As of Monday, 109,746 people in the U.S. have died due to COVID-19. Nearly 40 percent of America's poorest households have lost jobs during the pandemic, while at the same time billionaires gained over half a trillion dollars. Meanwhile, police have been responding to protests against police brutality with even more brutality, attacking peaceful civilians with batons and tear gas.
So, of course, President Donald Trump has been congratulating himself on the stock market.
"If 40 million people have filed for unemployment and over 100,000 have died and police are violently beating peaceful protesters, maybe the stock market hitting an all-time high doesn't actually mean we as a country are at an all-time high," said Late Night host Seth Meyers on Monday. "Maybe this is your hint that the stock market is actually bullshit."
Meyers isn't particularly surprised by Trump's disappointingly characteristic behavior though. "Of course Trump and his buddies are gleefully celebrating the soaring stock market," he said. "Our deeply unjust system works for them just fine — inflating the wealth of the most privileged people in our society even in a time of abject misery and crisis while crushing the poor and working class."
This has long been the case, but the White House's response to the ongoing protests has thrown it into stark relief, dragging the grotesque truth into the spotlight.
"There isn't one law and order — there are two separate and distinct systems," said Meyers, refuting Trump's statement that the U.S. has just "one beautiful law."
"One is a system where the law serves people of privilege and order preserves their privilege, where the police work for them. And the other is a racist system of predatory policing that systematically de-values black lives and which acts as an occupying force in their own communities. And now we're seeing that system unleashed on mass demonstrations across the country."
