[Plura-list] Make Mordor great again, N95 Mask of the Red Death, Medicare for All with Covid, Necessity Defense

[Cory Doctorow]

Today's links

* Trump's rhetoric fits eerily well into the Tolkien canon: AR Moxon
makes Mordor great again.

* The wealthy are chartering jets to avoid coronavirus: The Masque of
the Red Death takes to the skies.

* The US already has Medicare for All: The day that Trump declares a
national health emergency.

* America's uninsured will turn a covid crisis into a covid disaster:
Our shared microbial destiny cannot be denied.

* Jury refuses to convict Extinction Rebellion activists: Long live the
"necessity defense" and the human race it protects.

* This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019

* Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming
appearances, current reading

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🔊 Trump's rhetoric fits eerily well into the Tolkien canon

AR Moxon's satirical riff on how Trump would play as a Tolkien villain
is not only hilarious, it's also exactly the kind of thing the Tolkien
estate used to threaten to sue people over.

https://twitter.com/JuliusGoat/status/1233207274992263168?s=19

(which is why Pat Murphy's astoundingly great genderswapped retelling of
The Hobbit, "There and Back Again," is no longer in print.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_and_Back_Again_(novel)

Especially good is how Moxon digs into the way that Tolkien's concept of
"races" was uncomfortably close to "racism" (especially orcs, who,
honestly, have no conceivable basis for subsisting as a species, let
alone a society).

https://twitter.com/JuliusGoat/status/1233682097463873536

"While I was here, this orc came up —a big guy, very tough, like out of
central casting, handsome, could've been a fighting Uruk-hai—and he's
crying, weeping, he says 'sir, thank you for the meat.' Incredible. He
hadn't had nothing but maggoty bread for three stinking days."

Other Trumpland rhetoric fits in eerily well. Just like Murphy, Moxon
claims Hobbits: "We have Hobbits coming in folks, and they're smoking
the pipe-weed, and eating second breakfasts, third breakfasts, your
breakfasts, your children's breakfasts."

https://twitter.com/JuliusGoat/status/1233221682309083137

And just as with Murphy, Moxon's satire is full of deep, Silmarillion
cuts that demonstrate that his work is coming from a place of deep, if
conflicted, affection.

https://twitter.com/JuliusGoat/status/1233328631734206475

"Fëanor, son of Finwë, King of the Noldor, is an example of somebody
who's done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more. We all
appreciate his contributions, and we're looking into him, and we're
looking very strongly. Nobody was talking about him before me."

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🔊 The wealthy are chartering jets to avoid coronavirus

Plutes are chartering private jets in the hopes of avoiding
#coronavirus, assuming that if they only fly in fart-tubes that other
wealthy people have farted in, they won't get sick.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-29/wealthy-jump-to-private-jets-to-duck-airlines-and-cut-virus-risk

To make this pay, you really need to fill that Gulfstream. NYC-London is
$140k for a 12-seater — flying those 12 buttery soft asses from JFK to
Heathrow in BA First will run you $120K.

So you're basically assuming that if you use the plute-only terminal at
LAX (whose management company once threatened to sue me for criticizing
it in print!), and LHR (originally royals-only, now open to any
oligarch), you'll avoid covid. Presumably because the Better People have
Better Masks and the Luxury Decontam Wipes and that will keep the bad
stuff at bay. Nevermind that we're finding covid in people who've been
in psych ward lockdown for TEN YEARS.

https://twitter.com/AskAKorean/status/1233046896719126533

Elite Panic is definitely a killer. I mean, people have been pointing
this out since Poe wrote "Masque of the Red Death" in 1842. You can't
shoot germs.

https://www.poemuseum.org/the-masque-of-the-red-death

Humanity has a shared microbial destiny. Crises get resolved by people
running TOWARD the problem, not cowering in luxury bunkers while better
people do the work. This is the point of my own take on "Masque."

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250242334

Public health crises show that reality has a well-known collectivist
bias, and this challenges right wing orthodoxy, which is why the right
has only two responses to epidemiology: "It's a hoax" and (later)
"Exterminate the dirty poors!"

"The Reactionary Mind," Corey Robin's magnificent 2011 book (updated
2017), traces the history of right-wing thought to find the factor that
unites Dominionists, imperialists, white nationalists, libertarians and
other strains of right-wing thought.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reactionary_Mind

Robin's conclusion: the thing that unites these different strains is a
belief that humanity is naturally arrayed in hierarchies, with some
people simply born better than the rest of us, and the world is best
when the best people are in charge. It's an idea as old as Plato's
Republic. Dominionists want Christian men in charge of women and
children. Racists want white people in charge of racialized people.
Libertarians want bosses in charge of workers. Imperialists want America
in charge of the world.

It explains why right-wing movements hang together (because they all
agree that the "wrong people" are running things) and why they splinter
(once they take power, they can't agree who the "right people" are).

This "divine right of kings/bosses/America/whites/men/Christians"
philosophy is coterminal with the idea of the natural leaders having
special stuff that makes them better: just as the touch of a king will
heal leprosy, so too can you expect that a plute won't have covid. It's
wrong, of course — lethally so.

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🔊 The US already has Medicare for All

Did you know the US already has "Medicare for All"? But only under very
specific circumstances: under the National Disaster Medical System, if
the President declares a public health emergency, the federal government
steps in to pay all out-of-pockets.

https://www.phe.gov/Preparedness/responders/ndms/definitive-care/Pages/coverage-guidelines.aspx

Any medically necessary service which is authorized for reimbursement as
long as the patient sustained:

* Injuries or illnesses resulting directly from a specified public
health emergency;"

("If you have covid symptoms, you're covered")

* Injuries, illnesses and conditions requiring medical services
necessary to maintain a reasonable level of health temporarily not
available as a result of the health emergency

("if you have any other problem and can't get treatment due to covid
chaos, you're covered")

As Carlos Mucha points out, Trump declaring a national health emergency
would create "Medicare for All with Covid-19," which could easily become
just plain Medicare for All, "as surely as the UK's Emergency Hospital
Service morphed into the NHS."

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🔊 America's uninsured will turn a covid crisis into a covid disaster

The last time Carl Gibson saw a doctor was 2013, when an arm-sling and
an Rx for painkillers ran him $4000, creating a permanent blot on his
credit report. He hasn't been since.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/28/coronavirus-millions-of-americans-uninsured

He's not alone. 44% of Americans do not see doctors despite medical
necessity, because of cost. About a third of Americans do not fill their
prescriptions because they can't afford them.

27.5m Americans don't have health insurance, thanks to a mix of
Republican state-houses blocking Medicare expansion and Obamacare's
intrinsic shortcomings, which invite price-gouging and under-coverage
from America's sociopathic health-insurance industry.

This is terrible under the best of circumstances, but it's the thing
that turns a coronavirus emergency into a coronavirus catastrophe.
Because Carl Gibson is sneezing into the same air you're breathing.

("All the common people breathing filthy air" -The Pointer Sisters)

Trump's Health and Human Services Secretary, Alex Azar, is a former
pharma lobbyist who has ruled out price controls for a Covid-19 vaccine.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/27/pluralistic-your-daily-link-dose-27-feb-2020/#pandemiccapitalism

And Nancy Pelosi has said that treatment must be "affordable" – not
free. What's "affordable" when 61% of Americans don't even have $1,000
saved to cover a medical emergency?

It's hardly a novel observation to say that we have a shared microbial
destiny: "The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for
one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'"

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/18/few-americans-have-enough-savings-to-cover-a-1000-emergency.html

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🔊 Jury refuses to convict Extinction Rebellion activists

An Oregon jury has refused to convict a group of climate activists who
blocked a rail line that Zenith Energy used to transport tar sands
crude. The Extinction Rebellion activists presented a "necessity
defense" for their actions.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/28/landmark-win-fight-habitable-future-jury-refuses-convict-climate-activists-who

The activists were charged with trespassing for planting a "victory
garden" that blocked the track. There was video. 5 of 6 jurors decided
that maintaining the habitability of the only planet in the known
universe capable of sustaining human life justified the action.

"We need to take note of the lessons learned by the labor movement—mass
civil disobedience works. The climate crisis is a workers' issue, we
need to unite to shut down business as usual. Right now." -Margaret Butler

The result was a mistrial, and now the local prosecutors have to decide
whether to haul the activists back into court again.

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🔊 This day in history

#15yrsago Deluded Sony music exec can't read his own study
https://constitutionalcode.blogspot.com/2005/02/us-market-not-antagonistic-towards-drm.html

#15yrsago Euro software patents reanimated through corrupt officials
0wned by Microsoft
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/05/02/28/2223232/eu-commission-declines-patent-debate-restart

#15yrsago Comp sci profs smackdown the movie studios
https://web.archive.org/web/20050303023425/http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000776.html

#10yrsago Architectural fan-drawings of classic sitcom houses
http://origin.www.markmoorefineart.com/artists/mark-bennett

#10yrsago Petition to make "Hella" the prefix for
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
https://www.facebook.com/The-Official-Petition-to-Establish-Hella-as-the-SI-Prefix-for-1027-277479937276/

#10yrsago Cyberwar hype was cooked up to sell Internet-breaking garbage
to the military https://www.wired.com/2010/03/cyber-war-hype/

#5yrsago North Korean defectors undermine totalitarianism with smuggled
pirate sitcoms https://www.wired.com/2015/03/north-korea/

#1yrago Oakland teachers' union declares total victory after seven-day
strike
https://oaklandea.org/updates/oea-reaches-tentative-agreement-with-ousd/

#1yrago German Data Privacy Commissioner warns at new Copyright
Directive will increase the tech oligopoly, make EU companies dependent
on US filter vendors, and subject Europeans to surveillance by US
companies
https://torrentfreak.com/german-data-privacy-commissioner-sounds-alarm-over-upload-filter-oligopoly-190301/

#1yrago University of California system libraries break off negotiations
with Elsevier, will no longer order their journals
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/02/university-california-boycotts-publishing-giant-elsevier-over-journal-costs-and-open

#1yrago Satanic Panic 2.0: The Momo Challenge hoax
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/momo-challenge-hoax/583825/

#1yrago Striking West Virginia teachers won swift and decisive victory;
Oakland next?
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/02/28/rapid-victory-west-virginia-teacher-strike-shows-what-happens-when-progressives

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🔊 Colophon

Today's top sources: Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/)

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the
Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:


* Canada Reads Kelowna: March 5, 6PM, Kelowna Library, 1380 Ellis
Street, with CBC's Sarah Penton
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-radio-presents-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-96154415445

Currently writing: I just finished a short story, "The Canadian
Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next
novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and
reconciliation. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel now,
though the timing is going to depend on another pending commission (I've
been solicited by an NGO) to write a short story set in the world's
prehistory.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland:
it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs.
Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a
magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they
cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into
Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt
Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to
it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Gopher: When Adversarial Interoperability Burrowed Under
the Gatekeepers' Fortresses:
https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/02/24/gopher-when-adversarial-interoperability-burrowed-under-the-gatekeepers-fortresses/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book
about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies
and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the
monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very
special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

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