Welcome to The End

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Welcome to The End

When we conceived this newsletter in late 2019, came up with the title, and got the amazing Roger Peet to kindly agree to do some illustrations, we didn’t imagine that 2020 would starting looking quite so terminal by the end of Q1. 

Back then, we were talking about the possibility of a messy, contentious, and possibly even violent election season. We were talking about white supremacist terrorists running wild in America. We were talking about the strange trickle of information about UFOs coming from the US military. We were asking each other how resilient constitutional rule actually was in this deeply divided country. We were talking about Bernie, we were talking about Trump. 

We were talking about covering as much of this as we could, in person where possible, for the readers we hoped to attract. 

The title was an ambiguity: a grim joke, a possibility, a place for a new beginning. Roger helpfully reminded us that The End is the thing that the means may justify. It could be read a number of ways, we thought. 

At the time we even wondered if, as two gloomy guys, we were being overly pessimistic. We didn’t see COVID-19 coming. As it turns out, we’re launching this publication from lockdown. Corey is housebound in Alberta, Canada. Jason’s hunkered down in Oregon. 

Those of you who know our previous work in The Baffler, The Guardian, your podcast client, or the bookstore know what we have been focused on. 

There are specific topics — the far right, our dystopian immigration enforcement system, the reactionary heart of Silicon Valley. Altogether we have considered many facets of the kaleidoscopic nightmare that is The Trumpian Situation. 

That situation is worsening by the hour. We’re going to continue talking about it here. Expect to hear from us several times a week.

We will be publishing a range of stuff including

• Original, investigative reporting

• Analysis

• Interviews

• Essays

• Podcasts

(As to that, expect an episode here later this week, where Corey and Jason talk about part one of The End's prepping guide, and take temperature on all the rest of what's going on.)

We’re doing this in part because one of the other things that seems to be reaching its end is the news business. This very week venerable outlets have been scaling back, even at the epicenter of the US disease outbreak. The economic impacts of this crisis will hit the rest of the business hard, as advertising budgets shrink. 

There are not enough journalists on the ground to paint a true (inter)national picture. In times like these, having reliable and timely information, and knowing who to trust, can be as vital as food, water, and shelter. 

We’ll both continue to work with the outlets that we have established such productive relationships with. 

But we have more stories than the news business can absorb, and we feel a new urgency about telling them. Local stories, long stories, detailed stories, personal stories. We want to put our own work on a sustainable basis. We want to serve our communities for a long time to come. We want to find out what the fuck is going on, for you, dear reader. 

In coming weeks, we will let people know about options for financially supporting this newsletter. Supporters will receive additional, premium content. 

But we believe in journalism in the public interest. So the majority of our work will be freely available. And we will not be charging anyone for the next month or so, during a period when the Coronavirus looks set to turn America inside out, and the Democratic Party grinds out its nominee. 

This first newsletter features a piece on the Democratic primary from Corey, and some prepping-related service journalism from Jason. Let us know what you think (we’re launching with comment threads on, you can also email us at the.end.newsletter@protonmail.com, anytime). 

Subscribe. Tell your friends. Stay indoors. Wash your hands. Keep in touch. 

Corey Pein (CP) & Jason Wilson (JW), March 15 2020

The Vichy Democrats and The Plague

Waking up at 3am with a cough, wondering if it's allergies or something else; recalling my childhood asthma and pneumonia, and the damage to my lungs from mold-infested housing, not to mention years of smoking and self-medication, and imagining myself in a life-or-death triage situation such as the Coronavirus pandemic has already brought to a number of countries: It boggles my mind at times like this that there are American citizens and registered Democrats who intend to vote for someone other than Bernie Sanders.

If and when I return to the United States, I'd like to know I could see a doctor if and when the need arises. I am not of the class that takes this for granted. Growing up in rural Washington State, I didn't see a doctor unless there was an emergency, and often not even then, on account of the cost.

As an adult, I've avoided hospitals, even when insured -- because as most Americans know, our insurance does not work as advertised. This is all very ordinary, but only in one country. I've been fortunate (if that is the word) to experience semi-socialized hospital care in the United Kingdom and now Canada, among other places.

Of all the countries I've lived in on three continents, the US ranks among the worst for medical care; even Thailand with its military-backed monarchist kleptocracy ensures the poor have access to doctors without forcing them into crushing debt. I expect this pandemic and the resulting shortages will bring the criminally extortionate nature of the American system to the forefront.

Tonight the socialist Senator from Vermont faces the establishment's derelict champion, Joe Biden, in what could be the most important televised presidential debate in history. Sanders and his supporters are counting on the one-on-one format of tonight's debate to snap people awake with the contrast between his competency and Biden's inadequacy in this moment of profound crisis.

Anyone who still fails to understand the stakes should have a moment of clarity in the coming weeks as the hospitals get overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases compounded by pneumonia. The US was already volatile. What happens next won't be pretty, but what is clear is that the US government can either ease the suffering of the people, or exacerbate it.

Trump is already exacerbating it. Biden will too, if given the chance. Of the candidates for president, only Sanders is talking sense on the measures that are necessary to confront this pandemic.

Many people who will watch tonight's debate won't have heard Sanders' recent appeals for emergency passage, by Congress, of elements of his Medicare for All plan, to ensure that no one is denied testing or treatment. His calls for universal income support, an end to evictions, pharmaceutical price controls and, effectively, the full mobilization of society will be news to millions of voters.

People tuning in to the debate tonight may not have heard Biden say, as he did last week on MSNBC, that if elected president he would refuse to sign a Medicare for All plan passed by Congress -- tantamount to a veto threat.

You ask me to vote for this man, who would so cruelly and needlessly condemn millions to death with the stoke of a pen? Sanders says he intends to ask Biden about that comment. Let's see if Joe has changed his mind -- again. I expect Sanders will not stick to the format if CNN's moderators try to put him in a box with more irrelevant questions about Fidel Castro, or whatever nonsense the networks political director, a Republican operative with no journalism experience, comes up with.

I expect he knows tonight could be his best shot to reclaim the lead, and give us some hope for the future.

I can't say voters will make the right choice; in my experience, they rarely do. But I know this debate could affect the outcome of the Democratic primaries, and therefore, what happens tonight will determine what I spend my time thinking about, and preparing for, in the months ahead.

Will we be scraping by in plagueworld under a government that's actively hostile to health and welfare, or with one that, as Sanders put it, understands it must care for the people? Will the US be building hospitals and hiring doctors, or guards for more concentration camps? In this respect, a vote for Biden is functionally equivalent to a vote for Trump.

Yesterday, and for the second time in a week, Sanders laid out his plan for dealing with the Coronavirus. He correctly compared the pandemic to World War II, both in terms of potential casualties and the scale of the effort that is required to prevent the worst possible outcomes. (Over 400,000 American service members died in WWII -- a number Sanders omitted in making the comparison.) And he correctly identified the steps that must be taken. He did this because he has been listening to scientists, who have been pretty clear about what public health measures can slow the spread of the virus and thus keep hospitals from getting crushed by a massive wave of new cases. It may be too late for that.

Listen to him talk: Sanders understands the situation. Listen to Biden talk: It's not always clear he understands what year it is, or what office he is running for. On Coronavirus, he is offering a plan riddled with compromises to capital. Like Trump, he does not want to disrupt the course of business and interfere with the profits of his donors. Nature has other plans.

Biden's cognitive decline is not even the main problem here. To the extent his brain is functioning as normal, he thinks it's a good idea to put his hands all over the nearest woman and name another bank executive to run the Treasury. But Biden's problems are real and they have been getting worse and I expect we'll this again tonight. Where was Biden when Sanders was holding his fireside chat? Botching a cell-phone town hall so badly that his video team replaced his image with the campaign logo and abruptly ended the event after four minutes. How can people see this and say everything is A-OK?

I have personally seen people who, weeks ago, were referencing or even joking about Biden's cognitive decline all of a sudden insist that he's sharp as a tack, Jack. If that kind of gaslighting doesn't remind you of Trump's cult, stop reading, I can't help you. Frankly it scares me as much as the plague. What else are such people capable of? I have little doubt anyone performing enthusiasm for Joe Biden would happily turn me in to the Gestapo to advance their careers -- and without a second thought, once corrupted and compromised Democratic Party assumes nominal authority.

Through an increasingly desperate process of elimination, Biden stands, however unsteadily, as the leader of the Vichy Democrats. Sanders, politely, calls them the establishment. I call them Vichy, which refers of course to the French regime under Nazi occupation. Marshal Pétain was also an establishment figure, who enjoyed the utmost respect. Like the Vichy, the policies of the Biden Democrats are policies of fascist appeasement. Should Trump remain in power, the tepid nature of their resistance will curdle into obsequious servility, for such is the fate of all fascist collaborators. That is what Biden represents: fake opposition.

What can we call them but collaborators, when they speak now of bipartisanship? Who but Vichy could contemplate reaching across the aisle to shake hands with their old Republican friends, now so brazenly fascist in their aspirations and their actuality? At this moment the Republican Party is leading a campaign of genocide against the indigenous and Spanish-speaking people of the hemisphere. Can you trust a man who scarcely acknowledges Trump's concentration camps to close them? Can you trust a man who wants to let oil companies keep on fracking to take on climate change? Biden is an accelerationist in the same way that Trump is, he just doesn't have the nerve to go pedal to the metal.

I don't want to sound fatalistic. If Biden wins the nomination, he could still beat Trump. But where will we be then, in plagueworld? It is of paramount importance that Sanders not drop out from the race. He and his supporters need to hang tight all the way to through the Democratic National Convention in July. America needs someone with a large platform telling the truth to the public, all the more so during this crisis, even if he ultimately does not become president. Tonight's debate is an opportunity for Sanders to keep telling the truth. If that hurts him with voters, then I suppose there may be a karmic element to all of this misery.

If Biden wins -- or, as could happen, more elections are canceled, using the pandemic as an excuse -- the left still needs to develop parallel structures of governance. It is March 2020, and January 2021 is a million years in the future.

Trump's regime will provide nothing, or worse than nothing, through this pandemic, but people will still have needs. If labor unions, community groups, and mutual aid networks do not step up to meet those needs, corporations and gangsters will. This is the work that must be done no matter who wins the Democratic nomination, and no matter who wins the White House. We need to start building. The time is now.

CP

Uncle Jason’s Prepping Guide: Part One

It’s a wobbly time for America, and the world. If the reports coming out of Seattle are accurate, and the disease here follows the path of Northern Italy, it may become far worse.

You should have decided by now that you need to prepare your self, and your household, for an extended period of isolation. 

Perhaps you have looked at a reputable guide to disaster preparation, like the one published by the Red Cross, or FEMA (if you haven’t, you should do so immediately). Perhaps you’ve even browsed some of the saner prepper sites. 

They’re all telling you that you need, among other things, two weeks food and water. But the stores are packed and getting cleared out, and ready-made kits are expensive and by now mostly unavailable. 

Maybe you don’t have much money on hand, and phrases like “14 gallons of water per person” seem pretty intimidating when you have no way to store it. 

Here at The End, we would like all of our readers (and potential readers) to survive, and make a contribution to steering their community through this crisis. We hope that what follows will help you make a start. 

To be clear, we are not public health experts, nor do we claim specific expertise on COVID-19. That said, like everyone else, we are keenly following the most reliable sources of information on the pandemic. 

This article is about food only, and it draws on my experience and extensive research on emergency preparedness. This began several years back as an attempt to assemble a Cascadia Subduction Zone emergency kit, and ended up transforming the way my whole household functions. 

The other important store of knowledge I draw on comes from learning to cook at a time when I was very poor. 

I’ll return to all of that in future articles. For now, what I want those who read this to take away is the idea that you can assemble two weeks sustenance for you and the rest of your household in the context of the coronavirus emergency very cheaply and simply. From there, you can build in some luxuries and surpluses. 

And you can use this as the basis for developing something that goes beyond prepping into a resilient, holistic provisioning system for your house. 

This will not be the last emergency. 

Assumptions, Disclaimers, and Principles

No prepping guide is one-size-fits-all. If I spell a few things out you can decide if you want to read further. 

There is room for disagreement here. You may not agree with my assumptions about the way in which this emergency is likely to track. You may have dietary needs that don’t fit with the disclaimers. You may disagree with my guiding principles. That’s fine. You can vary your preparation accordingly, or consult some other guide. 

Assumptions

I will assume the following about the unfolding coronavirus emergency in the United States:

First, largely automated utility systems like water, electricity, gas, and telecommunications will probably not be disrupted by the pandemic alone. Governments that continue to function will prioritize the continuity of these services. 

You should work towards obtaining capacity for water storage for the future, and a means of cooking that doesn’t require mains gas or electricity. (Again: this will not be the last emergency).

But you can move forward without all of that for now. 

Second, large numbers of people will contract the virus - perhaps the majority of us according to some public health experts. The vast majority of people who get it will not die or require hospitalization, but any person who catches it will require a minimum two week period of isolation. 

Third, beyond self-isolation due to infection, most of us will want to spend as much time at home as possible to facilitate social distancing, and to avoid spreading the disease. 

Fourth, there will be at least mild social disruption almost everywhere — local supply problems affecting groceries and fuel, repeated incidents of panic buying, school and government closures etc. 

All of this is already happening in Oregon, where I live, and elsewhere around the country.

Fifth, there will be severe, dangerous disruptions which (fingers crossed) are more localized. Heavy-handed policing, grocery riots, overwhelmed hospitals, formal or informal rationing, forcible quarantines, etc. 

Last, a range of people will attempt to take advantage of social breakdown. Profiteers, looters, con artists, and armed rightwing militias are just some of the people who will try to derive advantage from the chaos. 

Altogether, this means that we will want to spend as much time at home as possible in the next few months. It also means that we will all need to pull together in order to protect, supply, and sustain our communities. 

But you can make a start on preparation now, and build for the future. 

Disclaimers

Two big disclaimers: 

First, to repeat, this guide is food-specific. It supplements but does not replace more complete prepping guides like the Red Cross’s. 

Second, I can’t cover every food preference or dietary need in this space. There is gluten in here. There are tree and ground nuts, pulses, and rice. There is meat. There is dairy. But people with specific needs can substitute as required. 

Principles 

Here are my guiding principles for disaster preparation:

1. Preparedness is a pro-social activity primarily oriented towards sustaining communities in circumstances where states and markets cannot deliver basic human needs.

   It’s “we” not “me”. If you can sustain yourself, you have the ability to help your neighbors. If you can isolate yourself when sick, you will not infect other people. If you can build in some extra food supplies, you may be able to share some.

   The individual, and even the nuclear family, are not capable of long term independent survival. We must help each other. 

2. Some preparation is better than none. Do as much as you can to secure 14 days of nutritious calories and build on it. 

3. Preparation is not a stash of food. It is a process of building household and community resilience. It should be holistic, and requires ongoing mindfulness about provisioning and consumption. 

4. We should build in redundancy where we can. We can cover 14 days basic sustenance with very inexpensive supplies. We can supplement that if we can with other items that provide variety, additional calories, comfort, and the possibility of sharing. We can expand over time to having a month, or three months food on hand at any time and build that into our shopping, storage, and cooking.

Part two will run tomorrow, part three on Tuesday.

JW