Weekend thread: @JoeBiden has hit the ground running to well-deserved applause from liberal social/MSM. He has rapidly taken action addressing four key crises he’s named, the good news. The bad news is that he left out arguably the two most important crises. His four: “changing

the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, providing economic relief, tackling climate change, and advancing racial equity.” The two he left out, which are interrelated, are massive inequality and democracy. While Biden is off to a good start, these two deep crises are getting worse.

Re democracy, the issue at the moment is whether the Senate will use budget reconciliation to pass the next relief bill, or possibly end filibuster. From his 36 years in the Senate, Biden wants to work across the aisle. Unfortunately the majority on GOP side of the House aisle

seem to be moral/political cowards, at best, w a few clinically insane sociopaths, as definitively proven by 137 GOP reps, out of 211, voting against certifying Biden’s Electoral College win, just hours AFTER the Jan 6 Capitol Hill riot. To try to “unify” U.S., not D.C., Biden

needs to continually talk directly to the people, so that he can eventually, if his policies and the economy perform well, first fixing the vaccine mess ASAP, split off 5-10% of GOP voters, which is all he needs in 2022 to increase his narrow mandate to a comfortable majority.

To do so, he must walk his talk about “unity,” meaning he must address massive inequality, in words and deeds, in addition to racial equity, the former addresses all groups, the latter specific ones, Biden so far has emphasized those that won him the nomination and election.

Massive inequality has led to deep polarization and crisis of democracy. Biden’s 4 crises policies will impact massive inequality to some extent, but he is not directly addressing it. There are several long-term crisis converging now. There is 400-year old crisis of racial/social

injustice, which affects blacks, Latinx, women, others. There is the 40-year crisis of the neoliberal era, in which entire bottom 50% and more have seen their income and wealth stagnate while that of the top 1%, 10% and 20% have exploded upwards. That crisis hollowed out lives,

communities of white workers. Elites, with the help, sometimes unwitting, of “identity politics” from the “left” and “culture wars” from the “right,” have successfully turned various groups in the bottom 50% against each other, rather than against them. And there is the crisis

of climate change, which is a crises of neoliberal era’s emphasis on financialization rather than productive investments in the real economy, including earth. Climate change will be the key item on Biden’s agenda once the next relief bill is passed. But the key issues involving

how to effectively deal w climate change have really never been debated out, certainly not during the farce debates of Dem primaries and general election last year. Biden’s so far sketchy Green New Deal-type plans and those of “progressive” left seem possibly more "radical" than

that of FDR’s New Deal (his 1932-36 landslide wins absolutely dwarfed Biden’s narrow one), which could never contemplate replacing the entire fossil fuel energy systems of the past 270 years since the Industrial Revolution. Hopefully there will be a major debate building support

for the necessary economic/technology policies, but I'm skeptical. Dealing w climate change has now created a politically correct incongruous coalition of social/racial justice “progressives” and Wall St, with BlackRock’s Larry Fink the latest to throw around its trillions to try

to force corporations to comply. Speaking of Wall St, there was the GameStop reality show this week. I won’t go into the absurd details, basically it’s a proverbial falling out among thieves, the “oppressed” retail traders of WallStreetBets are trying to manipulate stocks just

like their “oppressors,” hedge fund short-sellers, both of whom are often just trying to make a quick buck. The former sometimes try to present themselves as sticking it to the man, i.e. short sellers and/or boomers, for their dastardly unpunished deeds during GFC, when families

of millennials lost jobs and homes, never mind that short selling did not cause that crisis. But the retail speculators lack of facts and positive ideology, program for social change, financial gambling is not it, is indicative of a broader trend. The most extreme wings of BLM,

the Capitol Hill rioters and now retail stock manipulators all share a basic characteristic, which is not just using free time and government checks while out of a job or school. It is that they all have various stripes of anarchist/nihilist worldviews. This is of course very

obvious with the Capitol Hill rioters. But the Reddit traders talk about YOLO trades, You Only Live Once, and even suicide if they go broke on them. As for BLM, of course the vast majority were peacefully protesting very real facts of centuries of racial injustice. I’m talking

about the extreme “left” who did property damage (usually underplayed by liberal social/MSM) and would sometimes face off with the extreme “right,” not realizing that down deep they shared similar anarchist/nihilist worldviews, w different “enemies.” Biden and especially Harris

have justified a focus on racial equity because of the BLM protests. Those protests were very legitimate, but before Floyd’s gruesome murder was caught on video, BLM was going nowhere for years, check it on Google trends. BLM focused on “defunding the police,” despite the fact

that Covid-19 killed ~100k blacks in 2020, ~5,000 times more unarmed blacks than police, also not on millions of black un/underemployed. Corporate America supports BLM. Have you considered why? The extremes of that movement believe whites are systemically racist. Actual racist

white supremacists who rioted in Capitol believe blacks are inferior. I hope that Biden can somehow find his inner Lincoln (“progressive” S.F. Board of Supervisors just voted to remove his name, 43 others from its schools, closed amidst huge unaddressed housing, overdose crises)

and inner FDR. But Lincoln was pushed by abolitionists (a leader was caned nearly to death on Senate floor by a pro-slavery rep from SC, sound familiar?), and FDR by an actual socialist left, which organized the industrial labor unions, also key in 1960s civil rights movement.

Labor left, which achieved Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, no longer has any influence in U.S., replaced by various “identity politics” groups, which Biden, especially Harris have focused on. I suggested in my last weekend thread that BLM, Women's March, etc. support union

organizing drive of Alabama Amazon warehouse workers. This would expose faux populists like Marjorie Taylor Greene, also help clarify where “left,” Biden, Harris stand. For another view of stuff here, see short, thought-provoking 2020 book "Angrynomics." Thx 4 reading. End thread

My 1/23/21 Weekend Thread https://twitter.com/jfurlan14/status/1353070017181491203