The present age, part 2

DARPA, radical freedom, Yogi-Commissars & 24/7 hyper-reality in the time of Covid

“This freedom which we take for granted in all political theory and which even those who praise tyranny must still take into account is the very opposite of inner freedom, the inward space into which men may escape from external coercion and ‘feel’ free.”  – Hannah Arendt

Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People (1830), Wikipedia

THE PRESENT AGE, PART 2

Part 1 of The Present Age was published Monday, April 19, 2021, exploring historical perspectives on the possibility of political revolt against the new globalized financial, social and political regime that has been imposed under the banner of public health over the past year in response to Covid-19.

The Present Age articles are companion pieces to my COVIDNOMICS series tracing tens of trillions of dollars in Covid “stimulus” pumped into the global financial and corporate sectors, an estimated $20 trillion in just the first five months after the WHO’s declaration of a pandemic, almost certainly over $30-$35 trillion now.

Before the pandemic, twin financial and political crises were destabilizing and threatening the survival of the post-Cold War neoliberal order in real time in unprecedented ways.

In 2019, the year before the pandemic, global debt, most of it in the corporate and financial sectors, reached a historic high 320% of global GDP. The IMF warned of possible “GDP shock” caused by elevated “corporate sector vulnerabilities across countries” if the crisis in liquidity was not addressed urgently.

In January 2020, Verisk Maplecroft, the world’s leading risk consultancy, characterized 2019 as a “nadir for political stability worldwide” and warned that “the 2020s appear set to become the decade of rage, unrest and shifting geopolitical sands.”

With the declaration of a global pandemic in March 2020, authentic political life was essentially shutdown worldwide as tens of trillions of dollars in stimulus-fueled liquidity flooded, and continues flooding, the speculative economy. There is almost no news today about either political instability or a looming financial crisis.

The news is about variants, virus surges, masks, possible school openings, etc.

Most people remain patient, but in the face of devastating and still unfolding pandemic-driven economic, social and secondary health impacts, questions about the rationale of the global lock down agenda are frequently manifesting as overt resistance. The political unrest that had been shaking the world for a decade before Covid (Brexit, Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro, et al.) has not disappeared. It is latent.

Hannah Arendt observed that revolutions are possible but not necessary answers to a devolution of legitimacy within a particular regime; they are not the cause but rather a possible consequence of the downfall of political authority.

At minimum, I think the sweeping scope and devastating impact of the new Covid regime being implemented by fiat worldwide requires more robust and open democratic debate. Absent such a course correction, it is instructive to explore what forms popular revolt might take.