The Tribulation has begun
Above all, this plastic society will be remembered for its innumerable addictions. The net end game of the corporate failed status quo. An entire society systematically consumed by a virtual way of life at the expense of reality. Massive doses of drugs paper over the chasms in the facade. Fake happiness is a full time job. I call it the 50 year life. Because that is the healthy life expectancy for those who enjoy being sucked dry by the corporate Matrix. It's a soul-dead way of life.
Take Walmart as an example of how this society conflates failure as success. Walmart displaced millions of small businesses that were the backbone of investment and employment in local communities. They siphon all profits out of local communities off to corporate headquarters and then out to offshore bank accounts. In the process they decimated local retailers and through predatory price competition became the only option for impoverished "consumers". Now to shop anywhere other than the dollar store is deemed "elitist" in this Idiocracy. To seek a healthy lifestyle is a luxury. It's why Trump poses with junk food all the time. To prove he is a man of the people. As the economy was degraded, society's expectations of what is healthy and normal was degraded at the same time.
Of course now Amazon has taken slash and burn retail to its logical conclusion - imported junk from China drop shipped to yuppy doorsteps, bypassing the entire U.S. economy. More progress.
Due to decades of rapacious capitalism, the concept of "economy" no longer exists. Now we have full time non-stop "stimulus". The legacy of John Maynard Keynes was usefully hijacked by rapacious opportunism aka. greed. Just as the Founding Fathers never envisioned this Idiocracy, Keynes never envisioned a society as dumb as this one. He never conceived of a society that would slash tax rates to near zero and call pro-cyclical deficits "GDP". Keynesian policy was intended to be counter-cyclical - deficits during recession and surpluses during expansions.
It gets worse. Picture a scenario in which corporations lay off tens of millions of people at the beginning of the worst pandemic in modern time, in the process cleaving the fattened herd of their healthcare at the worst possible time. These are the same companies that fought against a public healthcare solution in the decade prior. Millions more uninsured former employees fully exposed to pandemic are the crowning achievement of America's disastrous death care system. It gets worse. Millions of formerly useful undocumented workers now have no incomes as they are not eligible for any form of assistance. These people were vital to the economy when it was booming, but now they have been discarded en masse. They have fallen through the chasmic gaps in the systematically strip mined social safety net. Yet another reason that the economic multiplier remains stuck at zero. Millions of families have no income. And the anti-immigrant politics of the day prevent any of the stimulus from reaching them.
It's ALL falling to shit now.
The so-called "faith based" charity model works great when the economy is booming and then becomes non-existent when it's actually needed. Faith based for a reason It has no basis in reality. It's the boom and bust capitalist model. Capitalism in good times and bailouts when it all turns to crap. What choice do we have when the system fails? We must put our ideologies aside to save the system. Accountability for rapacious greed and gluttony, is not an option. Greed is the backbone of the system.
Rinse and repeat.
Make no mistake, this is a 100% corporate Idiocracy. Corporations have systematically dumbed down the populace for a useful reason. They didn't want anyone to question "the system". Our leaders are full stop idiots. Their entire careers are call options on the status quo. When this final explodes, they will have no clue what to do next.
At the macro level the great reset is now underway. However, this all gets very personal now, because we all know friends and family who are hardcore addicts of the toxic waste dump.
This virus, the lockdown, and the widely ignored economic implosion is putting pressure on mental and physical health like nothing we've seen before in our lifetimes.
There is only one solution: Detoxification. Of mind and body. Just don't expect to see any ads for it any time soon. It's the natural solution, and like reality itself, it has no corporate sponsorship whatsoever.
Corporate addictions have a deathgrip on this society. There is only one thing that can save them, and they don't even know it exists. There's always another pill for that.