A few random thoughts...
Some random thoughts.....After this, I'm going to stop posting so much. I feel a little like I'm writing angry letters to the editor as Armageddon unfolds.1) This will be going on for a long time--months and years. People might want to wait and consolidate their comments instead of reacting to every hiccup willy nilly.2) This is going to be unendurable. Unlike 911, whose immediate impact (as opposed to the subsequent war on terror and the Iraq invasion and everything else) was only felt directly in three locations, virtually every American is going to know someone who gets sick. Many will be within one or two degrees of separation of someone who dies.3) The economic effects will be deep, deep, deep. The Trump boom is over. The market will come back fairly quickly once people get used to the idea of millions of people dying, but it's not going to change the fact that a huge part of the workforce will be idled because there's no demand for what they do. The inequality that you'll see over the next ten years is going to make the last ten years look like Communism.4) Yes, a huge amount of this is Trump's fault, but to make it about him to the extent that the media and we Trump-haters do is to play into his hands. He wants it to be about him because he wants everything to be about him.5) His press conferences are his rallies, and COVID-19 is his reelection platform. His wedge issue is himself. Don't waste your time pointing out his inconsistencies, because you'll just be amplifying his message. If it serves him in one news cycle to say that no one is really dying, he'll say that. If it serves him to say that the people who are dying deserve to die, he'll say that. If it serves him to say that people are dying and his liberal enemies are celebrating, he'll say that. If it serves him to say that, thanks to him, only a 100,000, 200,000, a million, two million have died, he'll say that.6) Be careful not to get too carried away with the war metaphors and the celebrations of our service class heroes. Not that this isn't like a war and not that they're not heroes, but there's a danger of normalizing the terrible risks they face out of their need to work and support their families. I mean, they're making sacrifices, but they're not doing it for God and country, they're doing it because they don't have any choice. Calling them heroes may make us feel a little less ashamed that they're dying in the numbers that they will be to keep the people who do have choices fed and clothed and safe.
