04-24-2020, 11:51 PM
Did anyone foresee a respiratory disease as a likely focus of a Crisis? A market crash? We have had one, and we may be in another, especially if you believe as I do that the recent improvement in stock valuations is a suckers' rally. Unemployment has skyrocketed.
To the extent that Americans comply with difficult-to-enforce stay-at-home orders, Americans are in a 4T mood. People are doing their jobs. Some politicians (regrettably not including the most important one in America) are doing their jobs. Big Business and Small Business alike are doing their jobs. People losing their jobs seem not to be protesting sudden mass unemployment. Americans seem to be acting upon the assumption that however difficult things are, meeting COVID-19 is worth economic distress.
Lethal respiratory diseases just do not kill in large numbers in advanced industrial societies except to finish off people dying of other causes such as heart failure, cancer, advanced diabetes, or the like. But that is what we have. We are finding ways to deal with it. The cooler heads in politics -- the smarter and more pragmatic -- seem to be gaining against those who have operated on the assumption that people are nothing more than Homo oeconomicus, a vile creature under the control of his appetites, fear, greed, and snobbishness. Americans seem to not be looking for scapegoats.
So we didn't get World War III, a military coup, or nukes being tossed around. Some Americans have disgraced themselves, and history will judge them harshly. So, I hope, will the electorate.
To the extent that Americans comply with difficult-to-enforce stay-at-home orders, Americans are in a 4T mood. People are doing their jobs. Some politicians (regrettably not including the most important one in America) are doing their jobs. Big Business and Small Business alike are doing their jobs. People losing their jobs seem not to be protesting sudden mass unemployment. Americans seem to be acting upon the assumption that however difficult things are, meeting COVID-19 is worth economic distress.
Lethal respiratory diseases just do not kill in large numbers in advanced industrial societies except to finish off people dying of other causes such as heart failure, cancer, advanced diabetes, or the like. But that is what we have. We are finding ways to deal with it. The cooler heads in politics -- the smarter and more pragmatic -- seem to be gaining against those who have operated on the assumption that people are nothing more than Homo oeconomicus, a vile creature under the control of his appetites, fear, greed, and snobbishness. Americans seem to not be looking for scapegoats.
So we didn't get World War III, a military coup, or nukes being tossed around. Some Americans have disgraced themselves, and history will judge them harshly. So, I hope, will the electorate.
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.