Posted on 04/17/2020 11:29:43 AM PDT by Cedar
The debate about “reopening the economy” is a phony debate.
It’s phony because “the economy” isn’t shut down. Far from it. Walmart is still open. Dollar General is open. Amazon is open. Alibaba is open.
It just so happens that the big-box mass merchandisers and online retailers responsible for flooding our country with crap from Communist China are open.
Meanwhile, other, very specific parts of the country are shut down.
Family-owned shops and workshops, the backbone of America, are closed. Fast-food franchises remain open—drive-through windows are operating at full tilt—but independently owned restaurants are shuttered or trying to survive at diminished capacity doing takeout only.
Conveniently, if not coincidentally, small-business owners make up an important segment of Trump’s base. Like the president, they have signed the front of a paycheck, experienced the brunt of the well-meaning administrative state, and endured the predations of giant corporations and subsidized Chinese competition. That’s why they love President Trump–he understands what they go through.
While these largely family-owned, small and medium-sized enterprises are laying off workers by the millions, Amazon and Walmart are hiring.
In the energy industry, the big guys can weather the storm while small, independent producers are getting crushed as oil prices fall off the cliff along with demand.
Facebook, Twitter, Google, Zoom and other giant internet overlords are seeing more traffic than ever as people are locked in and white-collar professionals work from home.
These are the same people in Silicon Valley who tilt hard to the left and censor anyone who strays from the official “we are all going to die” pandemic narrative.
Twitter gives a soapbox to Chinese Communist Party propagandists suggesting the U.S. Army hatched the coronavirus but bans Laura Ingraham for daring to suggest an FDA-approved drug could offer hope to the stricken.
Who else isn’t shut down?
Government employees continue to draw paychecks, even those deemed “nonessential.”
Let us pause for a moment to consider just how ridiculous this is: Show me a private business that pays a “nonessential” employee even in the best of times. In the real world, outside of government, if you’re not essential you’re not on the payroll (unless you’re married to the boss’s daughter).
The “creative class” of the coastal elites, academics, media and the white-collar professionals of the urban centers remain employed—and paid—while blue-collar Americans are furloughed, laid off, and deemed “nonessential.”
There’s a certain symmetry to this.
Americans who work with their hands and live outside the big blue cities are considered “nonessential.” Families who own their businesses, or work for a family business rather than depend on the government or a global corporation for their livelihoods are considered “nonessential.” People who want to go to church rather than an abortion clinic are considered “nonessential.”
Before these Americans were called “nonessential” they were called “deplorable.”
The same people who called half of America deplorable now call half of America nonessential. They never really liked them anyway.
They feel a closer affinity to their classmates from Harvard and Yale, children of transnational global elites, than do for their fellow citizens without such credentials.
These “citizens of the world” refused to learn any lessons from Donald J. Trump’s victory in 2016. Now they’ve found the ultimate weapon to punish those they detest for electing the Bad Orange Man president: lock them at home, put them on the dole, and let them eat grass (since they can’t buy seeds for a vegetable garden).
Do this and maybe they will finally learn to place their faith in government, not God.
Or they can find solace in the bosom of the human resources department at Amazon or Walmart, now hiring.
As agriculture consolidated, family farmers became farmhands for agribusiness giants. Now those who once owned shops can become buyers for one of the remaining merchandisers or find a managerial position in the archipelago of Amazon warehouses.
We are watching the corporate consolidation of the economy taking place before our eyes.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo tells us government economic development officials and Nurse Ratcheds from the Department of Public Health will be in charge of all economic activity in the northeast. How reassuring. I can’t wait for their five-year plan!
Banks are poised to exploit the recovery programs while everyone else waits for the check in the mail.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wants to give private equity firms money that was supposed to help small businesses. The Federal Reserve is taking on its balance sheet the junk bonds Wall Street players used to destroy the real economy companies where all those nonessential deplorables once worked.
These vulture capitalists are poised to snap up the distressed properties shuttered by the forced shutdown of the non-corporate sector.
When we awaken from the fever dream of pandemic hysteria, it will be clear who has suffered the most: the forgotten men and women of America.
If you tried to design an attack against Trump voters you couldn’t do better than what the experts have done in the name of public health.
We need to restore our way of life—and make America great again.
– – –
Curtis Ellis is policy director with America First Policies. He was also a senior policy advisor with the Donald J. Trump presidential campaign in 2016.
“Before Americans were called “nonessential” they were called deplorable.”
There’s a tagline for someone....
Payback is a bitch for the free traders, globalist and the American hating leftist.
From this point forwards, complain about any Communist Chinese products on the shelves. Demand to see the Manager and ask them if these Chicom products have been decontaminated, demand American made products etc!
Maybe this was the Insurance Policy the Coup actors spoke of? Either way it is and will decimate the middle class and precede the largest transfer of wealth from the people to the Ruling Class this country has ever seen.
A question for all Freepers who are serving and ex-military(regrettably I never served)My question is this: As men and women trained to fight and engage in combat do this Covid virus release from a Communist Chinese laboratory seem to you like a kind of ‘’armed reconnaissance’’?
A way to see what damage it would do to our economy, our
institutions , our infrastructure and social cohesion?
sounds like a good idea for a t-shirt:
Deplorable
Non-Essential
American!
If this wonderful man. Donald j trump. Was not president
I would be worried and take this seriously
This president loves this nation and it’s people. And has our back
The rich do not want too many people with some money (mercantile class), poor people are jealous because they can actually see the middle-class.
Normally, the rich play the poor against the middle-class as a diversion.
This means this shut-down is the free world's "Great Leap Forward" as it destroys the best means to the middle-class, a successful small business.
That is a good idea!
its an attack against the middle class, primarily.
to eliminate as much of the middle class as possible and make them poor.
because of course the media and socialist uniparty will attempt to put it all on Trump.
It’s so easy to know what they are doing.
bmp
if so, i wonder what the trump game plan would be?
for example, first open (most) red states.
then what?
i’m half tempted to suggest a few structural changes in the federal government.
if the usps is allowed to shut down for lack of funds, for example, or by decree, would that get rid of ballot harvesting? tax collection could be switched to private delivery services or a new mail service.
the fbi director could be fired.
after a while, market pressures would force blue states to open (?)
i can’t envision a country half shut down for long and i also can’t envision (yet) a red-versus-blue civil war (but if this keeps going...)
No. It’s obviously a targeted hit against Democrat states, cities and against globalist trade interests.
Coronavirus survivors say they fear long-term effects
https://nypost.com/2020/04/17/my-lungs-are-on-fire-coronavirus-survivors-say-they-fear-long-term-effects/
Woman shares strange neurological symptom as she recovers from coronavirus
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/woman-shares-strange-neurological-symptom-21881561
Deep State PLOT:
1) Using PUPPET MEDIA, create a 'PANDEMIC' ultimately aimed at DESTROYING our economy and PREVENTING REBELLIONS (LARGE GROUPS) FROM FORMING THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY. Any protests in HONG KONG lately?
2) Move on Trump either physically or with a COUP on the White House with little to no resistance because of the CoVid-19 scare.
Trump needs to BOLSTER his security with one or preferably TWO SEAL TEAMS or other Special Ops teams resident within the White House.
I pray for Trump's safety as well as I know MANY FReepers do!!! This could get SERIOUS, people. 'Normalcy Bias' be damned. KEEP YOUR GUARD UP.
The gig economy has probably been hardest hit. And they’re mostly liberals.
Perhaps a “probing raid” would fit. Testing (probing) and looking for vulnerabilities, defensive reactions, impacts etc.
USAF Ret.
Manufacturing shops should be open in Republican states. There’s no great likelihood of disease spread in those places, as long as employees aren’t bunched up while working. Outdoor activities should be good to go, as long as small services buildings like tourist trap stores aren’t packed.
Every day the shutdown continues, the food supply chain strains/breaks a little more. Democrats want to be generous with payments to out of work people, as long as farmers, ranchers, food processors, truckers and grocers continue to perform at their same hourly wage, at great risk to their own health, if warnings are to be believed. What would happen if anywhere in that supply chain, massive numbers of workers decided to step aside and take the government $$ instead of rising their health? How long before the food stopped hitting democrat strongholds?
This is a civil war at the upper levels of our government. We are mostly spectators, but the deep state keeps attacking like cornered beasts.
They have control of the narrative and a lot of stupid people who think they are smart, believing their nonsense.
The virus is too convenient and people like Gates too eager and ready to impose draconian measures. The Democrats are being revealed as tyrants. Political correctness has been pushed to the back. Globalism is fighting for its life.
Sometimes I think that X22 guy is full of it. Other times I believe we might all be around to see victory. God bless our great president and the patriots.
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