With all the economic shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many politicians are calling for some type of basic income stimulus ala Andrew Yang just to keep some economic activity going. Even Trump is jumping in on the act. Undoubtedly, Biden will take credit for thinking of Andrew Yang's idea first, but that's just the cute bullshit people have to put up with from good old Joe.
Trump supporters are putting up memes that correctly show the Democratic hypocrisy on the matter, but they do so without recognizing their own hypocrisy. It would be funny, except that it isn't when you consider all these hypocrites in both parties get to vote. Oh well, I'll get to that later.
There are entire industries shutting down, and some countries are completely quarantined. This is unlike anything I have ever seen in my lifetime. I suspect that the last time the world faced such a crisis was during the Spanish flu epidemic that killed tens of millions of people in 1918. The world today has four times the population. Proportionately, it would be like 100 million to 200 million people dying today. Again, I'll get to that later.
Of the candidates in the Democratic party, Biden does not support changes in the basic health care system, but he knows which buttons to push because he watched Obama push those buttons. Then, he headed up everything that Obama ever did. He really didn't, but those are just the relatively innocuous lies Biden tells compared to Trump, who, as the narcissist he is, claims credit for everything.
This would not be such a conflict with positions if there were not the progressive wing of the Democratic party that has been advocating for social changes for more than four years, led by Bernie Sanders, who has been advocating for social changes for sixty years.
Biden stood on a stage with Bernie Sanders and lied about his reason for supporting the crime bill and about going onto the floor of the Senate with cuts to Social Security and Medicare on the table. Despite that he is as pathological a liar as Donald Trump, we are about to be marketed that his lies are less despicable, and he is personally somewhat less corrupt. Of course, maybe he would investigate his son's involvement in Ukraine, but I doubt it. That's just one possible corruption compared to all of Trump's, and, voila, he is less corrupt. He is not beyond reproach but look at all those flies hovering over Trump's bullshit, and the same number hovering over Biden's bullshit seem more acceptable.
However, Bernie's call for a temporary universal basic income (UBI) is not out of character for him. He and Tulsi Gabbard are the two Democratic candidates who are supporting the stimulus who do not have to make an excuse for suddenly being cool with socialism. They have been advocating using tax revenues to improve the lives of everyday people for their entire political careers.
What it means is that those who support Trump or Biden will be trying to tap dance around how their stimulus was not socialism. Perhaps, they can avoid that by making everyone pay it back, but that seems really steep since they already grabbed about 30% of everyone's retirement that was invested in the stock market. Along with $1.5 trillion in liquidity they put into the money market so people could inexpensively borrow money to pay their bills to rich people, there is still money to be made for those on the right side of the 1%, but that comes at the expense of all the rest of society.
The dance they put try to tap out in their fashion footwear will be similar to the one you hear from old people who claim Social Security is not socialism because they paid into it. It is such an idiotic argument that you wonder how these people would ever have breathed if breathing took actual thought. That makes a nice segue for that other way socialism is going to be made more popular because of this respiratory virus.
Math is really cool if you understand it. Many people have convinced themselves that they will never use the good math, and then they spend all day adding and subtracting as if the universe is made up of lines. The universe is comprised of spheres, not lines, and one of the considerations people miss in their additions and subtractions is how the result will affect the overall balance of the sphere it's in. It's likely that you will need to think about that, and almost as likely that you won't.
When we take a group to measure popularity, we must recognize that the group is dynamic. It changes. For those who add and subtract, the way something becomes more popular is for someone to convince other people to change their minds. If there is anything I can attest to after this long in the world, people are more comfortable guessing what causes the shadows than finding out what is in the light. There will be some changing of minds as popular polarity changes, but most people will die with the preconceived ideas they have today. That includes educated people, too, perhaps even especially.
However, the group changes more because people are added every day. I don't recall the estimated number, but tens of thousands of people become eligible to vote every day. When considering the popularity of socialism among these younger voters, we are seeing more than 80% favor the government using tax dollars for their benefit rather than for corporate subsidies and the military industrial complex. That statistic alone indicates that the transition of the Democratic party to one that supports democratic socialism is inevitable.
That will work exponentially with the virus to hasten the transition.
The people least susceptible to death from the virus are young people who are otherwise healthy when they get it. That group largely supports democratic socialism. The people who are the most susceptible to death from the virus are the elderly and those who have underlying illnesses. Age is one of the main factors in determining who is likely to support democratic socialism. Since the old will be dying at a faster rate, the popularity of democratic socialism will happen sooner than it would under normal rates of attrition.
Any of the people who have underlying medical conditions, but who do not support universal health care, are also in the category of people who are most likely to die. Of course, the elderly and infirm who support democratic socialism are equally susceptible to death as those who oppose it. However, the higher percentages of people who oppose young people that this group represents will speed up the natural rate of attrition.
Italy has already stopped using resources on anyone over 80 years of age. Biden pointed to that as how socialized medicine is hurting them. Italy is in the epicenter of the virus. The US is trying to figure out how to test people to even know who has it, and it doesn't have the capacity in its health care system to handle this if it gets anywhere near the proportion of the first N1H1 virus in 1918. Italy's health care system didn't fail; it got inundated.
One of the main arguments for Medicare for All is that people will not seek treatment or care until ailments become emergencies if they cannot afford the treatment. The worst-case scenario of millions of people being uninsured is the potential for epidemics. The line that was drawn about who can and cannot get medical care has thrown the sphere of this epidemic out of balance. We will see many falling to death in this imbalance, and many, many more financially devastated while the insurance executives try to figure out how much profit they can make on our collective misery.
That answer, though, is as much as they can for the short time it will last. Though, some of us may lose our parents and close friends to the virus, those who profited from unchecked capitalism, like Charles Koch and Dick Cheney, will also likely die if they get the virus. They may get some care that is denied others, but they are immoral, not immortal. In any case, there will be silver linings in the dark foreboding clouds of COVID-19.
Here is where the catch is when it comes to democratic socialism: those who support Biden think those who support democratic socialism learned their lesson by getting Trump instead of Clinton in 2016. Those are the people who did not learn their lesson.
Biden doesn't support Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, or any social changes of significance. These young people aren't looking at the same number of flies hovering over Joe's pile of bullshit and remembering those as the good old days. They are looking at the two piles of bullshit and wondering why old people don't see that bullshit is bullshit even if the bull doing the shitting is somewhat less despicable than the other bull.
The predictable result is that Trump will beat Biden because it was the DNC that didn't learn its lesson from 2016. The people who say they aren't voting blue if Biden is blue aren't kidding any more than were the people who said they would never vote for Hillary.
"That will get you Trump for four more years."
Yeah, it gets you Trump, too. I don't control twenty-five million votes. I just listen and learn and think.
My vote will be with any effort young people make to get Bernie, Tulsi, or Bernie and Tulsi elected. You all can talk about how it would have worked if only they had voted, and probably at the next funeral you all are at for someone who thinks like that.
Here is something people who think they can add need to remember: it doesn't matter which integer is added to the other, the result is the same. In other words, if Bernie's support added to Biden's support would equal the winner, so would Biden's support added to Bernie's. Biden's supporters should consider how this virus is personally affecting them and remember how 2016 went because Bernie supporters are well aware of how 2016 went and how it is affecting them.
Though knowing you have health care would not prevent you from getting the virus, knowing you have health care would make you more likely to seek diagnosis and treatment. Ultimately, we want to know everyone who has it. When you consider Biden's plan, which they don't allow him to actually say for fear he'll screw it up, and you listen to Bernie's plans that he can actually state, there is no comparison in the integrity of the two candidates on health care.
Anyway, I think there will be some people who really will change their minds about democratic socialism as they become more and more aware that the term is really about whether or not taxes are used to help people rather than to make a few people rich. However, democratic socialism will also become popular more quickly because many of the people who oppose it, regardless of whether it is out of selfishness or stupidity, will die because of their ages or underlying medical conditions. That means the natural attrition that makes this the last election old people can screw up -- and that is the only thing old people can do -- will speed up.
It might not be too much of a comfort for any particular individual, but this virus isn't going to kill anyone who wasn't going to die anyway. Isn't that how we comfort ourselves about the refugees and other lesser people? Oh well, adding and subtracting works like that, and bullshit is bullshit.
For anyone who is taking this really seriously, Tulsi Gabbard is still running, and she is the least likely of any of the candidates to succumb to the virus should they all contract it. Bernie should immediately name her as his vice-presidential nominee so that she is obviously his heir apparent.
