Deeper Into The Woods

"We ain't outa the woods yet" is pretty much the hallmark of understatement for 2020.

I think we may be only about halfway to the darkest shittiest parts of the woods right now, and without some pretty great leadership and extremely adept maneuvering, no amount of bread crumbs will get us safely out of this mess.

Observing Joe Biden these last few weeks, I've been thinking about how his usual "happy warrior" demeanor just isn't there in the same way it's always been. I've found myself wondering if it's because he's lost a step or two, but then I figured (and had partially confirmed) that as the presumptive nominee, he's been getting security briefings.

We all imagine how fucked up things are - can you imagine what it must be like to get your worst fears confirmed, but then hear there's a shit load more that's even worse than your worse fucking fears?

I can only guess, of course, but it seems obvious to me that Joe's got the weight of the whole world on him right now.

So anyway, here we are, not quite two thirds of the way through 2020, and we've got a pandemic killing one of us every 55 seconds, we have a battalion of Daddy State monsters loose in the corridors of power, we've got Murder Hornets, Derechos and now Fire Tornadoes.

But the really bad news is...

...Wade Davis, Rolling Stone:

Never in our lives have we experienced such a global phenomenon. For the first time in the history of the world, all of humanity, informed by the unprecedented reach of digital technology, has come together, focused on the same existential threat, consumed by the same fears and uncertainties, eagerly anticipating the same, as yet unrealized, promises of medical science.

In a single season, civilization has been brought low by a microscopic parasite 10,000 times smaller than a grain of salt. COVID-19 attacks our physical bodies, but also the cultural foundations of our lives, the toolbox of community and connectivity that is for the human what claws and teeth represent to the tiger.

Our interventions to date have largely focused on mitigating the rate of spread, flattening the curve of morbidity. There is no treatment at hand, and no certainty of a vaccine on the near horizon. The fastest vaccine ever developed was for mumps. It took four years. COVID-19 killed 100,000 Americans in four months. There is some evidence that natural infection may not imply immunity, leaving some to question how effective a vaccine will be, even assuming one can be found. And it must be safe. If the global population is to be immunized, lethal complications in just one person in a thousand would imply the death of millions.

Pandemics and plagues have a way of shifting the course of history, and not always in a manner immediately evident to the survivors. In the 14th Century, the Black Death killed close to half of Europe’s population. A scarcity of labor led to increased wages. Rising expectations culminated in the Peasants Revolt of 1381, an inflection point that marked the beginning of the end of the feudal order that had dominated medieval Europe for a thousand years.

The COVID pandemic will be remembered as such a moment in history, a seminal event whose significance will unfold only in the wake of the crisis. It will mark this era much as the 1914 assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the stock market crash of 1929, and the 1933 ascent of Adolf Hitler became fundamental benchmarks of the last century, all harbingers of greater and more consequential outcomes.

COVID’s historic significance lies not in what it implies for our daily lives. Change, after all, is the one constant when it comes to culture. All peoples in all places at all times are always dancing with new possibilities for life. As companies eliminate or downsize central offices, employees work from home, restaurants close, shopping malls shutter, streaming brings entertainment and sporting events into the home, and airline travel becomes ever more problematic and miserable, people will adapt, as we’ve always done. Fluidity of memory and a capacity to forget is perhaps the most haunting trait of our species. As history confirms, it allows us to come to terms with any degree of social, moral, or environmental degradation.

To be sure, financial uncertainty will cast a long shadow. Hovering over the global economy for some time will be the sober realization that all the money in the hands of all the nations on Earth will never be enough to offset the losses sustained when an entire world ceases to function, with workers and businesses everywhere facing a choice between economic and biological survival.

Unsettling as these transitions and circumstances will be, short of a complete economic collapse, none stands out as a turning point in history. But what surely does is the absolutely devastating impact that the pandemic has had on the reputation and international standing of the United States of America.

In a dark season of pestilence, COVID has reduced to tatters the illusion of American exceptionalism. At the height of the crisis, with more than 2,000 dying each day, Americans found themselves members of a failed state, ruled by a dysfunctional and incompetent government largely responsible for death rates that added a tragic coda to America’s claim to supremacy in the world.

For the first time, the international community felt compelled to send disaster relief to Washington. For more than two centuries, reported the Irish Times, “the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the U.S. until now: pity.” As American doctors and nurses eagerly awaited emergency airlifts of basic supplies from China, the hinge of history opened to the Asian century.

Davis goes on to lay out just how fucked he thinks we are.

And while I can't say he's wrong to think what he thinks, I will say that we've been down before.

The one thing 45* has been right about - the only thing, and he's warped and perverted it almost totally beyond recognition - but the one thing is that we just go on. We fuck up. We fall on our face. We get back up. And we keep going.

Of course, it'd be nice if we could recognize the need for some fundamental change once in a while, and it'd be really nice if we could see the need and make the changes before all the shit hits the fuckin' fan.

Anyway, we have to make some real adjustments. Trump just pretends he's some fuckin' cat that jumped up on the table and landed with all four paws in 4 different bowls of steaming hot soup, and then tries to make like he meant to do exactly that, and what are you guys laughing at - you're the idiots, not me - oooh look, a mouse.

And that's kinda what we've allowed fuckups like Trump to pull. We have to try harder not to let them off the hook this time. If we want government to be held to account, then we have to dig in and insist that some of these big fish get fried.