Got myself injected

January 30, 2021 by Leave a comment

Having managed to dodge the coronavirus for the best part of a year, despite working in some relatively high-risk areas, last week I stood in line and received my first dose of vaccine. If the outcome data is as good as has been reported (and there’s no reason to believe that it isn’t) it’s looking like I have a reasonably good chance of coming out of this pandemic essentially unscathed, physically at least.

The jab I got was the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2, described in the product literature as “highly purified single-stranded, 5’-capped messenger RNA (mRNA) produced by cell-free in vitro transcription from the corresponding DNA templates, encoding the viral spike (S) protein of SARS-CoV-2”. The fact that our species is capable of even imagining such a thing, let alone developing and manufacturing it on an industrial scale in little over twelve months since the virus emerged, does give one some hope for the future of humanity.

Of course the mere existence of this vaccine, and the others that have become available over the last couple of months, would count for little without a reliable distribution system, but, happily, our local inoculation programme seems to be rolling out reasonably efficiently. Less happily, production problems have reportedly resulted in a shortage of supply in the rest of the EU, indirectly straining the Brexit trade deal barely a month after it was signed. I guess the last year should have taught me that, for every piece of encouraging news there is bound to be an equally dispiriting counterpoint.

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Incomplete deliverance

January 20, 2021 by Leave a comment

Back in 2016 I identified the story of Donald Trump’s run for President as a narrative of national redemption; the US, having peered into the abyss of fascism, would reject such Old World extremism, and confidently carry on down the road of enlightenment and democracy.

It’s taken four years longer than I expected, but, with today’s inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, our transatlantic cousins do seem to be bringing the tale to a happy ending. Even the most optimistic liberal would have to recognise that it’s not that simple though. One can hardly say that the country unequivocally rejected Trump, when he won nearly 75 million votes, more than he received in 2016. He would almost certainly have been re-elected were it not for the coronavirus pandemic, and, even if the man himself is forced to retire from politics by his various legal entanglements, there are plenty of would-be successors ready to take up his mantle.

I would argue that Trump was not the antithesis of the American experiment, but rather its inevitable conclusion. The divisions that he exploited were there from the start, and while Joe Biden may be able to calm things for a while with an injection of administrative competence, in the long run more radical solutions will surely be required. Perhaps future generations will look back on the Trump era, not exactly with gratitude, but at least as the time when the need for change became inarguably obvious.

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Premature insurrection

January 9, 2021 by Leave a comment

Events in Washington this week have, understandably enough, provoked a fair bit of pearl-clutching among both liberals and conservatives, the latter especially declaring themselves shocked – shocked! – that an unstable narcissist, whose every whim they had hitherto indulged, should stoop so low as to defile the sacred grove of democracy that is the US Capitol.

One does not wish to make light of an incident that cost five people their lives, but I think history will see this episode not as a thwarted rebellion, but rather a case of the deluded experiencing a hard collision with reality. Trump and his followers may yearn for a fascist coup, but there is no sign that the bulk of the US ruling class is ready to contemplate that level of disruption. Why would they? There is no significant anti-capitalist threat from the left – such movements that exist, particularly BLM, are asking the right questions, but the situation is nothing like Germany in the 30s, when there was a mass Communist Party, and the recent example of a successful proletarian revolution in Russia. US capital has time to give Joe Biden a chance to calm things down, and has no need to turn to Hitler figure just yet.

That’s not to say there won’t be more mayhem from the extreme right in the months to come, but the important thing to remember is that violence is not synonymous with a threat to state power, and, conversely, non-violence can be the strongest agent for change. This explains why the peaceful marches for racial equality over the summer were met with massed ranks of National Guardsmen, while Trump’s goons were allowed more or less free rein to run riot in the halls of Congress, at least until the spectacle became too embarrassing. The State knows which group presents a real danger to its existence, and which can be allowed to blow off a bit of steam.

My worry is not that the fascists will seize control of the government, but that their foot-soldiers will be co-opted by the government as a tool against the left. Countering this will require organisation and education, to win the disaffected away from the right, and into the struggle for progressive change.

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Riot on the Hill

January 7, 2021 by Leave a comment

Wild scenes in Washington DC tonight, as pro-Trump mobs, egged on by the man himself, invaded the very heart of US democracy, storming the Capitol Building to disrupt the formal confirmation of the presidential election results.

This is clearly a massive embarrassment for the US political class, indeed for the whole nation; such behaviour is not what one expects to see in a country that likes to lecture the rest of the world on how democracy should work. The big question is whether these events will shock those Republicans who were prepared to play to the Trump-loving gallery into reflecting on the wisdom of such a course of action. My guess is that it will, and that today’s disruption will prompt a moratorium on Trump-style demagoguery, at least for the immediate future. The reactionary forces that the President and his enablers have nurtured in the last four years are not going to disperse overnight though, and there are still two weeks of potential chaos to navigate before the new administration takes over, so there may be further outrages to come.

The news from DC overshadowed what would normally have been the big story of the day; the twin Democratic triumphs in Georgia which have cleared the way for Joe Biden to pursue his modest centrist programme. I’ve no doubt that we’ll find plenty of reasons to criticise him in the years to come, but right now a period of relative calm in Washington seems exactly what the world needs.

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New year, old problems

January 4, 2021 by Leave a comment

So, here we are in 2021, and it doesn’t seem that different from 2020; Donald Trump has kept on being cartoonishly villainous, and Boris Johnson is still cartoonishly incompetent.

At least our American cousins can look forward to some relief at the end of the month, since, apart from some grandstanding for the benefit of QAnon diehards, the GOP seems to have resigned itself to the reality of a Biden administration. They are probably fairly confident of picking up at least one of the two Senate seats on offer in the Georgia runoff election tomorrow, which would give them the majority needed to block any part of the Democrats’ programme they consider too progressive. It’s not hard to imagine the existence of a significant block of Republican voters who didn’t want to back Trump, but who will turn out to make sure Joe doesn’t have everything his own way, but it’s also possible that Biden supporters will be energised by winning in November, and will show up in sufficient numbers to carry the day. The early polling figures give some support to the latter scenario, so I’ll stick my neck out with our first prediction of the year; Democrats to sweep both contests.

Over here, alas, there is no immediate prospect of a change of government, so we seem fated to continue enduring the combined effects of Covid and Brexit for the foreseeable future, unameliorated by the ineffectual efforts of what passes for our national leadership. At least the frontline health services do seem a bit more on top of things, so I guess we’ll survive, but we’re going to have to draw deep on our famed reserves of British resilience to see this through.

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