In the midst of this crisis I am finding myself trying to find ways to think about the future. Here are just a few thoughts on what we may be looking at as a result of this catastrophe.
These are just hastily scribbled initial notes. Please add your own and your thoughts on these.
- An understanding, finally, that politics, public policy, leadership is a serious thing, not just a media spectacle.
- Death of the “walls will protect us” mentality that formed the core of the Trumpian message
- Expose of the suicidal absurdity of the GOP doctrine of radical selfishness and the desire to “drown the government in a bathtub”
- Radically increased demands for complete overhaul of the US healthcare system, including investment in research, capacity, access.
- A return to respect for facts, science, experts, non-political professionals within our government.
- A hastened generational shift. Not to be morbid here, but a not-insignificant number of the most conservative and pro-Trump voters in this country will not be able to vote for him again in November. Correspondingly, perhaps this experience will be a wakeup call to younger citizens that they need to get involved (starting with voting) to take their futures away from the crazy and incompetent people we have allowed to be in charge.
- A newfound appreciation for the right and the freedom and the unique value of sharing physical space with others. After the crisis has abated and we are finally allowed again to occupy public space with others, without (as much) fear, will we appreciate the unique opportunity or we will still be glued to our damn screens, totally ignoring the other beings around us? For example, students who are being forced to go into online learning mode -— will this experience hasten the move to online learning or produce a backlash, an appreciation for the unique experience of groups of learners gathered together in a classroom?
- Also, this postmodern condition of multiple, "personalized" worlds driven by niche-media, where we are all free to create our own set of priorities based on personal preferences. That is gone for the foreseeable future. For example, the kind of people who consume no news but sports news, now have no sports news to consume. All the of attention and time taken up by infantile bullshit, controversies that exist only to keep us "engaged" on facebook, etc. etc. This will be disrupted, at least temporarily and some of the most bewitched among us will be forced to face a common reality governed by forces that cannot be denied or manipulated digitally. In short, all those personalized hyper-realities are about to collapse into a common, horrifying reality that we cannot escape from digitally.