Week 35 of the Quarantine
SAN MARTIN, ARGENTINA – Hooray! A vaccine! The relief column is finally in sight.
And soon, it will run off the fiendish COVID-19… releasing the entire world from months of fear, loathing, death, and siege.
Americans have not been reduced to the misery of the French, besieged by the Huns in 1870. We are not yet eating our household pets or the animals from the public zoos.
But the economy has been largely sequestered… locked up and locked down… if not by edict, then by dread.
Millions still cower in their homes. Millions are still unemployed. Restaurants in many areas remain closed or only half full.
And people are sore afraid.
Long Shadow
“I was surprised,” said Elizabeth after a Zoom conference with friends back in Baltimore. “The number one subject of conversation is still the virus. They’re all in their 60s and 70s. They’re very afraid of getting it. Some of them aren’t even going to have Thanksgiving with their families.
“They’re waiting for Biden to require face masks. And they say they’ll take the vaccine as soon as Fauci says it’s okay.”
“You’ll see,” adds a colleague. “America is not the same place you left.”
But what has changed? The virus was never like the Black Plague. It was never any threat at all to the nation. And for individuals, it was never as big a threat as heart disease, cancer, and the other big killers.
The virus focused its most lethal attacks on the weakest part of the population – those in nursing homes. And from them, it stole little of their lives, simply because they had little left to steal.
And yet, the coronavirus, like a strange, black sun, cast a long shadow over the entire world.
People may eat to excess, drive 70 mph in heavy traffic, and rarely get up from the easy chair for exercise. But why take the extra risk of Thanksgiving with the family?
The threat of the virus – at least, after it was pumped up by health authorities and the sensationalist press – was in a class by itself.
It practically created a new religion. It caused people to cover their faces – not as a prophylactic, but as an act of piety. No longer was it enough for the soul to have everlasting life; the body, too, must be spared.
No Cure
What gives? We’ll see for ourselves. We return to the U.S. next week.
We suspect there is a great yearning in America – for safety… for protection… for a panacea that will save us from all life’s problems… especially the ones we make for ourselves.
We, who no longer trust in the Almighty, are ready to trust anyone, including Doctor Fauci.
But while the new miracle drug from Pfizer may or may not prove effective against COVID-19, there is no elixir so powerful that it can revive a dying empire.
It was probably a desire to get back to normal – more, even, than the alleged votes from dead people – that gave Joe Biden a slim margin of victory in the U.S. presidential election.
Trump made people nervous… anxious. Both conservatives and liberals wanted him out of the way.
But the trouble with the liberals is that they really do think they can all live at each other’s expense. And they see each passing fad as God’s Eternal Truth.
The trouble with the conservatives, on the other hand, is that there aren’t any.
Trumpismo – a mixture of Big Man politics, money-printing, giveaways to the favored groups, and whatever comes into the Big Man’s head – was not crushed out of the Republican Party.
The electorate, bless its heart, did not reject Trump or his brand of politics. Instead, it affirmed its support – with more votes for Trump in 2020 than he had gotten four years ago.
Conservative principles – small government, constrained by the Constitution… balanced budgets… and honest money – were not on offer in the recent election.
And if they had been, they almost certainly would have been rejected. It is just not their time…
Swamp-Dwellers
A headline from The Washington Post probably tells us all we need to know about how government will work over the next four years:
Long-standing ties between Biden and McConnell could shape early agenda
Trump was an outsider in Washington. A “disrupter.”
Biden is very much an insider. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and president-elect Joe Biden have worked together – shifting power and wealth to themselves and their fellow insiders – for a combined total of 84 years.
Both are go-along, get-along Swamp-dwellers – the most elite of America’s late, degenerate, imperial class of connivers and flimflammers.
What this means to us is that the Biden team will face little opposition to its big spending/big printing plans.
The Republicans will make a show of preventing plans to pack the Supreme Court, howling occasionally about transgender bathroom policies… and other marginalia.
It’s back to “normal,” in other words… or at least to the ersatz “normal” that you get when a nation is in a steep decline.
People will clamor for protection… for miracle drugs (at someone else’s expense, of course)… for the ersatz safety offered by a corrupt government.
The mob may have tired of the circus provided in fulsome extravagance by Donald J. Trump, but it still wants the bread. And since the feds don’t have any bread, they will continue the scammy counterfeiting that always ends in disaster.
Future Normal
And now, with a vaccine in sight… with Biden and McConnell working hand-in-glove, like a practiced team of bank robbers… with Trump back on the fringe of celebrity politics…
…and talk of making Janet Yellen the new Treasury Secretary…
…we will all get what they’ve got coming.
Tomorrow, we will return to our regularly scheduled programming. That is, we will look at how you can protect yourself during the Biden years.
Regards,
 |
Bill
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