20.05.2020 – The danger of normal and 'progressives'

Aside from all the horror, things are blissful. I’m not getting far with job hunting, but I have enough furlough money to get by for now and there’s nothing to spend any money on. I spend my days working on my course (I graduate in two weeks), reading, writing, doing a few job applications. Then we wonder down to the river, wine in a coffee keep cup, past the lads who’ve improvised a gym in the park with bench press weights, then stroll back through the mostly car free streets as the sun sets. It feels like how life should be. Like the spell is broken. It would be different if I couldn’t pay the rent.

The approaching economic devastation seems preferable to our old high paid, high cost lives. There was always a feeling that you only lived in London so you could get work that pays well enough for you to live in London. I am London as much as the buildings, even your life, history and identity was becoming unaffordable. You, or I, did a miserable, meaningless, stressful, ethically questionable job, just to be able to afford the things we attempted to sooth our souls with. Take away coffees, clothes you don’t need, Deliveroo, make up, gizmos, cocaine etc. I wonder if people will reject the old ‘normal’.

I’m in an incredibly privileged position, but I do have some insight to how tough things are for a lot of people. They really will suffer, if, like most people, they were only just getting by anyway. My hope is things will change for them. Until we are all free, no one is.

Documenting a time when every day is the same doesn’t make exciting reading. Things are changing though, just in a strange, remote way. The sense of being kept in the dark is stronger than ever.

I’ve been applying for more work, porter jobs and as a contact tracer, where you phone people who have covid and their app, if it’s ever released, tells you everyone they’ve been in contact with and you call them and tell them to quarantine. One of their ministers said they’d only hired 8% of the callers they need, then a day later they said actually they’ve hired more than 100% of the target. I’ve been strung along for about two weeks, no real idea if I’ll get work or not. Like that imaginary portering job.

Yesterday the Home Office tweeted about ending free movement. Priti Patel’s words were “we’re ending free movement to open Britain up to the world.” It’s like INGSOC, the party of Big Brother in 1984, hired a PR agency. That’s all they care about and are capable. Headlines, pr, I suppose it’s because half the cabinet are journalists. It’s got a ring of ‘let them eat cake’ about it.

Get this, remember all that clapping for the NHS and key workers? If those workers are from another country, they’ll have to pay to use the NHS, and the amount is going up, regardless of the fact they put their lives on the line for it – Yevette Cooper ‘in the spirit of cross party co-operation’ abstained on the vote. On top of that, they’re getting a two year pay freeze (just after coming out of an eight year one), and public transport fares are going up. They also said they’ll pay out £60,000 to the family of any NHS worker who dies, unless they’re a cleaner, porter, caterer, receptionist, or any other support worker, and if they’re from a different country their family will lose their indefinite right to remain. They did the pr bit, but fucked everything else off.

As it stands, 181 NHS staff and 131 care workers have died. What a tragedy, 312 of the best people this country has. And still, they are treated like they’re not even human. I really hope those people get honoured properly, which, yes, means looking after the families they leave behind. Not just just a round of applause.

Police helicopters circle over head most evenings. I was out with the dog the other day just as the sun was setting, you could sense the danger seeping out from the cracks in the pavement. Everyone goes in, apart from the kind of people you don’t want to run into. I’m not going out after dark anymore, although at the moment it’s Ramadan, so there are a lot of nice families out after dark. Shadwell actually has a lovely tradition of doing charity car washes and barbeques for causes like Gaza, to raise money for foodbanks etc. At the moment there’s one for people having a hard time due to the pandemic. The only problem is yesterday it was outside my window, going on till 12:30am, radio blaring, and actually I’m not sure that one was for charity. As I speak, the dude is washing his own car again. He does it every two days or so.

The BBC is warning people not to gather for Eid celebrations, after actively promoting VE day street parties the other day, 

We’ve decided to get bikes, cheap fold up ones, because huge parts of East London are being made bike and pedestrian only, and I really don’t want to go on public transport, but all the bike shops are sold out! Everyone seems to have had the same idea. You can only get so far on foot. It’s strange never leaving the same few streets. That and our evasive leaders (Boris Johnson has been missing for a week), makes it feel like no one really knows what’s going on.

My methylphenidate dose is up to 54mg a day. Need to keep an eye on it, at the moment I think it might be a bit high.

Something is shifting. I never felt like this, or really any, government is legitimate and it doesn’t seem like I’m the only one. Liverpool has said they are ignoring the government orders to reopen schools, and today, there’s news that 1,500 primary schools are doing the same. It’ll be interesting to see where that leads. Update, as I’ve been writing it’s been announced that the government are backing down from opening schools on the first of June. They’re now saying it’s not a fixed date.

A circle within the magic square has emerged. I keep meaning to leave a note asking what it is. I really need to find out.

I’ve been thinking about going back to normal, and what that means. Like I said, to some degree the spell seems to have broken, everything is up for grabs. My partner for example, is only now beginning to recover from the state of constant burnout caused by working in a callous industry for years. And I’m getting by on less, but have the time to invest in my future. We’re both much happier and healthier in this crisis than before. It’s not that way for everyone obviously, but for us going back to normal means just another type of crisis and more mental health issues. Like William Gibson said, “the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” That applies to the end of the world. Some people were already living through it, most of us just didn’t notice.

The language we use is important. If we try to go back to normal we might end up there. One of the reasons the 2008 recession was so bad, in the States anyway, was that Obama defined the goal as recovery rather than structural reform. He bailed out the “too big to fail” banks with billions of dollars but did nothing for the 10 million Americans who lost their homes. Thanks to Nancy Fraser’s The Old World is Dying and The New One Cannot Be Born.

We have to remember financialised capitalism is, evidenced by the S&P 500 unstoppable rise while US unemployment explodes, completely disconnected from reality. It is liberated from the social, political, ecological, moral, human, constraints needed to sustain it. Freed in this way, it consumes its own background conditions. It’s a cannibal. It eats everything up and shits it out while destabilizing the world it feeds off. The endless crises we experience one after another, and the way covid is so much worse than it needed to be, is an expression of that built in tendency. Thanks again Nancy, borrowed a few bits there.

Going back to normal is going back to one crisis after another, each worse than the last. My sincere hope is that the pain of what we’re going through is worth it, that rather than things being terrible for people but more or less staying the same, things fall apart to the extent we can change direction. I’m not sure if there’s any other way. If not, we’re doomed.

But what does normal even mean? I suppose it means hegemony, which according to Antonio Gramsci is the process by which a ruing class makes its domination appear natural by installing the presuppositions of its own worldview as the common sense of society as a whole. You’ll see this everywhere if you look. In the UK and USA, Nancy says, it’s progressive neoliberalism. The politics of people like Obama, Clinton(s), Blair, Bush, Cameron, who replaced equality with ‘meritocracy’ and conceded some recognition to marginalised groups like LGBTQ+ and women who already had access to the social capital to get on, so not poor women, or women of colour or really anyone of colour and failed to address the injustice of neoliberalism, or consider the distribution of wealth, apart from upwards. Both main parties represented more or less the same things but the poverty and alienation didn’t go away so a political void opened up which was taken advantage by reactionary neoliberalism Trump. Boris Johnson. Jair Bolsonaro.

This is how corporate ‘diversity’ and green-washing, and pr became more important to politicians than policy. And why I am becoming more and more suspicious of the rainbows in windows everywhere for the NHS, it feels like a rainbow flag in the window of a McDonald’s. Like a trap.

If we go back to ‘normal’ without addressing the conditions of inequality and lack of meaning, fascists like Trump won’t go away. They will likely be angrier, and elect nastier and nastier people, until capitalism tears itself apart or the world chokes to death on its fumes. We need to reject progressive neoliberalism too.

Knowing what to do about this is above my pay grade, but I have a couple of thoughts.

First of all, you can’t write people off as racists, or patronise and call them stupid because they don’t agree with you. That’s attitude to Brexit voters is what lost Labour the election. People are angry and confused. No doubt some Tory voters are genuine racists but most people just want the best for themselves and their families. Real left wing politics isn’t performative, the point isn’t just to feel nice, or show off that you’re a good person. That attitude that puts people off. Instead, we need to realise we’re all getting fucked over, and until everyone is free no one is. That includes Tories. I know it’s difficult, it’s nice to feel better than other people and to have an enemy, but that’s the first step to becoming a Tory yourself.

Secondly we need to find our own symbols. If things like the rainbow flag and probably before too long the Extinction Rebellion sign, go the way of the peace sign and start cropping up in Coke ads, then they lose meaning. They have been co-opted and stripped of their power. They’re too important to let that happen, so choose your own. I think that means finding some kind of creative outlet.

Thirdly, like cigarette companies, McDonald’s and Pret, Deliveroo and Uber don’t love you. They’re not your mate. In fact they don’t even like you. They hate you, why else would they manipulate you into buying stuff that bad for you, and exploit you when you work for them? If they don’t spark joy, if you don’t miss them, don’t let them back into your life when this is over.

Remember, if a brand does one nice thing, like donate to a charity, or give some shoes to goats, it doesn’t mean they are always a force for good.

I saw this boat which is named after Jo Cox, a left wing MP who was assassinated recently by a racist, and thought it was weird that wasn't a bigger deal. 

Good luck. I hope you’re well and free of coronavirus and can pay the rent. Make some bread and take it easy.

I looked this up, it sounds like some trendy bar, but it turns out there was actually a spaceport in Croydon.