Where do we go from here: A new paradigm
But if ever we've been faced with a new paradigm since the end of the Second World War, well friends, this is it.
This is the first event of our modern, super-connected, hyper-media-saturated world which is affecting every person on the planet. (I mean this in an acute sense, as obviously we have things like climate change which are slow rolling.) We are in a pandemic which, no, isn't bubonic. But the fact that we are so interconnected heightens the impact. Yes, the bubonic plague swept through the known world, and killed, proportionally, far more people than COVID-19. But the medieval world didn't have CNN and BBC beaming the calamity into every hovel and hut.
However, and this is what I want to stress: I'm not despondent. Do I get down? Of course I do. How could one not?
But look at the graphic fronting this piece.
For decades, we've had doomsday preppers and survivalists amassing guns and supplies for the inevitable collapse of society. And in, again, an interconnected world such as ours, a collapse doesn't necessitate some great event. A pestilence with ten times the mortality rate of the flu will do. Trade stops, the economy stops, life stops. These gun-humpers thought their "skills" would be what was needed to survive Armageddon. Force, brutality, inhumanity.
Instead, you have this: At 7pm every night, New Yorkers—yes, surly, rude New Yorkers—gather in their windows and send cheers washing over those hospital workers on the front line. All over the world you have musicians singing and playing on their balconies to keep up spirits. You have impatient Americans queuing six feet apart to get into Trader Joe's, with no complaint. You have leaders around the world and in our country putting the well-being of their people over the well-being of the markets. Kindness, patience, and responsibility are the traits which have seen us through so far, not violence and fear.
I have bi-weekly phone calls with my staff, and one of our librarians never fails to mention that what this calamity has revealed is the best of humanity. Sure, you have the imbeciles protesting to OPEN UP AMERICA. But they're in a slim minority. Even the vast majority of Republicans approve of the measures taken by states to curb the pandemic's spread. Only Donald Trump's death cult, beholden to him as an orange, moronic Thulsa Doom, will follow him to the ultimate quietus. Those "pro-life" morons don't actually value life; they value power and dominance. And those values are not the values being exhibited in this crisis. You know what values are being exhibited? Me seeing a UPS driver outside of Staples, and us exchanging head nods, where we wouldn't have before. Ignore the squeaky wheel; common decency is taking root again. And once it does, it won't be displaced easily.
As I've quoted before often, this is my philosophy:
Force, hatred, history, all that. That’s not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it’s the very opposite of that that is really life.... Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred.I've always believed this. But never more so than now. People and governments which wallow in hatred and fear will perish. Vladimir Putin is holed up in his dacha surrounded by Interior Ministry troops while the virus ravages his country, with no central response. People in Trump-loving states will demand an accounting of the butcher's bill as the virus reaps its reward for inaction. And it will be love, not hate, which will save this country, and the world. A virus cares not for Democrat or Republican, Communist or Fascist. But the living left behind by the dead will want a bill, and an explanation as to why the cost was so high. Woe betide anyone who can't provide the sums, and why they were necessary.
As we go into the weekend, another quote from another writer I revere:
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.