Новости за 03.04.2020

On Tuesday, the number of American coronavirus casualties reached a grim milestone. Over 4,000 deaths had been recorded, officially surpassing the number of Americans killed on September 11. The shock of those nearly 3,000 dead led to nearly 20 years of war, which killed hundreds of thousands abroad and reordered politics and the habits of daily life here at home. As of today, April 3, the pandemic has taken over 6,000 American lives, more than double that number.

As enabling acts go, Viktor Orbán’s might be one of the most sweeping since Hitler got his in 1933. On Monday, Orbán—the quasi-fascist former Communist who has dragged Hungary to the far right since becoming prime minister a decade ago—secured his parliament’s sign-off on a law that effectively makes him a dictator until he decides the coronavirus emergency is over.

Over the next few months, the United States will be tested by a reality that moves much faster than our imaginations. Things are already changing in ways that seemed impossible months ago: Unemployment claims are spiking beyond the point where a graph can adequately convey the carnage. If things go well, deaths will be limited to somewhere between 100,000 and 240,000 people. That’s the “good” outcome. As we come to terms with what it means to live through this historical crisis, we must also get... Читать дальше...

At a press conference Thursday morning, Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp made the astonishing claim that until the “last 24 hours,” he and his team were unaware that asymptomatic people can carry and spread the coronavirus. This, despite a White House press room warning from the country’s top medical expert issued a full two months ago and consistent mainstream news reports repeating this fact day after day after day. One would imagine that the governor has other resources at his disposal beyond CNN... Читать дальше...

“I just spoke to our great General [James] Mattis, just now,” Donald Trump said near the end of his first State of the Union address back in 2017, “who reconfirmed that—and I quote—‘Ryan was a part of a highly successful raid that generated large amounts of vital intelligence that will lead to many more victories in the future against our enemies.’” Trump was at that point deep into a familiar State of the Union ritual—a speedrun of local heroes and Forever War martyrs whose inspiring stories... Читать дальше...

During the early days of the coronavirus crisis, President Donald Trump couldn’t make up his mind about the governors who were closing schools, banning large gatherings, and shutting down businesses across the country. He veered between admiration and resentment, praising governors for working with “urgency and speed,” while calling one a half-wit and another “a snake.”

To treat the Black Death, some doctors in the Middle Ages recommended ingesting “potable gold,” a vile tonic of gold compounds dissolved in ether. One might think that we had progressed past such bogus remedies, but in the age of the coronavirus, quacks and pseudoscientists are now pushing colloidal silver, long touted in wellness circles for its antimicrobial properties. (Gwyneth Paltrow, for instance, once said she sprays a little in her mouth and around her seat on planes to fend off germs.)

As if the flesh had come apart
            in my hands to tell of it—light

come through the vague furred frame

             then coming through deeper, as I cut
the skin away, so that it seemed deep green 

            was an order of light unto itself,

what wrought at the center 

            among seeds, its issue, could be

revealed as the system

             I was going toward, all this time.

All this time, sharing a part
            of the fruit with... Читать дальше...

While many Americans worry about how much longer they can pay rent and avoid contracting Covid-19, corporations are within striking distance of controlling our basic political institutions. The recent congressional stimulus package has been criticized as a sweetheart deal that will only make the rich richer, giving the airline industry a cool $60 billion while individual Americans facing job loss, eviction, and illness get at most $1,200 a piece. But beyond resource allocations, there are many... Читать дальше...

It is often said of the writer Rebecca Solnit that her work “resonates.” It’s hard to find an article about her that doesn’t include that word. At a time when feminism is about finding others who have lived on the same frequency (#metoo, #yesallwomen), a thinker like Solnit, who gravitates toward identifying common denominators in the female experience (mansplaining, gaslighting, silencing, etc.) is primed to resonate.

You said in your last meeting you figured out
the map of the planets. The lonely orbits.
Cosmic dust. In my last meeting, a future
meeting was discussed. How to kick out
the un-paid children—holes thumbed
into sweatshirts—from debates about the shapes
of the soul. Like always, I brought my vag
to the table. And when I spoke,
it was like it breathed. Echoed me.
Shadowed me. And every time,
someone uses this to soften my presence
into something ordinary... Читать дальше...

Writing about South Park, a silly cartoon, in the middle of an eminently predictable and yet entirely unanticipated global pandemic has an uncanny quality, like meeting a time traveler and realizing that he is you. If I could travel back in time now and meet myself circa, say, 2005, just a few years out of college and struggling to figure out how to become a writer, and tell that younger me that in 15 years, nearing 40 years old, I’d be locked in the house during a plague year writing a review of the political valences of South Park... Читать дальше...

An iron pan is burning; the witch
has left her house. The children
walk hand in hand through a
forest of reagents. In the subterranean
world, bolts of silk, yellow pills
and moths the size of dinner plates.
You said you wish to practice yoga
with baby goats? The witch is back,
pan still burning, the stars
can’t wait for their sacrifice.