That was an annoyingly breathless article, like someone who used to read revolutionary tracts in college, with roundabout breathless worrying.
I think it’s a bit wordy to get to the central theme:
From one citizen to another, I beg of you: take a deep breath, ignore the deafening noise, and think deeply about what you want to put back into your life. This is our chance to define a new version of normal, a rare and truly sacred (yes, sacred) opportunity to get rid of the bullshit and to only bring back what works for us, what makes our lives richer, what makes our kids happier, what makes us truly proud. We get to Marie Kondo the shit out of it all.
(I had to look up Marie Kondo)
Don’t get me wrong, i think there will be some knock on consequences, but neither the consequences I want nor the worst of society that I might guess. I suspect we’ll all start moving toward a most East Asian cultural context now, as those societies will demonstrate a modern, effective response and western societies, especially Anglo Saxon derived, a much impoverished response. The 21st Century is likely to be the century of Asia, and moving culturally and politically toward Asia - being led by Asian polities - seems more likely.
That said certainly Trump and his cronies will attempt to bury the bodies and complain that it wasn’t their fault and there was nothing they could have done, and Republican voters who believe the American status quo to be the one and only possible way of politically functioning will nod their head in approval. But if it comes to pass that the federal government’s fitful, ineffective response really did favor GOP states and punish/deny Liberal states Federal aid, you’re more likely to see a much more significant and sharp response by liberal states than nodding back to sleep and buying Starbucks lattes again. If anything it could signal the breakdown of the current American political system.
A Federal government that actively spites and works against Liberal leaning states would be a wake-up call that all the ads on billboards could not paper over.
A big long-term potential change is reduced travel. Reduced traffic, commuting, airline travel, cruises, vacations.
Gas prices could stay low. The oil and gas industry will continue to suffer. Car sales overall will decline. This might speed recent trends to more profitable large trucks and SUVs. More bro-dozers, now speeding more due to less traffic. Yay.
Good for climate change, but cheap gas will likely mean more travel than otherwise (e.g. drop of 5% instead of 10% that could have been attained). Maybe governments realize the absurdity of cheap gas in the face of climate change, and institute higher carbon taxes? Likely wishful thinking.
If traffic is lower, a lot of the road and highway projects become unnecessary, or can be deferred to a later date. This can have knock-on effects through the economy.
Hotel industry and airbnb, likely a long term decline in revenues. Though I see a resurgence in family vacations as the huge SUV powered by cheap gas doesn’t involve crowds of people. Perhaps national parks, camping, nature travel grow in popularity. A good thing, but we’re short on those already.
Transit, which is more sustainable than driving, has the issue of crowds of people. Perhaps more people bike to work? That would be a positive.
If the roads are less crowded this is possible. My guess is once businesses reopen and expect employees to be at the place of employment, people will drive just like they did before. The only thing that might change is if more businesses offer a WFH option.
What does interest me is anthropogenic warming.
I know, I know, science says it’s not true. But there’s going to be a very interesting data set to see global temperature changes over the short term.
Here’s the old chestnut - splitting up the country.
There are three big things right now - American “producers”* are rising up to meet the challenge, including some heroic work by heath care workers, scientists, and food distributors. Total dysfunction on a federal level leaving states to do the best they can, and a not insignificant mass of “consumers”* that are scared and angry and are looking for people to blame, and many of whom fall back on well warn political tropes they’ve been nursed on for decades.
How does this look on the other side? There’s IMO clearly a big undercurrent of lets get back to normalcy 2.0; certainly Biden is the normalcy candidate right now, and the election in November (wow, is it finally in sight!?) is almost perfectly timed to meet a rising wave of similar sentiment.
But… lots, and lots of things can happen before then. And what if Trump wins? The Keys to the White House guy Lichtman feels Trump still needs some other crisis to push him out, “social unrest” or “military / foreign policy defeat”.
*This is just my own personal division of populations in the modern world, rather than on class or race or religion.
Since 2016 I distrust all predictions. Trump was a terrible candidate with huge character issues obvious to all, yet he still won.
We will likely have Russian dickery and voter suppression to deal with. Covid-19 will probably be in steep decline by then, no thanks to Trump, but he will take credit. The economy will likely be in the shitter, but I guess there’s a chance it’s rebounding and the Dow has come back.
It’s always hard to vote out a sitting president.
I get the pessimism and to some extent share it, but it has to be said that — based on what we see now — Trump is probably going to lose. He was historically unpopular before the pandemic, is demonstrably screwing the pooch in handling it, is more unpopular now and almost certain to be even more unpopular in the coming weeks and months. The Democrats have nominated a popular, likable guy who isn’t going to scare away anyone. If the election were held today, Trump loses. That situation is unlikely to switch very much in his favor; it is far more likely to go the other way.
Sure, stuff can happen. But Trump’s victory in 2016 came down to sheer dumb luck, a matter of about 60k votes in a handful of states. He could get luck again, I suppose, but it is more unlikely now than it was before. He’s not going to win any fair open election.
As for unfair ones, I don’t see the problem as being Russian interference or Trump himself somehow ‘cheating’ the election. The thing to worry about is the very slim possibility that a few swing states with Republican governments decide not to hold a presidential election at all; that, instead, they opt to have the GOP legislatures select their electors. I think the odds of that are quite small — it’s hard to imagine them taking the heat from their citizens for disavowing elections in selecting the President, but still having elections for Congress and the Senate etc — but it is a thing that could happen given the pandemic and the way the GOP in Wisconsin tried to use it to their benefit. But if there is an actual election, I think Trump loses.
the world will not return to the state before the pandemic, that’s for sure