The Coronavirus

[pbrower2a]

(05-15-2020, 06:50 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(05-15-2020, 06:41 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Or some people would rather work for a living than get a government ration.  Or they value having their own money over their own life.  I know I do, I work with the public every day and have since this 'pandemic' started.

There is no moral judgement here, there are only two sides here:  Those who want to get back to living their lives on their terms and those who want to virtue signal about those people living their lives on their own terms.

History has a habit of bypassing the virtue signalers.  As I said elsewhere in five or so years the Carona Karens will be openly mocked because those who simply want to get on with life will be victorious.

There are those who want to turn the turnings backwards, to go back to what we once were.  Unlikely.  If you want to run by unravelling selfishness and hedonism during a crisis, you are going to be out of step.  You can try to run against the will of most of the people, but if you do so you are likely to get trampled.  The vague principles that hold true during three plus turnings don't hold true in a crisis heart.

You have always clung to the elites, whether it be the Communist Party or your father.  This has obvious advantages most of the time.  Not just now.  You might want to run with the people for a little while.

As a rule a vehicle wheel goes forward, unless it is skidding as if hydroplaning, when the upper part of the tire is headed backward. With a tank, the upper treads are going backward. The generational cycle is like that in many ways. Some progress comes to an abrupt end and even reverses. But wheeled transport is usually more economical than the alternative. Horses might be more effective in some cases, but they are more capricious and they must be fed even if they aren't working -- and they must rest to forage. 

The bad behavior of the 3T that got us into our current pickle is the last thing we need to recover. If by some chance one enjoyed soms of its aspects, then it will likely be back in about seventy years. Obviously I won;t be around, and in view of human nature as the generational cycle operates, people will again be seeking easy money in highly-liquid investments instead of investing in plant and equipment that create the jobs. that promote a consumer economy instead of one big, glitzy (and doomed) casino economy. Were we to go back to the recent 3T we would be setting up nearly the same calamities only to be in a worse position in which to respond because such would gut even more of the assets and talents necessary for turning America around.

Somehow I see the people who want to open America prematurely as doomed but clueless.  It is not a question of liberalism versus conservatism; it is one instead of wise practice instead of recklessness and corruption. Conservatives would be wise to recognize that their next successful President will act much more like Obama than like Trump, and all that could possibly be wrong with Obama is that he was not a conservative. Of course, people whose idea of a fitting protest is to carry their beloved guns around and deny the reality of the danger of COVID-19  by mass but mask-less rallies seem to be acting in consummate folly. If we have no counter-protests it is because the liberal side knows what the issues are for themselves. 

... Howe and Strauss suggested that kindness, caution, and conscience are the tools of character necessary for achieving a satisfying conclusion to a Crisis war. OK, COVID-19 isn't exactly a war, but it certainly offers danger and mass death characteristic of a Crisis War. Statistically I can see little difference between death in combat (such as crashing and burning in a downed aircraft, drowning as one's ship or submarine sinks, being blasted into a pink mist when one steps on a landmine, being riddled with machine-gun fire, or being crushed under a falling building that one cannot escape as it is bombed -- and dying of an unusually-nasty respiratory disease for which we Americans are ill prepared because respiratory infections rarely kill healthy people in a First-World society or privileged people in somewhat-poorer places. 

It is clear what we must do to avoid contracting and transmitting this horrible disease. We all know. More people are catching on. Fewer people are going out in public without masks.  Most of us are washing our hands more often, and we are keeping distances. We are getting accustomed to not doing many things that we used to do with little thought. We are developing (or at least most of us -- blockheads less likely to survive might not be developing those sound habits) -- like seeking out reputable sources and credible leaders instead of seeking people who tell us what we want to believe.  We are beginning to recognize that a steady supply of goods at high prices is better than an unsteady supply of bargains. Big Business will be unable to use some of the corner-cutting means of keeping costs down at the expense of workers.   

I expect the stock markets to further tank. Add to this, games with money supply to make the economy perform as the national leadership wants at the moment will start to fail. I can't say that we will quite go back to the pattern of the late 1940's in banking (as a depository institution and as a lender) in relying upon depositors for capital for investment with the expectation that prudent borrowers will pay back because they prosper. Subprime loans will of the sort that flourished and fizzled in the Double-Zero Decade won't be possible. Bankers will be unable to sell people on taking out a mortgage loan that they have no chance of ever paying back on the assumption that foreclosing on a defaulting mortgagee  whose property is rising in value is more profitable than lending on more modest housing. I expect real estate values to crash in some places as people find that they no longer need to live in high-cost places just to be able to hold a job while some recently-ravaged urban areas become attractive places for raising families. 

Forward has always been Crisis Eras in which the great absurdities of the outer world come crashing down, a High (or recovery) in which people establish credible institutions that facilitate prosperity and comfort, an Awakening Era in which people challenge the mechanistic and often conformist assumptions of an economic machine, an Unraveling in which people try to have fun without thinking too deeply (because such is exhausted), and finally a Crisis Era in which people make momentous sacrifices for survival of what is dear and necessary. We find in a Crisis Era that some sacrifices are necessary for the survival of nation and community, in a High that material comfort is worthy of some constraints, in an Awakening that if we act as automata we lose our human characteristics, and in an unraveling that hedonism and the profit motive aren't all bad. No era within the Saeculum is perfect, and much that is possible in one stage of the Saeculum is impossible in another.