Covid Is Just The Trigger Event
As a matter of sociological history, the current 2020 Covid pandemic is a really, really good thing, a great gift to America. The tragedy of the sickness and the deaths is horrific and terrible, an incomprehensible and inconsolable hurt and grief for each person and all in their lives at the individual perspective. Like so many tragedies, such as death and injury from war, it has a very different meaning depending on perspective.
I’ll give a history example. The American Civil War was about a lot of things. “States Rights” was the catch all umbrella. The southern states wanted each state to decide slavery or not … that truly was the most inflammatory issue. Extra taxes on cotton sold outside the country, extra taxes on finished goods bought from outside the country also figured in. Part of it was just all the egos and attachment to tribal ideas and affiliations. The media egged it on, wild reports on the killings in Kansas and Missouri, inflammatory articles about Lincoln in Southern papers, and broadsheets whipping up published rhetoric that flamed the fire into a bonfire.
So, in many ways thanks to freedom of press, we fought a costly civil war — the cost in economy and death was much higher than Sam Houston guessed in early 1861 when he foretold of the misdirected drama and fellow Texans thought he was a daft weak old man. Reparations for African American slaves? How about 700,000 whites killed and leaving 50,000 widows and 100,000 outright orphans and the southern economy destroyed? Pretty big start toward payment. 500,000 non-US born immigrants fought for the Union. Lincoln didn’t want a wall. The average union soldier was 5’8” and 143 pounds — and they just kept coming.
Big price. Incredibly tragic for individuals and their loved ones and neighbors. BUT, the huge blot on the nation, institutional slavery, reached conclusion.
Flash forward. We have acrimonious polarization. We have skyrocketing government debt, pandemic, broken immigration system, bloated healthcare system with insurance premiums the low income people can’t afford, environmental issues man made or not, trade issues, economic issues such as income inequality/40% of population in marginalized menial low wage jobs, tattered and outdated education system, ongoing racism and overloaded police force that profiles and has some out of control personnel, high suicide, high drug OD, wars that have gone on for 20 years, huge technological shifts undiscussed for implications. These are all truly real problems that are complex, multifaceted and require great amounts of cooperation and compromise with citizen responsibility with long term sacrifice and patience. The sitting president presided over 3 years of growing economy, tax cuts, regulation reduction and increased conservative sitting judges. The same president is also a self proclaimed “deal making” TV personality with history of bankruptcies, divorces and lawsuits, no government or military experience, a lot of ego, careless with facts, persistently uses divisive tactics, has a reported short attention span and used a Bible and a church as photo op.
This pandemic has isolated people, created more reading and thinking time, brought into focus truly real and deep grief and human vulnerability (130,000 USA dead from Covid), furor around a police killing, stressed the healthcare system, burst the American exceptionalism myth, crashed school as usual, put millions on unemployment. In short the pandemic has been a bucket of cold water on a jobs and economic bubble that camouflaged a lot of rotten stuff.
There can be no winner in the 2020 US elections. Democracy works when the leader who gets the most votes has a deep and profound concern and appreciation for the opposing view. Democracy works when unity is paramount over opinion, when gratitude and shared values and vision is held above a polarized “us vs. them” blame game of right and wrong. There appears to be no margin or interest in that kind of magnanimity from any quarter.
There will be a price to be paid if the seeping wounds and torn injuries are to be healed. And they will heal or will fester and become cancerous and lethal. The question to be answered is will the price get paid, and, will it be sooner rather than later and at a cost no higher in than necessary. Time will tell, predictors and forecasters cannot do more than guess when nations enter unchartered waters.
