Posted on 04/20/2020 7:49:37 AM PDT by Kaslin
Americans must reject a dehumanizing "new normal" in the wake of the Chinese Virus.
Anyone who has ever acted on stage knows the difference between a full audience and a light audience. Even when lights blind the eyes to their presence, even when they are silent, they are there. It’s like the difference between driving a box truck full of furniture or one that is empty and almost weightless. Theater, sports, movies, and church are all driven primarily by an ancient desire to be in each other’s proximity.
President Trump made some waves last week when he rejected the idea that the United States would enter some kind of “new normal” once the Chinese virus has run its course. Asked about the possibility that in this cowardly new world, would social distancing would remain, Trump had this to say:
“Oh, that’s not going to be normal. There’s not going to be a new normal where somebody has been having for 25 years 158 seats in a restaurant and now he’s got 30 or he’s got 60 because that wouldn’t work. That’s not normal. No, normal will be if he has the 158 or 68 seats, and that’s going to happen and it’s going to happen relatively quickly, we hope.”
He went on to proclaim that if Alabama football games had 100,000 fans in attendance before, they will have 100,000 fans in attendance again. It’s the right tone and the right policy. During these almost two months of social purgatory, a kind of fatalism has set in among the right sort. “Of course things can never go back to the way they were,” we are told. Nonsense.
By the 4th century BC, the Theater of Dionysus on the south slope of the Acropolis in Athens could seat 17,000 people. Mind you the best estimates of the total population of Athens at this time was a mere 150,000. The Athenians built this massive structure that could fit over a tenth of their population for the same reason we build football stadiums and movie theaters. It is to be together, with others, to foster a sense of community and friendship, without which civilization is not possible.
The point here is that mass gatherings and physical intimacy are not some luxuries of the first world modern age, but rather universal and a priori conditions for human society. An atomized future in which we all hole up in our cubbies and have cocktails on Zoom not only sounds horrible but will not happen. Put simply, Americans will not live that way.
The most dangerous people in America today are not the protesters defying social distancing to get their lives back to normal. The most dangerous people are those who say we will never return to normal, and that they have the new rules all picked out for us. No thanks. For many progressives the virus is like climate change on crystal meth, a fast moving emergency that requires the government to seize power from citizens.
There are certainly lessons and opportunities to be gleaned from this bizarre experiment we have all been thrust into. Working from home, new forms of education, tele-medical services, fine, good. But two months ago we were packing bars and ballgames, we were attending baby showers and funerals, spreading germs willy-nilly at EDM shows. All of those things must come back and they will.
If understandable fear is what drove Americans into their homes and succeeded in flattening the curve of the virus in our country, then it is courage that is needed to see our way back to the lives we left behind. The ancient rites bequeathed to us and which we bequeath to our children is a chain that must not be broken. Society cannot long survive social distancing.
In a time of so much death it is appropriate to mourn those we have lost. It is not appropriate to mourn our society and culture as if it too will never return. It will return, not because the NBA needs money, or because the restaurant industry will collapse, but because we are human and we need to be loved, we need to be with one and other.
Death will play its sinister trick on all of us one day. But it is not undefeated. Death has never conquered humanity. Even in the darkness of death’s most ominous shadows human beings take strength in each other. Together we preserve all that is wonderful. We must not surrender to a dehumanizing “new normal,” but bravely go forward and claim our lives and society back.
but will they do this every year when a new Flu from China shows up ?
There will be no returning to “normal”.
Our Goal Must Be A Total Return To Normal...
That ship sailed for me and some others here years ago. :)
Yup. And it can’t be based on a vaccine which may never be discovered.
And let everyone, PLEASE, stop using the term “New Normal”.
I want normal, not someone else’s idea of what is “new” being shoved down my throat.
Rush, Hannity, a host of “you know who you ares”
Trump? We don’t need a NEW normal, we need a normal America.
#liberatemyjob!
but will they do this every year when a new Flu from China shows up ?
Only if a Republican is in charge.
Amen
We must never again have supply chains that are dependent on China. We must have manufacturing of strategic goods (at the very least) in our own country. We must stop the technology transfers to China. This change will fundamentally reorder our country away from the desperation of seeking meaning in the frivolous. We will change, Lord willing. There was nothing normal about the old “normal.”
Amen. Had a very strong and negative reaction the first time I
Heard the term.
Hear, hear!
Governments - having seized power - will not give it back unless continuing to hold on it becomes extraordinarily painful for the politicians and their operatives.
There will never be “normal” or true “freedom” again. Gubbermint is to large and invasive. May it be for “national security” and crap like the patriot act by a so called conservative president, or the idiocy by Obama with his social and environmental programs, gubbermint is so pervasive and intrusive that it’s in the church, in the family, in schools, business, airports, sport arena, even when you eat and what you eat and drink or say and read. The idea that there will be some return to normal means you think gubbermint will voluntarily shrink itself back inside its little constitutional defined box. That’s not how human nature works.
Very good article. I think we can return to normal - if, as he says, we have courage. And if the government hasn’t taken away too many of our rights and freedoms by then.
This whole thing is based on fear, not even a realistic fear, but one that needs to be fed regularly with falsified statistics and kept going by a hysterical media.
I want a normal that is actually normal rather than a continuation of the gaslighting by globalist elites who are catastrophically wrong.
yes, if we don’t increase deaths from not opening will surpass Covid, suicides will surpass 120,000 per year
Suicides are already the #10 leading cause of death in the U.S., almost 48,000. Every 1% increase in unemployment results in thousands more committing suicide. ( medical journal Lancet). I can tell you that suicide intervention centers are getting more calls in 72 hours than we usually see in 3 months.
For a concise analysis see the following excerpt below that estimates an increase from suicide and drugs of 70,000 this is from https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/13/shutdown_could_kill_more_americans_than_covid-19_142934.html
No model or guesswork is required to foresee the deadly impact. Job losses cause extreme suffering. Every 1% hike in the unemployment rate will likely produce a 3.3% increase in drug overdose deaths and a 0.99% increase in suicides according to data provided by the National Bureau of Economic Research and the medical journal Lancet. These are facts based on experience, not models. If unemployment hits 32%, some 77,000 Americans are likely to die from suicide and drug overdoses as a result of layoffs. Scientists call these fatalities deaths of despair.
Then add the predictable deaths from alcohol abuse caused by unemployment. Health economist Michael French from the University of Miami and a co-author found a “significant association between job loss” and binge drinking and alcoholism.
The impact of layoffs goes beyond suicide, drug overdosing and drinking. Overall, the death rate for an unemployed person is 63% higher than for someone with a job, according to findings in Social Science & Medicine.
It is all part of the normal rhythm of life. Some people get sick, some die. Eventually we all die. We are not going to permanently upend our entire way of life 'cause some guy in china likes his soup medium-rare. We should not have done it even temporarily. This was a mistake, we need to learn from it.
Everyone’s goal is a return to normal.
The problem is that there’s this virus going around that makes some of the people who get it extremely and unpleasantly sick.
Since people don’t want to get the virus, they’re not behaving “normal.”
This is NOT about government policy shutting down economies. This is about ordinary people wanting to not get sick.
I agree. We need to reorganize our supply chains with a view to our autonomy. I’d also like to see some more trivial changes like an end to the disgusting practice of cashiers who lick their fingers before touching plastic bags or money.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.