“The Summer of our Discontent.”
As the numbers of the dead inexorably rise from those who succumb to the rigors of COVID-19, so too does the social discontent with the state of governmental incompetence.
As I suggested in an earlier commentary, politicians make poor physicians, for doctors are trained to give patients necessary but bad news. Politicians, meanwhile, struggle to please their audiences, no bad news allowed.
But sometimes, as shown by this pandemic, bad news is a necessary truth. No amount of happy talk or sweet political promises will change such grim realities, and now children—children!—are being blindly tossed in to the hungry maw of COVID-19 so that politicians can ensure that their parents returned to work to fuel the engines of capital. Those parents, like their children, are both living experiments of a social test.
By forcing both to return to work and to school, will they survive COVID-19 or will they not? The same political and economic forces that caused the preemptive opening of states and businesses several weeks ago, sparking a surge of COVID-19 infections, is now pushing for more re-openings with predictable results. Workers and their children are being offered as sacrifices for political and economic gain.
From imprisoned nation, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
