Whether it’s the Bernie bros arguing how the coronavirus proves we need his Medicare4All, or the fact that poor people are still poor even in a pandemic, and rich people get to use their money to obtain things, from toilet paper and masks to tests, there is much talk about how this pandemic will change everything.
Indeed, in one of the more unhelpful op-eds published by the New York Times, Viet Thanh Nguyen raises “ideas that won’t survive the coronavirus,” such as American Exceptionalism. After all, is there anything more worthy of discussion as people are dying than what a terrible nation this is?
If anything good emerges out of this period, it might be an awakening to the pre-existing conditions of our body politic. We were not as healthy as we thought we were. The biological virus afflicting individuals is also a social virus. Its symptoms — inequality, callousness, selfishness and a profit motive that undervalues human life and overvalues commodities — were for too long masked by the hearty good cheer of American exceptionalism, the ruddiness of someone a few steps away from a heart attack.
Is this it? Is America done, over, kaput? Are we the most awful country ever, a cesspool of “inequality, callousness, selfishness” that’s spiraling down the toilet bowl of capitalism?
At the same time, our world has gone online, from classes to medical consultations, making it far easier to reach out even if it means a massive loss of quality, whether of education or care. Ever try palpating a stomach over the internet?
Will our children, if such things happen in the future given that social distancing may make procreation more difficult, wear masks from infancy? Will schools be handing out A’s to all students, or will grades be reduced to pass/fail? Will law graduates take the bar or be handed a free pass, even if 50% of them aren’t competent enough to manage a pedestrian test of basic legal knowledge?
Will things change? What? How? Will this pandemic reduce us to the life of mediocrity and excuses for failure that have been held out as Utopia? Will the curse of personal responsibility, and success or failure, finally be vanquished as we all sit alone in our rooms pretending to be witty on the internet?
*Tuesday Talk rules apply.
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Would you prefer it if I pretended NOT to be witty on the internet?
Work to your strength.
What I see as ‘us’ could never be my own ugly, unconscious shadow, could it?
Well, we will survive, no doubt at all. Those that have good immune systems will learn to live with the virus and pass their genes on. This is not the first pandemic we’ve faced.
Will America survive? Sort-of, it was collapsing before this, and I expect that will continue. Other world leaders will be brave enough to deny the USA more and more, the fight against the American oil dollar will continue and China will still push upwards in world affairs.
Life will be back to “normal” in a generation, but the pressing need to survive might eliminate a lot of ‘rich people’s problems’, or pretty much everything the Left have been lambasting us about for the last 20years. So it won’t be all bad!
The countries that embrace capitalism and small Govt will recover fastest, there’s nothing like a vast bureaucracy to slow things down. Our PM was telling us smugly that the Dole Dept had processed as many people in 6weeks as they usually do in 6months. No-one asked him why they work so slowly normally..
The question wasn’t “will America survive.”
‘The question wasn’t “will America survive.”’
Indeed not! It was ‘Is this it? Is America done, over, kaput?’ Totally different.
Given Mr. Nguyen’s love for endless strings of Latinate words that say nothing, we have to consider the possibility that he’s WFB reborn. Now THAT would change everything.
A….what?
Man, it’s a good thing that human life doesn’t depend on commodities! Imagine how complicated things could get then.
Without a market, it’s hard to give a human life a fair value.
The way you can go right up to the line without crossing it is remarkable.
It’s a gift.
Perhaps part of what makes America exceptional is that we don’t fear death so much, and are more willing than some other cultures to trade some deaths for other benefits. The American people have quite clearly spoken through their actions and their elected representatives over the years. We tolerate 35K automobile deaths per year, and any politician who, for example, proposes lowering speed limits or ticketing a lot more people is toast. We tolerate 35K gun deaths per year because the right to bear arms is important to us. We tolerate 35K flu deaths a year for both economic and social reasons. Pollution deaths are harder to compare because the health effect is spread over years, but 100K per year is the publicized number that we tolerate to support our material standard of living. We don’t tolerate stop and frisk, even though it takes hundreds of illegal guns off the street every year, because the cost to liberty and equality is too great. The liberals want to move the needle on these one way, the conservatives want to move it another, and our current situation is the compromise we have reached.
The liberal press has been sneering for the last three weeks every time someone compares the projected death rate from Covid-19 to some other thing we tolerate, but I haven’t heard or read any of the sneerers actually tell us what principle they use to decide what number of deaths is OK to think about trading for some other benefit. The conservative press flips the script on that.
There’s a very different feel to deaths we’ve factored in and “novel” deaths on top of it. I bet there’s a psychological explanation for this phenomenon. If only someone knew more about such things than I do.
Dear Pops,
It’s the end of the world as we knew it.
Masks are the new norm. Make sure to get yours made bespoke of only the finest cloth to make sure the plebs know your rank in the new America. Who cares if the evidence is slim as of yet when there’s yet another way to demonstrate your slavish and narrow-minded devotion to such banal topics as personal responsibility and prosperity.
Most of us aren’t “essential,” but we still need shit to do other than try our damnedest to impress one blawger with our awesome wit. I can dig a ditch to nowhere and keep six feet apart from my comrades for a little of that sweet government nectar. Is that enough personal responsibility for you? Give me work. Make it up if you have to. Make it menial or not. Anything is better than nothing for us, the many, many useless mouths who have others to feed too.
If only Biden or Trump had the vision to see us through this. Neither likely will. The sky is fucking falling. Help, Dad, I’m scared that the new normal won’t be as kind as the last.
Best,
PK
You can start by making your bed.
Look, when you get like this, just go to Netflix and start binge watching Tiger King. All questions will be answered.
There are lines I will not cross.
Totally in agreement there.
It’s too bad they cancelled Counterpart where a part of the story was a deadly flu epidemic. With projections for the post epidemic world not completely baseless. Wash your hands!
Well, 9/11 changed everything, too. Or not. The damage will be more widespread this time around, and many neighborhoods will be greatly changed. In some cases, change already underway will be accelerated, and in some the new thing will be thwarted.
I’d like to think that the governing class will examine the successes and the failures and forge a better way ahead, but it’s really laughable to suggest it. Our government is really terrible at addressing institutional failure. The voters may punish particular politicians who did badly, but I can’t see them changing party or ideology. Unfortunately.
Is there any actual thing you believe will change, or are you murdering random words for no particular reason?
Fewer people will be able to afford scotch but, contrary to the law of supply and demand, prices will rise as distillers try to maintain revenue.
Interesting hill to die on.
Bidet seats have entered the mainstream and purchases have exploded, as a result of tp shortage. I was an early adopter in 2013. This is a huge improvement in hygiene!
TMI.
Well, of course you were an early adopter … I mean, your last name and all.
When does your new line of butt washers debut?
We will inexorably change. By the numbers:
1. People that never worked from home, must. They’re learning how to do it. They’re learning it sucks and is very inefficient for most. But they will continue because it will either be mandatory for the long-haul or much cheaper for employers. The inefficiency will be forgotten with use.
2. People dealing with companies whose employees work from homes will at first rebel against the ineffectiveness of services. Imagine the Indian IT person working from home. They will learn to live with it because that’s how it will be.
3. There will be lots of leisure time because many will not be employed. “Leisure” will need a new definition. It will now mean “the state of nothing to do.” It will obviously suck.
4. “Travel,” which a month ago meant, “going somewhere for fun or profit,” will be an archaic word. Might as well stick “airplane,” “cruise ship” and “golf buddies” in there. Don’t that suck?
5. The nets and twits will be stupider. I know that’s hard to fathom, but nevertheless true.
6. “We the people” will end as a cry, or even a thought. You can’t be cohesive with someone without shaking hands, even symbolically.
7. “Rugged individualism” will lose the first word. The second won’t mean much, either. People will think they’re individuals, but only because they’ think they’re in a different pile of suck. It’ll be a sad reckoning when they realize suck is just suck, but it won’t last: “suck” will no longer be recognized.
8. “Mediocre” will be the new “exceptional.” Nearly no one will notice, having given up all hope of better.
We will give up everything good, but will hardly recognize it happened. In less than a generation, how it happened will be forgotten and replaced by fiction. Happily, or perhaps just hopefully, there will be rogues–those that refuse to be mediocre or surrender to the collective suck. To them, I raise my rum.*
*Or vodka or bourbon, but always with bacon.
That’s an unpretty picture. Video appearances, hearings and trials? Jurors at poolside? Never again leaning against the bar after court, always with bacon?
Crap! Never again in a bar after a trial win or loss. Will people know the humanity lost in those hours? The gut-wrenching or eagle-flying feeling of it all? The pals saying, “good for you,” or “you really got fucked”?
I’m glad to have already done those things. I might go lose a case just to feel it again.
Nope.
Maybe what will happen is people will grow up and stop relying on units of government to fix everything for them. In 1918 government failed to stop the flu pandemic. So far, government is having a lot of problems with this one. Maybe people need to go back to taking more responsibility for themselves and putting some savings back for hard times. The problem isn’t so much the failure of government as it is people with unrealistic expectations, who insist on living like perpetual children.