between Devika Girish and Soraya Nadia McDonald of LOSING GROUND, a film I liked a lot and would be happy to revisit with their observations in mind.
One last gift, this one from a tweet by Pinkerton: an ongoing list of African films and where to find them. Large majority seem to be on YouTube, couple on Rarefilm.com as well, very cool to see a project like this underway!
