The Coronavirus: An Illuminating Bug | Bill Ayers

The Coronavirus: An Illuminating Bug | Bill Ayers

The Coronavirus: An Illuminating Bug

Jack Halberstam’s brilliant book, The Queer Art of Failure, offers an essential insight for these terrible times: when things are “normal”—predictable, common-place, habitual—whether in one’s personal relations, work life, or politics, life putt-putts along at an expected pace with little fanfare, and without much thought or reflection. Then, an unanticipated crisis, a rupture, an upheaval—one’s partner has an affair, one gets laid off, Donald Trump becomes president—and it’s suddenly time to question everything, challenge the taken-for-granted, rethink basic assumptions, reimagine and rebuild.
This is such a time.
Of course I know as much about coronavirus as any other dazed participant-observer—probably more than Donald Trump and Mike Pence combined, but that’s next to nothing.
I do know that the airlines are on life support, that SXSW cancelled, that the NBA suspended the basketball season, and that I can’t meet my classes in person. I know the illness is spreading exponentially, that official inaction wasted precious time at the start, and that a patch-work health care system (“the best in the world!” according to official messaging) and a hollowed out public medical administration has left the country flat-footed.
I also know that the political class and the 1% know what to do for themselves in crisis: remember 9/11? Immediate and huge transfer of wealth from ordinary taxpayers to big corporations, massive military spending, and the surveillance state rolled out at lightning speed.
Remember the 2008 financial crisis? The housing bubble collapsed, CONTINUE READING: The Coronavirus: An Illuminating Bug | Bill Ayers