Sunday, September 27, 2020
The Poet: Galway Kinnell, “Another Night in the Ruins”
“How Does It All End?”
"Sometimes..."
"Covis-19 Pandemic Update 9/27/20"
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 32,833,300
people, according to official counts, including 7,101,915 Americans.
The Poet: Paul Fisher, "The Boat"
"Maybe the eyes of a dragon or goddess
glare from its prow.
More likely it leaks, loses an oar,
and reeks of rainbows awash on a sheen
of gutted salmon and gasoline.
If it’s a liner, we lash ourselves
to whatever will float or sell.
No matter which. We choose. We’re aboard,
icebergs or no, as we plow
through the songs of the siren stars-
one boat, black water, dark whispering below."
- Paul Fisher,
"Whatever Your Fate Is..."
Saturday, September 26, 2020
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Be That Thing..."
The Poet: Margaret Atwood, “The Moment”
“Sigmund Wollman’s Reality Test”
Greg Hunter, "Evil Covid Lies & People Died"
"You Cannot Kill Me Here..."
"Retail Apocalypse Is Greatly Accelerating: Companies Are Suddenly Closing All Over America"
"All across the nation, retailers are going bankrupt and closing stores. Evidently, this has been going on for many years, but as we are about to discuss, the bankruptcy numbers have never escalated as high as they did in 2020 in all US history. This is the worst retail cataclysm ever. To understand the extension of the damage - and if you haven't taken a trip to a mall since the sanitary outbreak has hit American grounds - let's picture a standard US shopping mall, with dozens or even hundreds of stores, consumers, and workers engaging, interacting and you can almost hear the sound of the economic activity flowing. Well, now this scenario is fading into a landscape that re-emerges almost entirely empty, with most stores closed, and the ones that remain open are liquidating stock so that they can shut down their doors for good, the customer presence is almost non-existent, the staff that used to be there to greet and assist the public is reduced to one person, timidly wearing a mask and standing alone behind the counter. That's no wonder why they call it "retail apocalypse", the setting looks exactly like one.
The stores are hollowed-out, malls are abandoned and the coming holiday season isn't likely to change much of this backdrop. In fact, big retailers such as Walmart, Target, and Home Depot already disclaimed they will not be open during Thanksgiving day, Black Friday, or even Christmas, and many other stores are bound to follow the same move. This month we recorded the highest retail bankruptcy rate of the past decade, and the struggle isn't over just yet, because the implications of more business closures will strike Main Street once again.
The columnist Donald Lambro has recently observed how damaging the effects of the virus outbreak were to this industry, leading retailers into a never-ending collision course. He pointed out that the new restrictions may have had a chilling effect on shoppers, who would naturally prefer to stay home and order goods online rather than risking exposure to the virus by venturing to department stores and shopping malls. Amongst the most reputed names that whether keep struggling to survive or have been already fatally pushed out of the market in face of the current crisis are Macy’s, Bed, Bath and Beyond, Kmart, Dunkin’ Donuts, Nordstrom, Lord and Taylor, Men’s Wearhouse, Joseph A. Banks, J. Crew, Neiman Marcus, Brooks Brothers and J.C. Penney.
Even though we do agree that the health crisis had a major influence on the collapse of this industry, it only boosted a trend that has been already happening. The massive bankruptcy surge didn’t just surface in February, along with the outbreak, but it certainly has amplified retailers’ problems. Since 2018, many of these businesses were signaling considerable failures in their activities. Back then, roughly 5,000 stores were closed, provoking shocked gasps in the markets. In 2019, the number escalated to almost 15,000 and the retail lay-offs experienced an increase of 92%. But nothing compares to what is happening in 2020.
A few weeks ago, we reported a Yelp study which has shown that by the end of August, 163,735 U.S. businesses on Yelp have closed since the beginning of the sanitary crisis, marking a 23% increase from July 10. The study outlined that in the wake of the virus-related cases surge and continuous changes in local restrictions still happening in many states it was possible to see both permanent and temporary closures rising across the nation, with 60% of those closed businesses not reopening, configuring in 97,966 stores that will now be permanently closed.
Apologies
"Civil War Two"
"Covid-19 Pandemic Update 9/26/20"
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 32,590,000
people, according to official counts, including 7,059,281 Americans.
Friday, September 25, 2020
"The Road to Nowhere: Whatever Can't Be Politicized Ceases to Exist"
"The essence of any Totalitarian society is the politicization of everything, as everything must be either supporting the status quo or it's a threat to the status quo. There is no middle ground in a Totalitarian society and so everything - literally everything - must be politicized to assess its true nature of being "for" or "against" the status quo. In such a society, what cannot be politicized ceases to exist. It isn't counted or recognized, and so it fades into a netherworld of shadows, a dangerous realm where the mere act of attempting to recognize a non-politicized experience is itself a threat to the status quo.
You will of course be thinking of the former Soviet Union (USSR) and other Totalitarian societies. Here's an extreme example of how the politicization of everything works: a conventional worker in a conventional factory happens to mention to a co-worker that he dreamed Stalin had fallen ill, and this worried him. The co-worker reported this disturbing dream to the proper authorities, who instantly recognized the true nature of the dream and sentenced the worker to 10 years in the Gulag for having an anti-Soviet dream. (A 10-year sentence in the Gulag was so common that it was nicknamed "a tenner.")
In America circa 2020, "a tenner" for the wrong thought, opinion or dream takes other forms. Indeed, even the claim that a dream might not have a political angle is itself cause for being sentenced to "a tenner," because the core of the Totalitarian society is the politicization of everything. Every object, entity, image, document, historical "fact," person, thought, emotion, reaction, narrative, opinion, everything tangible or intangible, has a barely concealed political subtext in a Totalitarian society.
There is nothing innocuous, innocent or whimsical in a Totalitarian society, at least in the public sphere. In an era permeated by the cruel marriage of surveillance capitalism and the bitterly divided state, even the once-private sphere is subject to public exposure and shaming/sentencing.
As in an Orwellian nightmare, your "smart" phone, vehicle, TV or Alexa-powered doorbell can eavesdrop and record your private conversations and behaviors, and somebody somewhere has access to this data and can share it with others.
The ostensible justification is "your safety" or "to catch wrongdoing," but this is transparently false. The real reason is to discern your political crimes. You need not commit any crimes per se to be persecuted; all that's needed is some tiny bit of evidence that reflects your true beliefs which by definition must be supportive of the status quo via endless virtual-signaling; if not, then they are necessarily a threat to the status quo.
To remain confidential, everyday life must be treated as wartime. Your hand-written journal is safe, as long as you don't share it digitally. But since we've morphed into an engagement-based social order, your selfhood now depends on engaging others digitally via "likes," shares, etc. and sharing your most "engaging" images and experiences.
A non-shared, non-digital private life is now a form of non-existence that most people find painful and isolating. Hence the obsessive addiction to social media and "sharing" one's (carefully edited) life online. Alas, even the most careful editing cannot conceal your true beliefs which will be revealed by the smallest detail: your location, the brand of items you're wearing, etc.
In a bitterly divided society, your beliefs will be political crimes to one camp or another. Any attempt to "find common ground" will be dismissed as a self-serving ploy, or more dangerously, as a hidden agenda of the forces attempting to destroy the Party.
Those furiously virtue-signaling to maintain their political righteousness within their chosen camp find the sands shifting beneath their feet. The most extreme virtue-signaling is rewarded until it becomes a new threat, and then those who strayed unknowingly beyond the invisible lines will find themselves cast out for political crimes whose definition is constantly changing.