“Coronavirus makes clear what has been true all along. Your health is as safe as that of the worst-insured, worst-cared-for person in your society. It will be decided by the height of the floor, not the ceiling.”
— Anand Giridharadas
*****
“All of a sudden you become a wealthy guy, you’re a famous guy, then you become president. And people that you’ve never seen, that you’ve never heard of, make charges. I would just say to Joe Biden, ‘Just go out and fight it.’”
— Donald Trump, who noted he was “sticking up” for Biden, Trump just blew up one of his campaign’s biggest talking points
*****
“We are witnessing the steady, uninterrupted intellectual and psychological decomposition of an American president. It’s something the Trump White House cannot hide—indeed, it doesn’t even try to hide it anymore. There is not even the slightest hint of normalcy.”
— Peter Wehner, The President Is Unraveling
*****
“And so, you know, we expected this ad to hit. We did not expect him to behave in the completely maniacal way he behaved all day, but here we are. We are here because of him. We have hung this rotten corpse around his neck, and he’s going to have to drag it around for a few months.”
— Rick Wilson, ‘We found his weak spot’: Rick Wilson reveals why Lincoln Project ad caused Trump to ‘lose his damn mind’
*****
“As we bear witness to armed white American militias storming or protesting outside government institutions, it is clear that the chaos and tragedy of Covid-19 are being used by Trump and the GOP to enhance the conflict and accelerate the birth of a new, greater America. At the heart of every nationalist mythology is some kind of a rebirth, usually bloody and requiring sacrifices, preferably of the weak and the doubtful.”
— Aleksandar Hemon, Trump’s Nationalism Advances on a Predictable Trajectory to Violence. His Supporters Will Kill When They’re Told To
*****
“Demagogues always arise from failed democracies plagued by rulelessness and anomie.”
— Chris Hedges
*****
“The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”
— Steve Bannon, former Trump adviser
*****
“But I believe the worker testimony too. And at the end of the day, the big problem isn’t the specifics of Covid-19 response. It’s that Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential. Only that’s not just Amazon, it’s how 21st-century capitalism is done.”
— Tim Bray, I was a vice-president at Amazon. I quit because of its toxic company culture
*****
“It’s madness – just madness. They were just dumped there like dogs. What are our lives worth now? Nothing.”
— Gilson de Freitas, a 30-year-old maintenance man whose mother, Rosemeire Rodrigues Silva, was one of 136 people buried last Tuesday, ‘Utter disaster’: Manaus fills mass graves as Covid-19 hits the Amazon
*****
“Never be deceived that the rich will let you vote away their wealth.”
— Lucy Parsons, early 20th century American anarchist and journalist.