Biden Pandemic Adviser Calls for Four to Six Week National Lockdown

[David Horn]

(03-15-2021, 05:50 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(03-15-2021, 05:20 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(03-14-2021, 09:45 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I have made it a habit to list the crisis problems of late.  No one seems to contradict my personal list explicitly.  COVID has caused a half million deaths and collapsed the economy.  There were big time protests of racism last summer.  Red violence steadily escalated during the Trump years leading to the January 6 insurrection.  Global warming is slower, has not resulted in as obvious a single trigger, but is worth at least an honorable mention and does not lack fire and hurricane catalysts.  If those were just catalysts, I would hate to see the trigger.

These are all on the agenda.  There are other things on the Biden agenda, but none I think have risen to the crisis level?

Is that the right list?  If not, how would anyone change it?

Biden's agenda seems to hit all of the above.  If I complain that the prior administration was oriented to not solve problems, those were the problems I meant.  If you can't fix the economy without beating the bug first, Trump was on the wrong side of all of it.

And yet, here there is a claim that Americans put their heads in the sand.  Over on the Generational Dynamics thread, they are still predicting wars and were recently wailing about civilization's collapse.  Some reds are working themselves up about Dr Seuss and Mr Potato Head.  It seems a lot of people are not focused on solving what seem to me to be the obvious problems.

Anyone real have a different list?

My list and yours overlap, but differ a bit. Here are my 5 must-dos, not that we will actually, you know, do them:

1. COVID.  Clearly the most important in the near term, but it's coming under control, or it will if the "freedom-to-die" crowd will allow it.  Luckily, it appears that the never-vaccers are losing steam.  Let's hope the decline gets the job done without even more misery.
   
2. Global Warming.  This speaks for itself, but it's worth noting that this issue operates by its rules and on its timeline.  That's why I would normally put it first ... that and the degree of seriousness.
   
3. Rising Inequality.  The rate at which this is amassing wealth for the few and penury to many -- all that in the world's wealthiest nation -- shows how quickly we can revert to something akin to Feudalism.  We can control this, but it requires the will to oppose the richest and most powerful among us.
   
4. Paranoia and Conspiracy.  With the arrival of Deep Fakes, the ability of large numbers of otherwise rational people to fall through a rathole just got bigger.  Since this is not limited to the US, I may have to move this up the list in the future.
   
5. Decline of the Commons.  Infrastructure decay is the most obvious example of this, but even the vaunted military is now just another cash cow for the .01% who effectively rule us.  But this isn't limited to physical decay, the phenomenon described in Bowling Alone has only gotten worse.  As social institutions fade, the connection of Americans to one another is bent and finally broken.  This is one the government CAN'T fix.  We need to solve this on the human level.
   

So that's my shortlist.  Other than COVID, we're not making a lot of headway on any of them.

I think Biden rightly put the priority on the cabinet and the COVID recovery bill.  The others could follow.

I see the emphasis in getting the economy working rather than ending the division of wealth.  While the inequality of wealth is on the short list for future awakenings or crises, I see no evidence that catalysts or triggers are pointed specifically at that yet.

You have paranoia and conspiracy while I have red violence.  These are obviously related.  Yours is wider.

The decline of the commons is more subtle.  Catalysts?  Trigger?

I'm in a bit of a quandary.  When we spike the economy, and that's underway as we post, how do we also assure that all that public money doesn't become instant private wealth? The alternative is to do nothing, which is guaranteed to be a disaster (been there, done that in 2009). Building new infrastructure poses similar issues.  In other words, have we allowed wealth aggregation to go on for too long to contain it? I hope not, but can't be sure.

It doesn't help that people have been aligned against each other, and seem destined to remain misaligned for the foreseeable future.  It's impossible to do the hard things if we disagree on what they are and how to solve them. To be frank, all my items concern me, but #5 the most, because I haven't a clue on how to address it.