My Guinea Pig bit me today.

My Guinea Pig bit me today.

I guess we've all been pretty stressed-out by everything. I got him to keep me sane during the insane lock-down, but now I suddenly don't know. I thought we had an understanding. I was holding him and cooing, but I guess he still isn't used to it and he nibbled me on the finger harder than usual, basically a bite.

I've been feeding him too much.  Every time I get bored and wander over to the fridge to see if there is something I forgot about he starts squeeking.  I generally give him some lettuce and we eat together, in our cages as I read about Cuomo deciding to give NYers experimental vaccines.  We are all Guinea Pigs now.

I leave his cage door open, but not too long because it scares him.  When I take him out and put him down he is cool for a minute, but then he starts going for the corners, the covers, whatever can make him feel safe again.  He is looking for another cage.

And why not? Haven't I always fed him? Doesn't he get everything he needs in there?  Little does Little Guinea know that I actually got him so I could have a breeding pair, in case times get really tight. When the world goes insane and decides to rely on the mercy of the government for food, it usually ends up very hungry. But for know our unemployment checks are coming in, our cages feel quite safe compared to the deadly and dangerous OUTSIDE.

After I put the Guinea Pig back I see some articles about people protesting the lockdowns, comments are calling them terrorists using biological weapons.  Maybe they are, maybe that is what is necessary to preserve our way of life.  Looking at the Phases they want to roll-out I doubt anything less than physical disobedience will be fruitful. A few nibbles are to be expected.

I am realizing that I've gone about "bonding" with Little Guinea all wrong. When I throw some hay in and a nice chunk of lettuce he kicks his feet around and throws the wood chips everywhere, a very cute spectacle.  But what I've perceived as harmless Guinea joy is really a boisterous ego-trip, though how anything so small and helpless could have ego is beyond me.  That's who we are too, our little thrashings probably just as amusing to our betters.

Yet I must also control myself now, to truly be superior to him.  I give him tiny slices of the romaine now, through the grate slowly so he can't pull it away under his box.  When he is sufficiently busy eating out of the Left hand my Right comes in through the door to stroke him gently and he coos. It's working! To my dismay he still panics when my hand comes to pick him up and he scrambles in terror away.  It's really my fault, I should have been putting the Right hand in first, for a few moments, then starting the feeding with the Left. I must become better at brainwashing Little Guinea into thinking I'm not a threat, if I want snuggles.

Perhaps that is the feeling I get when I see articles praising Biden (who has of course been "moved-Left" by Bernie Sanders) for hints that he might approve of Medicare-for-all, sandwiched in-between articles about Cuomo slashing spending on public assistance and more small businesses going under. There is something in my brain that can't think one hand is so innocent in feeding me, while the other hand comes for me again and again.  Are they not connected to the same body? All my previous experience in politics cannot imagine it: an alliance of socialism with the largest multinational corporations ever.  Yet both are moving in from the same viral crack in the door, both are enlarging their power beyond recent imagination's conception at the same time from the same excuses.  They have to keep us safe, it's for our own good right?

In chess when your opponent offers up his queen for your knight you know you have to be very suspicious of taking it, there has to be some trick and only a newb would accept the trade. Your opponent is seeing a turn or two ahead of you and knows he will actually be in a stronger place despite a point disadvantage. Thus what we witness around us today: total destruction of human capital, existing systems of profit and revenue generation uprooted. We have a hard time seeing the point, the benefit to those who are already at the top of the heap.  Nor would I expect it to be entirely clear, to know the exact stake any more than Little Guinea understands my actions. What I can see is that Left and Right don't have the same relevance they may once have had, the new stratification isn't yet clear.  Or perhaps it is and we just don't want to admit it to ourselves, that we are just as tribal and barbaric as our ancestors.  It is clear that the strategy of queen sacrifice is going to lead to a long chain of sacrifices, sometimes the chain of destruction practically clears the board until nothing is left except the absolute minimum pieces required to mate.

One must understand that the corporations themselves can be sacrificed to the underlying power structures composed of people in interlocking connection between the companies. Even though tough times are coming those at the top of the pyramid will eventually be able to buy up as much as they want of real-world assets at lower and lower prices, the deflation step. In my previous thinking I had went along with the view that real world capital was by nature a risky business and one of the main cause of economic declines since technology and changing supply-lines always result in a lot of it going to waste.  The inefficiency of physical capital investment is always a damper on spending and growth, even if it gets to quit low prices. Now though I am considering whether technology might be at a plateau for a while, making such investments better. How can I possibly know?  I'm not in the world where real money is spent.  In either case, paper assets have their own risk too, the dollar is not looking like the stellar world currency of old. Time to buy the world.

This won't happen for some time though, like the lettuce going through the grate the money is being sheeted-out fresh and sticky like crazy.  It's not going to be enough to save most small businesses, but it will keep us distracted from what's going on.  Meanwhile the prices will continue to drop on all the stuff that's worth owning. When the government money runs out we will sell all we had earned and the inflation part of the process starts.  Now the fresh money isn't as appealing to monopolistic vampires who have just cemented their control over all the markets, they can raise and raise the prices just as fast as the cash is injected. Their money will become worth less too, but all the debt that they've leveraged on their assets will become worthless -free money!

That's one way it could go. The government that is hopefully able to check these kinds of predatory schemes, seen over and over through history, has just declared it's absolute power over the individual.  It doesn't particularly matter why and one could argue it was necessary, but it has happened. With a government not kept in check by the power of the people, and often abetted indeed by the terrified ones, can we expect it to keep a check on the corporate power that is consolidating? I'm not sure that elections are going to mean anything at all in the "new normal" being prepared for us.

As I pick a few tiny morsels of lettuce out of the bag I'm discovering a new emotion in myself; annoyance... schadenfreude? Should the Guinea get that slightly larger piece or should I thinly slice from the romaine heart like before and deposit the slivers bit by bit? For the first time his hysterical shrieking is disturbing to me.  I shouldn't have to feel guilty about cutting his lettuce down, it's for his own good! At the same time I remember that nibble, for once an actual bite, and I cut the morels down smaller. I feel good inside.

Little Guinea has been teaching me about the world even as I'm conditioning him ("bonding" you might prefer) and he's been teaching me about myself.