I am once again in a Hospital parking lot with a couple of IVs in my arm. They did not let me in the hospital, instead I parked, set up camp and they came out to meet me. All the ICU and critical care beds are full for about 200 miles. They are calling in the National Guard to help at the hospitals. I've had a few nice conversations with the local cops, and asked them to document that I am a patient so I can rest before the two hour drive home. Before my treatments, I went to Costco to stock up for the month; I was the only customer wearing a mask. There are six other campers on the lot, two are construction workers, the other four are patients like me that they do not want inside the building. from the weigh in on Thursday, I am now the lightest I have been since I worked on a ship in Alaska so that I could get out of a cycle of living in my car. I look gaunt, my ribs are visible, and I am noticeably changing my muscle layout due to the work on the house. The BMI chart says I am still overweight so I joked that I need to go on a diet. The doc put an end to that joke, and told me to knock it off. He wants me to eat an extra 300 calories a day, that was a first I've ever heard from a doc.
Everywhere out here, and I mean just about every single business has a help-wanted sign up. Almost like 700,000 working people were removed suddenly from the labour force for some unknown reason, probably welfare and unemployment benefits. Another million or so people survived Covid, but are now unable to work. Back home, watching the business closed notices, all the restaurants run by assholes can't find people willing to work for them, maybe there is some light justice still left. The McDonalds at the exit to the hospital has a giant sign offering $18/hour and a sign on bonus, a construction company has a giant banner offering 25/hour and training if you stay for a year. To describe the current state of america in a sentence: It took a pandemic to start giving lip service to treating people that work for a living like human beings. Sanders can't do shit to raise the minimum wage, so thanks, Covid.
10 years ago this weekend a rag-tag weird group of hopeful idiots met in NYC to protest Wall Street greet, organize and possibly become a left-leaning version of the Tea Party. I have a very long, probably 4 part rant on OWS, what I saw inside and OWS cap out in Flyover Country, how we set up a jobs program that was then cannibalized by the Ohio Democratic Party and then shelved, how we tried to quietly raise money to buy medical debt after the regrouping... Only to have the people responsible for the murder of OWS take full credit and go on all the talk shows saying it was their idea (and funny thing, the people I fed cash to that had access to the debt markets all lost that access after the news stories. Funny, that) It felt really, good to get that in a notepad document, I even removed every other "fuck" from the prose. But as I have discovered in my temporary come-back to the internet, I am not a good enough writer Even here in the bubble of lefties that is Hubski, nobody started an OWS post or thread. Even here, nobody gives a shit. If you are on the left, or a progressive (does that even mean anything anymore) remember Obama and Hillary Clinton killed Occupy. That execution directly lead to Trump.
The bigger articles on Occupy this weekend are more focused on whatever it was that Reddit did to the stock market in January, than the take down in November by federally funded and organized police forces in mid-November 2011. Occupy Wall street was not a disorganized mess, it did not die, and it was not ineffective. OWS was in danger of re-energizing the US organized labor movement, organizing the working poor and building a coalition that could fight for economic justice. We can't let that shit grow, can me? OWS was marched out into Main Street USA buy the Obama Administration, stripped naked, tarred and feathered, Publicly had tanks run over it, then cut into pieces and spread across the country as trophies. People I communicated with back then are STILL fighting to get their stuff back. Protesters were allowed to all but sack the capital this year, but how dare you fight for people that work for a living.
If the Democrats lose the 2022 Congressional elections, and thanks the the Census they probably will, the 2024 Presidential election is going to be the last one in the USA. If there is a miracle upon miracle and the DNC decides to fight? My guess is that the 2028 election will be the last one before the Protestant National Socialists rally around someone competent and overthrow the country. Unless all the traitor cunts get covid and die.