Nearly 10 million americans said theyre out of work. That is more jobs loss in the last two weeks than in the Great Recession. And if you think that is the bottom, well, think again. Remember, we are weeks into a crisis that will likely go on for months. Businesses cannot reopen which means people cannot get back to work until the virus is contained. And the virus is nowhere near contained. We still dont have enough tests, doctors and nurses still dont have enough ppe and theres not enough medical equipment or space for the patients in need. Which is why in new york city an order to paramedics do not bring people in cardiac arrest to the hospital if you cant revive them on the spot pronounce them dead. The hospitals are too overloaded. In new york state, alone, the death toll is now over 2,000. Refrigerated trucks are parked outside of manhattan hospitals functioning as makeshift morgues to store the dead. Across the country, there are more than 232,000 confirmed cases of covid19. Over
As the US remains in the extraordinary position of having a President who refuses to acknowledge he hasn’t been re-elected, and who continues to encourage those who agitate for a populist coup, we often seem on the brink of political violence Americans are accustomed to seeing only in “banana republics,” or other nations we routinely dismiss as corrupt and backward. That violence did not explode as feared around Election Day, when the Electoral College certified its results, or when the Supreme Court shot down yet another bogus challenge from Team Trump. But who knows what January will bring?
Two new documentaries highlight the kinds of scenarios abroad that no longer seem quite so unimaginable in the “land of the free.” They highlight instances in which jail or outright assassination is the price for whistle-blowing, human rights advocacy, or investigating the crimes of an elite. Jeff Kaufman’s