Money talks, bullshit walks. Rationality orders delivery and binges TV.
Donald Trump, his female-empowerment-icon daughter, dweeb-Barnabas-Collins son-in-law, Secretary of Bank of Cypress, et. al., are all fired up to re-open the coffin, er, country in a fortnight. Their congressional and media allies, along with star-and-bar-waving fanboys, cheer on the effort.
Himself is trying to hustle the usual Big Dough suspects to climb aboard the bandwagon and give him cover when the bodies start to pile up like cordwood. Despite some pushback, he may get the denizens of Kochworld to sign on.
And it matters not a whit.
The Great God Economy consists of one thing: your ass. Consumer spending or, if you want to get fancy, Personal Consumption Expenditures, comprise 70% of the US economy. Happy days at the superstore, followed by romantic evenings at Applebees, with a couple of season tickets thrown in (plus annoying necessities like TP and coffee) and you’re nearly three-quarters to a fiscal year. And who knows? Maybe Christmas will be the closer we always hope…
You are the economy. And you control the economy.
Not Cuomo or Newsom or some nobody holding up your congressionally-mandated dough to make sure his name’s on the check. You are the switch.
And if you refuse to be thrown, if you eschew the interactions in reopened restaurants and retail outlets, if you choose to place the health of your family, friends and co-workers above the joys of yell-spittle debates in the bar and pawed-through bargains at the superstore (we’ll not mention religious re-affirmation from others that can easily be found through solitary contemplation), the “economy” will simply wait until your priorities change. Like when there’s a reliable, widely-available vaccine.
I apologize for restating the obvious here, but whatever ass-shaking comes out of Himself’s blue-ribbon panels will have a total of bupkis effect on the actual economy of the United States. Because, even today, perhaps more than ever today, in a country keeping 70% of its hopes and dreams at the mall, “the economy” is simply the decisions we make.
And I can’t imagine a lot of folks are ready to grab someone else’s bowling ball or suck face with a stranger at a festival. One Vor’s opinion.
Utterly Unrelated Shameless Self-Promotion: With this on the rec list, those who know me well would not be surprised to see an unrelated, shameless self-promotion tacked on the end.
My latest thing is a series of short films about how New Orleans is dealing with all of this and I would like you to watch them if you haven’t already. Thanks.
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