Or was it Biden’s victory and liberal’s exhaustion with politics in a Trump-era world?
I can’t help but wonder if the presence of a Democrat in the presidency just sort of pacifies liberal, left, and radical mass movements and mobilization.
Or was it Biden’s victory and liberal’s exhaustion with politics in a Trump-era world?
I can’t help but wonder if the presence of a Democrat in the presidency just sort of pacifies liberal, left, and radical mass movements and mobilization.
If one succdem losing a primary for president could shatter a mass movement, then that movement never had any revolutionary potential to begin with.
COVID is the beginning and the end of the story in 2020. Without COVID, the George Floyd protests would not have gained the mass movement and revolutionary character we saw. Maybe in black communities it would have, but the real truth is cases of police brutality happen every day.
The COVID lockdown was so impactful in the US for a number or reasons. First of all, it make naked the banal cruelty of the American system for everyone to see. It showed how little the government cared about its citizens when a disease was running rampant across the US. It showed how terrible our health system was.The counter protests showed how gleefully many people in this nation cheer on the suffering of others at their own expense.
The rent and eviction moratoriums were key here too: it pitted the interests of the owning class against the proletariat. A nationwide break from rent was something nobody could have thought possible, and it the relief it provided made alternatives seemed realistic.
Many people weren’t working as well, which gave them time to join protests and think about how the US operates. Work from home made it apparent how bullshit office jobs are, and the “hero workers” who couldn’t work from home were shown how expendable they were to the ruling class. Stimulus payments showed people the government could just send them money and it would immediately improve their lives. PPE loans showed how easily the government will bail out business owners instead of regular folk.
It was a convergence of many different things, both economic and social, that gave people in 2020 a revolutionary spark. BLM and anti police provided the most direct outlet for that rage, it was the most identifiable and obviously cruel institution of oppression. The 2020 protests and the state response were the collision of forces building for a long time, but it still centered around the unique circumstances of COVID.
And so when the lockdowns ended, when the COVID measures eased, when the effects of the disease were hidden behind the curtain the revolutionary energy faded. Trump could be blamed by liberals and the left, Biden could be blamed by the right. Why else would Biden campaign so hard against Trump’s COVID response, then undo COVID measures as soon as possible? Because he saw the summer of 2020 and Jan 6 and saw that unique circumstances gave a unique response. And now business is back to usual.
To do anything close to what happened in 2020, it will likely take a bigger crisis than COVID.