An update to my subscribers

Contextualizing the new world being created by official responses to Covid

First, a huge “Thank You” to all of my subscribers for supporting this newsletter and for your patience waiting for the next two installments of the Covidnomics series. A brief update follows.

PATERNALIST AUTHORITARIANISM

I believe that the scope and scale of the changes that have been wrought in the past 7 to 8 months in response to the Covid-19 virus are historically unprecedented. Nothing I had planned to write seems adequate to the enormity of the historical moment.

A recent scholarly legal analysis published by Oxford University Press characterizes government responses across the world as a form of “paternalist authoritarianism” and notes that “…there is no sound justification for systemic erosion of rights-protective democratic ideals and institutions beyond that which is strictly demanded by the exigencies of the pandemic.”

From global proposals such as the World Economic Forum’s "Great Reset" to a new highly organized and well funded campaign arguing for a rapid transition to financial accounting worldwide based on "natural capital" to the emergence of "bio-capitalism" as a central feature of daily life and a fevered campaign to launch the "Fourth Industrial Revolution,” the accelerated push for key elements of a new Covid regime has given everyone more to digest and contextualize than I’m sure any of us suspected back in March. And it is about much more than the virus.

Photo: PickPik

Thus I am doing my own “mini-reset”. The next two Covidnomics articles are still in the works. I hope to publish Part 5, Dramatis Personae, soon.

However, I cannot ignore the many new developments aimed at re-engineering all social, political and financial life on the planet, and I am working on new articles aimed at contextualizing these daunting changes and exploring their implications.

Your continued support is invaluable to doing this work!

REIMAGINING POLITICS EN ESPAÑOL

As a Spanish language columnist for the Montevideo Portal, Resliente Magazine and Pressenza in Spain, Uruguay, México and Chile, I am committed to offering as many of my articles as possible in both English and Spanish.

Today, with the help of my friend of many years Luciana Slaen, in Cordoba, Argentina, I am publishing our first article in Spanish about the extraordinary life and death of bicyclist Holger Franz in México. (link below) The first two articles in the Covidnomics series will follow shortly in Spanish.

Luciana is a brilliant linguist, and I give her a huge and very special “thank you” for the excellent translations of these difficult articles. Luciana is now the official translator of the Reimagining Politics newsletter and we are working together to translate nearly all of our articles into Spanish in the coming months.

LA INMENSIDAD DE UNA VIDA MINIMALISTA