The Coronavirus

[pbrower2a]

OK -- here is what soap and water do, with a focus on COVID-19:





Comments:


1. Soap and water are anything but passive cleaners. Although far from harsh chemicals upon us unless we are to ingest them. they are simply brutal to The Enemy of this phase of the Crisis Era. 

2. Because COVID-19 has no human characteristics it is even easier to demonize than Nazis. I have seen stories of very old Holocaust survivors succumbing to COVID-19 -- talk about facing two horrific enemies similarly deadly while coming of age and while in extreme old age. 

I can't imagine, except for scientific purposes of archiving dangerous pathogens for research, anyone, irrespective of ideology, having any qualms about the complete extermination of this Enemy of Humanity.  

3. People have been under pressure to keep restroom breaks as short as possible in the interest of efficiency in factories, food-processing places of all kinds, and offices such as call centers. Keeping those breaks optimally short for maximal productivity on production lines and for full coverage of clerical needs has been part of the 3T drive for efficiency in factories and offices in a time in which managerial elites make the assumption that workers are lazy malingerers who fail to recognize the ethos that nothing matters except the power, indulgence, and gain of economic elites. COVID-19 is perfect for exploiting such an ethos. Economic elites in the world are as rapacious as mobsters and drug kingpins, Gilded Age plutocrats and even slave-owning planters, and they have been able to maximize profits by treating workers as harshly as possible. Practices of a 3T that have well served profit maximization have been killing people. In a 4T, dehumanized methods of getting things done prove dangerous folly.

Consider well: the more humane conditions of American factories in WWII got better and more reliable production in the Arsenal of Democracy than did the brutal conditions of German and Japanese war production -- especially at the absolute worst of outright slavery. 

4. We have enough productivity to meet all human needs in contemporary America and the rest of the First World.  Countries in the middle tier of economic development, such as China and Mexico, are likely out of that zone. Countries now in the early stages of industrialization such as India and Nigeria might learn from this. 

Economic elites trained to see workers simply as machines of meat are much of the problem. In the 1950's (a 1T) the supervisors of factories and offices were typically graduates not of MBA programs but instead of the School of Hard Knocks. Graduates of an informal institution that issued no formal degrees knew better how working people thought than do today's MBA grads who are often valued for their lack of empathy for working people in offices or factories alike. The supervisor and even the executive from the GI Generation (I got along better with these than I did with my supposed fellow Boomers) knew better what made his subordinates tick and knew when to back off. The MBA grad, typically driven by a high income and what one could buy with such, has been more likely to crack the whip to get even more productivity.

Bad behavior has bad consequences that on a large scale lead to economic meltdowns, military defeat in catastrophic wars, and violent revolutions. Part of the transition to the 1T will involve the mass retirement of the first wave of MBA graduates born in the 1950's who may have been the worst executives in American history despite their sheepskins. X may be just as materialistic as Boomer executives -- but 

(1) it is more pragmatic
(2) as a Reactive generation it cannot get away with as much as could an Idealist or Civic generation, and
(3) the current Civic generation stands to wield more political power irrespective of social class.  

Yes, COVID-19 is a consequence of bad behavior by powerful people, and not only Donald Trump. Even diseases can evolve to meet changing realities of a society. Bubonic plague was perfect for exploiting the swift movements of Mongol armies, easy transport by ship of rats stowing away, and the extreme crowding of impoverished cities of the late middle ages. Cholera outbreaks ravaged the densely-populated communities of early industrial workers of the 19th century. The Spanish Influenza could have had no more effective means of transport than masses of soldiers moving about during World War II. AIDS perfectly fit the Sexual Revolution and an epidemic of heroin use. COVID-19 could first stow away on jetliners forcing the same dirty air among passengers and then hop onto subways and city buses... and then pop up in prisons, nursing homes, and brutally-managed workplaces. We change our ways in a 4T lest everything come crashing down. Tens of millions of deaths are still theoretically possible, and such could destroy the entire basis of our current plutocracy.