05-26-2020, 10:58 PM
Evidence that the Crisis is over is that the virulent hatreds of the Crisis Era weaken. The victors start seeing the defeated as no longer The Enemy, but instead as victims of the same Enemy (the leadership of the Other Side if it was especially criminal, as with the German and Japanese wartime leadership). Thus... those people brought you the war, shamed your nation, wrecked your lives, wasted the lives of loved ones, gutted your prosperity
Maybe people confused and helpless are not so easy to see as a dangerous enemy. So the victors compel the hungry soldiers to exchange swords for plowshares. So demobilized German soldiers plant grain and demobilized Japanese soldiers go to the rice paddies to harvest the rice. The victors might learn that there is more to the enemy -- maybe some great culture. Many American soldiers on occupation duty returned with a German or Japanese wife, something unimaginable before the summer of 1945.
But this Crisis will probably involve no war. People will often feel defeated, especially if they survive COVID-19 yet have unpleasant and permanent harm to their health -- or if they have lost loved ones. But the losses will not be linked to weapons. There will be no war brides.
COVID-19 is the one enemy that Americans will be delighted to have exterminated... but as a virus, it has nothing to elicit sympathy.
Maybe people confused and helpless are not so easy to see as a dangerous enemy. So the victors compel the hungry soldiers to exchange swords for plowshares. So demobilized German soldiers plant grain and demobilized Japanese soldiers go to the rice paddies to harvest the rice. The victors might learn that there is more to the enemy -- maybe some great culture. Many American soldiers on occupation duty returned with a German or Japanese wife, something unimaginable before the summer of 1945.
But this Crisis will probably involve no war. People will often feel defeated, especially if they survive COVID-19 yet have unpleasant and permanent harm to their health -- or if they have lost loved ones. But the losses will not be linked to weapons. There will be no war brides.
COVID-19 is the one enemy that Americans will be delighted to have exterminated... but as a virus, it has nothing to elicit sympathy.
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.