I’m reading about Herbert Frahm this morning. It occurred to me in the last couple days that in the US media and friends are not really even counting the dead any more — the numbers have become background. Demonstrations and statue toppling are the things to watch; it goes without saying that „watch“ is of course here the keyword. In Germany the SPD is among those enthusiastically celebrating the availability of a Corona Tracking App which users can download and install. As of this morning some six million have done so. Six million are like Saskia Esken watching the screens of their phones, anxious for software to provide them a green panel of light declaring their Bluetooth device has not spent time in close proximity with the Bluetooth device of the Feind.
This all got me to thinking about the early 1990s, when San Francisco Bay Area radio stations played Jesus Jones and Bay Area progressives unironically heard this as a sort of a post-Dylan anthem.