establishment

The Coronavirus Pandemic much like any crisis, in a political sense, opens the doors for new opportunities. It seems as though governments cannot make major changes without a strong boot in the rear from some set of rough circumstances. Like it or not, political action requires a catalyst. Trump, the man who dreamt of Making America Great Again now has the big overarching excuse he needs to push his agenda onto the nation, but the question is just how can the President of the United States use this pandemic to his advantage?

At a time when change is most needed, he’s asking voters to turn back, give up, and accept our country’s senility.
Daniel MCCARTHY
The Democratic Party is decadent, its future stillborn as its past seizes ownership of its backward-looking present. In 2020, the party is set to nominate for president a man who wasn’t good enough for the nomination in 1988 or 2008. Has he acquired a new vision or new vigor? No, but his party has run out of options.

The coronavirus pandemic has started to have another profound effect: The political leadership of the world is being transformed. No world leaders have as yet been actually killed by the virus. But several have been incapacitated, one major leader appears already to have been toppled with a second under sudden threat while the policies and world views of several others have been turned upside down and inside out.

In the Soviet Union there was an expression “The Organs of State Security” or “Organs” for short. Their supposed power in the USSR was one of the things that separated them from what we used to call “the free world”. Not so much any more – the American Organs came very close to getting rid of the so-called Most Powerful Man in The World. They made only one mistake; they probably won’t next time.

A perception ‘gap’, so wide, you could sail a Cruise Liner through it. On the one hand, we have the looming spectre of recession; a major loss of jobs, and of earnings cratered (some 80% of the global workforce has seen their workplaces closed, or partly closed, as a result of the virus crisis), and on the other hand, the shocking non-sequitur of the U.S.

Tony MCKENNA
I do not wish Boris Johnson to die. I only wish him to suffer.
As paradoxical as it might sound, I don’t mean this in a sadistic way. Suffering is part of the human life; it is as integral to our experience as the drawing in of air, or the feeling of sunlight against the skin. Hospitals are places of suffering; we suffer the fear and anxiety which comes from a loved one undergoing an operation. And we suffer the fear which comes from our own bodily being when we are ill or injured and we are wheeled into a hospital ward.

Jonathan COOK
Things often look the way they do because someone claiming authority tells us they look that way. If that sounds too cynical, pause for a moment and reflect on what seemed most important to you just a year ago, or even a few weeks ago.

What does the pandemic mean for the U.S. election in November?
If the U.S. can ride through the crisis with a mortality rate of less than 1 percent or so, a strong economic recovery may still happen in the short term: Then President Donald Trump will likely be reelected. That is especially the case if the Democratic candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden maintains his Invisible Man profile of the past few weeks.

As the lockdowns across Europe began to bite, the U.S. Establishment began its ‘wobble’. The more elegant amongst élite circles pointed to a dangerous mis-match in timelines: The medical advice has been: ‘lockdown until the virus begins to subside’, but that advice encompassed too, the possibility of Covid-19 returning later in the year in a Phase Two, thus requiring further personal distancing. Hands shot high in absolute horror amongst some business and Wall Street leaders: Could the U.S. economy sustain such a prospect? Might not a long shutdown inflict permanent damage?

Jacob BACHARACH