Day 23: Traffic on the freeway and another month in review
Looking back, I’ve done more writing than I realized. And I want to make sure you're all caught up!
It’s day 23 of the COVID-19 lockdown here in Los Angeles. Yesterday, I went for a jog in Griffith Park and almost got mugged by a squirrel. Today, Evgenia and I took a drive out to the beach — just to get out of the house and to see what’s going on. Aside from some people jogging, biking, and walking their dogs, it was mostly empty. The parking lots were closed and the beaches were desolate. The only people really hanging out in Venice Beach were the homeless. Oh, and construction workers. Speedway — the alley that runs parallel to the beach — had several active construction sites crammed with trucks and people.
Driving out, there were almost no cars on the I-10. It took us twenty minutes to get there — the fastest we’ve ever done it. But on our way back inland, we hit small patch of traffic — not once, but twice. Yep, traffic during quarantine. Just looking at the people stuck in traffic around us, it seemed that many of the cars were filled with working people. Most were alone and more than a few were dusty and looked like they were returning from working construction. In LA and California, construction sites have been labelled “essential services.” They’ve been fully operational during the epidemic all this time. It seems insane — a perfect vector for making sure the virus transmits far and wide. But the real estate industry is the closest thing we have to God here. That’s why the city’s mayor can sacrifice the people of LA to it, and no one questions it. And I’m sure construction workers need the money. They have no choice but go to work. It’s not like the government is going to help them pay the bills.
So our little trip to the beach showed another example of this quarantine’s serious class divide and how deep rot of our ruling class — from the federal all the way down to the local level. No one’s helping and they don’t mind killing us, all so that a few lousy developers get to keep to their building schedules. And the poorest and most vulnerable are, like always, getting screwed the most. And the statistics are grimly bearing this out. Ugh.
Anyway, with all the crazy shit happening, I figured I’d do my monthly newsletter roundup. Looking back, I’ve done more writing than I realized. And I want to make sure my readers are all caught up! (And check out the last recap here.)
Thanks, and take care of yourself and the people around you — because our corrupt and incompetent oligarchy sure as hell won’t take care of you.
—Yasha Levine
Soviet immigrants for the status quo! — “As far as we are concerned, America was always neoliberal. It’s the only America we know.”
Announcement: Say Hello To Oligarch Valley — “My journalism outside the newsletter has been increasingly focused on the world of Oligarch Valley. So I’m bringing Oligarch Valley into the newsletter fold.”
How California's oligarch farmers put Japanese-Americans into concentration camps — “California’s anglo oligarchs saw the nativist panic that gripped America after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor as an opportunity.”
Listen to me on TrueAnon talking about soft power, anti-communism, Internet Freedom... — “It's what the kids are into these days!”
A glimpse into the mind of a fanboy destroyer — “CIA agent Gene Sosin fetishized the Soviet Union. And yet he directed all of his professional energy into destroying it.”
A Failed State — “...and the coronavirus.”
Our nativist freakout about China hides the real origin of the coronavirus. It’s political, global, and made in the USA. — “We’re facing something that's more difficult than a medical emergency. We’re facing a political fight against the most powerful corporations in the world.”
Dusting off an old book proposal — “Our farmers aren't feeding us, they're killing us.”
Letter from LA: The homeless are internal refugees — victims on the run from neoliberalism — “The truth is that homelessness is fundamentally a refugee crisis — an internal refugee crisis caused by economic and political warfare.”
COVID-19 — “We’re seeing the rotten core of our society exposed in real time — and it feels like we’re entering some sort of political event horizon, but no one’s sure what kind.”
Notes — “The Industrial and Neoliberal Origins of COVID-19 (aka SARS 2.0)”
Los Angeles landlords can comfortably kick their renters out on the street during a pandemic — “Good news for rentiers!”
A wonderful COVID-19 immigrant story — “Death by lack of money”
Day 15: Rent's Due — “I’ve been thinking about this rentier frenzy from a Soviet perspective.”
Day 16: Good morning, Mayor! — “Evgenia and I woke up before dawn to head to an early morning “wake up asshole” car protest in front of Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti’s official residence.”
Canada finally gets a Nazi-loving Prime Minister — “...temporarily, at least. In honor of this momentous occasion, I’m opening up all my subscriber-only material on Chrystia Freeland.”
Day 18: Mitch O’Farrell — “On day 18 of our COVID-19 lockdown, Evgenia and I got in our car right after sunset and headed to 3708 Roderick Road for another round of a “hey, asshole!” car honking protest.”
Day 19: Check me out on Filmsuck as we tear into the new Netflix hit “Unorthodox” — “If this show was made in the 1990s, when American consumerist liberalism still seemed to hold some promise, maybe it would’a worked better. Now it’s like getting a whiff of a stagnant, dying culture.”
Day 20: Soviet immigrant crap lit — “Is there any book written by a Soviet immigrant of my generation that's actually worth reading?”
Day 21: Empire under COVID-19 — “I started this newsletter to explore the history of how America weaponizes nationalism in the service of empire. And with COVID-19, both nationalism and empire are being deployed in a big way.”
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