The post-New Deal new normal, then, is very similar to the pre-New Deal old normal. The present is not a rerun of the age of the age of robber barons after the Civil War, but of the subsequent age in which university-credentialed corporate elites have usually favored free markets and free love and freedom from organized labor, while working-class populations, white and nonwhite, have typically favored a mix of moral traditionalism with pro-labor protectionism in economic policy.
This is not the second Gilded Age. It is the second Jazz Age. And from the perspective of Americaβs disfranchised and alienated working-class majority of all races, that is bad enough.
A second lockdown here in Melbourne feels like a nightmare. I wake up each day and find it surreal. I can only go outside once per day for an hour of exercise. The state regulations require me to wear a face mask if I go outside my home. There are police and military in the streets and in beautiful natural settings like the Yarra River. Theyβre positioned there to ensure people are wearing face masks and to ask them why they are out. If a personβs answer is not one of the four reasons weβre allowed to leave home β to provide care, get to a medical appointment, go food shopping, or exercise for one hour β then officials are instructed to issue hefty fines of up to $5,000. On a bad day, you can see videos on the news of the police exerting their new powers and tackling anti-maskers or curfew-breakers to the ground in order to arrest them. You see birds chirping and people in military outfits right next to them. The contrast is bizarre β itβs as though weβre at war.They are committing national suicide.
"It's very dangerous to scale this up to an entire population without doing those trials," he said. The vaccine's effectiveness also hasn't been tested, he said. The fact is, he said, an immune response in the lab doesn't necessarily mean protection.They could say the same about the flu vaccine that comes out every year in the west.