Friday 31 July 2020

The Virus Years 5: The Big Reset Button

I've been looking into what social enterprises/schemes for the unemployed/mentally unwell (etc etc) exist. Some of the usual suspects are still around. By usual suspects I mean organisations I've dealt with before who talk a good game, but don't actually help and, at worst, engage in whole sale gaslighting when you discover this fact.

Some of them are still operating, but only remotely over Zoom. How this addresses the current and forthcoming state of the labour market I do not know. My experience with local groups is not positive and having been gaslighted by these people, essentially blaming me for their failings to provide a service (despite all the funding, compels me not to engage further. Essentially it all seems to revolve around trying to get you into the quickest outcome possible. Tick that box, get that funding. This amounts to little more than a push to do voluntary (doesn't seem very voluntary then) work. I can't imagine there's too much of that at present, not if the local charity shops are any indication. They're all shut.

The past is a foreign country now. The virus has pressed the big reset button. Perahaps this can be a good thing; a change that allows a break from old baggage. Who we are after we emerge from the existential lockdown, the presence of covid (whenever that will be), will be for us to define. Society will reflect this. Hopefully we can resist the desperate attempts of the ruling class to compel us back to old normality; back into offices and restaurants, with vouchers and failures.

Today sees the government pause it's haphazard easing of lockdown. What lockdown? That went out the window a couple of months back, rubber stamped by Gollum's visit to the opticians, I mean castle. What we'e had since then has been largely self defined. Do what you like is the only conclusion one can draw from perhaps deliebrately contradictory messaging. It is Doublethink: the Orwellian ability to hold two opposing views simultaneously. In the end it allows the government, through whichever we choose to follow, to trap us. You didn't follow the rules. How can we succeed?

Don't forget this is all to get us back to work. Back to profiting the bosses at our own expense. That's why there's a rush to get back to schools and pubs. Get children out of the house to get the parents out of the house and into the work place. How can we be sure this is healthy? What may be ideal isn't necessarily in our best interests in the presence of Covid; the defining factor of the now.

We are alone in all of this. The media isn't our friend. The government isn't our friend. The truth is a weapon to be used or denied as the government sees fit, perhaps both at the same time. The opposition - Labour - isn't our friend. They are careerist centre bound with no care for the working class. All Starmer wants is to be a safe pair of hands for big business, and he will be. 

Doesn't make him our friend though

Even the government can't keep up. How can we? How many weeks will this go on? A schizoid society at war with itself may be what Cummings and Gove, the real prime minsiters, want, but it just breeds a dangerosuly unhealthy society. While the virus attacks the body physical, these people attack the body politic. What's left for the crows?


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