COVID-19 is the perfect 4T event?

[David Horn]

(05-25-2020, 03:00 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(05-25-2020, 10:14 AM)David Horn Wrote: That's the hinge on this gate: 'we' or 'me'!  The 'me' crowd is getting more invested in magical thinking by the day, so let's agree that they aren't the source of a solution to this problem or any problem that needs a coordinated response.  They are also a relatively large contingent, so they can't be ignored.  Since they will fight any coordinated effort as an infringement on their right to do as they damn well please, it's hard to see anything more effective than muddle.  4Ts aren't about muddle.  Scary!

How scary?

I keep saying that you need something like Atlanta in the Civil War or Hiroshima in World War II to convince a conservative group to change their worldview, to stage what Xenakis’s and I have recently called a cultural reboot.

Now Hiroshima was about 100,000 deaths.  We are almost there with no appreciable effect. However, Hiroshima came with Nagasaki, a strategic conventional bombing campaign that occasionally reached a similar scale, not to mention the island hopping campaign or the submarine war.  The total in round numbers is around 3,000,000 deaths.

I heard one story of a bunch of POWs, far from Tokyo when the war ended, who commandeered a train to rejoin the allies.  Now, these people had not been treated well.  POWs of the old Japanese weren’t.  So it is hardly surprising when they reached the first pile of ashes that had once been a city, they cheered.  They had a similar reaction to the second pile of ashes.

But when they reached the third, they were silent.

Three Million Deaths.  Curves going up at the time the isolation was released.  Exponential growth without a scientific response.  How long before a cultural reboot?

As you say.  Scary.

If ~40% of the people simply don't believe the facts on the ground, how do you get to the next level?  Trump is a master of confusion.  If he convinces his 40% that the COVID-19 pandemic is a sham (and they actually want to believe that already), then couple that with the election was stolen and Democrats are responsible, how do you think that will play?  Will the military follow orders or devolve into a Trump cabal? If the latter, then how is anything resolved? The Blue side is not going to go for a coup. If the former, will there then be so much chaos that martial law really IS required?  How many boots on the ground can America tolerate?