03-15-2020, 11:28 PM
Could we be entering a regeneracy? Or getting ready for it?
Things that we used to defer we take with deadly seriousness -- and if the current leadership proves inadequately swift in its response, others bypass them. OK, the President over-reacts on travel... but note well: international travelers tend to be upscale in education and income, the sorts who used to be "Rockefeller Republicans" who have drifted away from the GOP and look like the difference between Reagan wins and Obama wins.
COVID-19 scares people. Sports leagues have been deferring or suspending seasons. Colleges are starting early spring breaks (not to encourage people to travel anywhere, but to slow the spread of a nasty virus) only to continue the semester on line. Commonplace meetings get cancelled.
Things that we used to defer we take with deadly seriousness -- and if the current leadership proves inadequately swift in its response, others bypass them. OK, the President over-reacts on travel... but note well: international travelers tend to be upscale in education and income, the sorts who used to be "Rockefeller Republicans" who have drifted away from the GOP and look like the difference between Reagan wins and Obama wins.
COVID-19 scares people. Sports leagues have been deferring or suspending seasons. Colleges are starting early spring breaks (not to encourage people to travel anywhere, but to slow the spread of a nasty virus) only to continue the semester on line. Commonplace meetings get cancelled.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.