The ongoing coronavirus outbreak has laid bare the backstage of the longest-running spectacle in the United States: the neoliberal horror picture show.
If we are to protect Americans’ right to vote during these hard times — their right to have a say in who leads the country as we emerge from this crisis — we must expand vote-by-mail.
Vote-by-mail systems, in their current forms, prevent the same level of voter validation as in-person voting, and therefore compromise our election security.
It is counterintuitive to see Biden’s gestures of amity, made unabashedly in the public view, as acts of violence. But when his performance of paternity occludes the intense discomfort of the women he is touching, he is contributing to a project of erasure — one that makes nonconsent generally permissible in our culture.
This ultimate stress test is teaching us that government-controlled systems of central planning and health care are woefully inadequate at providing care and are subject to political failure.
Where women on the front lines of the crisis are already showing us the way forward to a more just and equitable system, we need to listen and follow their lead.
Increased youth voter registration could help close the political power gap between millennials/Gen Zers and baby boomers, and ensure that elected officials more fairly represent constituents and their interests.
For those who would prefer to imagine white supremacy as the ink printed in our high school textbooks — see it today instead as Ahmaud Arbery’s blood, running down the streets of Satilla Drive. Ahmaud Arbery, may you rest in peace.
