Disaster at the Heart of Empire
© 2020 by Mumia Abu-Jamal, 10/14/20
As Americans slink toward the elections, a sense of disquiet haunts the land.
It’s a feeling of heightened caution, the shadow of fear radiating from a proto-fascist government, one riddled with disease, the fruit not just of the coronavirus, but of unease, unwellness, a mind burdened by weight.
This must be what fascism feels like: Deep, gnawing distrust of government institutions, the scent of corruption, born of crony capitalism, where everything and everyone has a price, which smells fetid, rotten.
Who thought, really thought, that things could fall so fast, so far — that hundreds of thousands could perish, so quickly, and the State stand by, in utter impotence.
This is the American Empire, 2020, lurching toward free fall.
Pandemania*
The coronavirus has hit, and in its wake, have been exposed the cracks in the system, in economics, health, education, transportation and the law, just to cite a few areas of human endeavor. We have seen how easily these systems can and have fallen apart.
The glue holding these systems together have cracked, frayed and shattered. There have been scattered attempts to bypass and ignore COVID-19, but few have proved successful. Across the nation we see a surge in COVID cases, and the overwhelming number of states report increases, not decreases.
That many Americans regard the wearing of a mask as a political decision, instead of a public health option, is a measure of the spread of this virus, and the absence of common sense.
COVID-19 is winning in America, and around the world.
From imprisoned nation this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of https://prisonradio.org
* Term Mumia seems to have coined from pandemonium, pandemic, and mania.
