You picked a fine time to leave.

Hi Mike, So, this was a thing in the media today, and I literally have been thinking it for several weeks now, and then just when I had convinced myself that I was being paranoid...here it is: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/trump-coronavirus-liberate-michigan-minnesota-virginia-lockdowns-tests.html?utm_campaign=nym&utm_source=fb&utm_medium=s1&fbclid=IwAR2OtZXWtwCpkrFPIWqZLXEXKGkGTicTUxXFvfK5d7sI8Fuwas39zlEGL-4 Because that's what's gonna happen now. I was joking with a neighbor (and I've said this to a couple people), but I honestly think only anyone with a passing understanding of anarchist theory/punk rock would appreciate it: I really did not expect anarchy to unleash itself like this. But there you go. The economy is plunging, the State/Corporate Overlord is having to pay us to stay alive because they need the labor to stay in their rich, privileged bubble. I feel like they might have misjudged the immediacy of the internet though, and to have basically all the industrialized countries (east and west) dealing with the same "invisible enemy" might bite them in the ass. Putin is staying awful quiet, which makes me feel a bit more worried than I might. US vs. China has always been a bad proposition, but this idiot POTUS has really unleashed a mess that he cannot understand. He can't conceive of political theory, much like his enablers on Fox, it's all so much window dressing. I'll tell you this: if the workers I have been talking to while manning the Union helpline in the last couple weeks are any indication the peasants who have been standing in the river with the water up to their nose (thanks Prof Todd for giving me that evergreen symbol) are watching the river rise and I do not think they are gonna just let it drown them, they are gonna start panicking and swimming like they have never swam in their lives. In Wisconsin, they stood in the cold, against the CDC warnings to assemble in order to vote against a conservative judge. I feel like the people who are even mildly angry about what they are being told to be upset about are going to start seeing how fucked they are really soon. Trumpy and his buddies made a crucial mistake: they promised cash to idiots, with no idea how to get that cash into people's hands, and now the cash isn't arriving and people are pissed. I mean sure, some of them are all "OOOH $1200, our prez is amazing" but the vast majority are gonna blow through it and have no idea where to turn next, and the administration (and I use the term loosely, obviously) will have no clue what to do next. Who knew that a pandemic would make people start to understand the value of MUTUAL AID.