We’ve seen viruses come and go before. We remain confident that all such disasters will pass with time. The authorities, scientific and governmental, always win for us.
Empty grocery shelves will get reshelved, lockdown lifestyles and travel bans will end, schools will reopen, jobs will return, and we won’t stay suspicious of everyone we meet. But these are just inconveniences compared to the dire possibilities that can follow a pandemic.
Stores can close, money can become worthless, and insurrection can turn law-abiding folks, propelled by irrational fears, into violent monsters. We see hints of this already in terrified selling on the stock market and selfish, cowardly volume-buying of everyday foodstuffs and other commodities. Me first thinking sets in. Mainstream television joins the desperate Democratic Party to stoke fear and resentment.
Some people “remember” lovingly how FDR and the Democrats ended the Great Depression by launching the Welfare State and the ever popular Free Stuff for Everyone social programs. Or did they get us into World War II to reset the economy and end joblessness by putting the unemployed into uniform? Militarism brings renewal to failing states, both Axis and Allied, or so countries back then hoped.
Perhaps the President waited too long when the Coronavirus first started to collapse the economy, forgetting the lesson of 1929. He could have shut down the market right away to gain time to assess and monitor, though the media and Democrats would quickly blame him for causing all the global troubles, not the virus itself. With Trump and the GOP riding high and future-certain, the opposition had little to lose.
Democracy is at an all-time low ebb, to the point that any reaching “across the aisle” only produces nasty politicization, the country and greater good be damned. Everything rotten about past regimes from both parties is now resurrected and brought forward as a ransom: political correctness, Identity Group hiring and preference, and other “values” which issue from Sanctuary Cities.
Now we should just throw money at people and workers to jump start the economy. Giving money to corporations and small business makes a lot more sense, letting them figure out how to come to the aid of workers and families. Government bureaucracies become wasteful and corrupt.
