Last week we shared an article on our Facebook page from the Guardian reporting that sales of toilet paper had soared by 23% in a week. Referring to the panic buying that occurred earlier this year, we asked, ‘Really people? Are we going to do this again?’ and one of our readers, Sean Smith, sent us the following answer sharing his views.
It’s almost as if having…
- a lying, ineffectual bunch of thieving gangsters giving inconsistent and conflicting information on a daily basis
- the upcoming end of remaining furlough with no option or scheme to replace it once it ends
- a likely surge in Covid cases coupled with, and exacerbated BY, seasonal flus on the way
- curfews and curtain-twitching paranoia as social policy
- another full lockdown looking more and more likely as we lose control of this even further
- economic, employment and food insecurity worsening every day
…is causing people less sensible and objective to act more and more selfishly.
This crisis will only worsen the more we turn against each other.
It’s almost as if the panic-buying, people acting like it’s a hoax and everyone being suspicious or outright hateful is precisely the government’s game plan here.
It’s right-wing authoritarian governments like ‘ours’, the US, Brazil, Belarus (nice to be in such good company, eh?) are all spiralling into thuggish police states, while the rest of the planet scratches their head in confusion at us.
We’re already ripping each other to pieces over a functionally pointless political compass, over ‘Left’ and ‘Right’, doubling-down on watching the Brexit fiasco go from laughable to outright illegal. Whether you voted for it or not, we aren’t ready and we certainly aren’t able to handle a provably lethal pandemic crippling our broken economic system any further.
Empty shelves WILL be the norm as we descend into our second economic depression in a generation. This is the tip of the spear for much worse things unless we start taking real action, that doesn’t involve picking which side of a meaningless line in the dirt these dangerous disaster capitalists have drawn for us.
But we don’t fix things by hating each other. Or calling other people ignorant. Or thick.
People are scared. My fourteen year-old son is scared and he SHOULDN’T be. None of us should be.
We fix things by doing something about those who funnelled OUR money to their friends, when they could have funded a health service to test, treat and protect the population. Who broke trade deals that mean food and medicine won’t be coming when we need them most. Who laugh at us as we beat each other in the dirt, while their personal capital grows, we get poorer and our rivers turn to poison.
But we don’t get through this as individuals, out for ourselves, or towing meaningless party lines that are just more of the same lies with a different coat of paint, or harping on about past glories that we took no part in. And we certainly won’t have anyone to blame but ourselves if we allow things continue like this.
