What is it like to be locked down? I don't know, but I seem to know all sorts of people who are. There was a picture of Times Square in the New York Times today, with a handful of people walking about. When, at any hour of the day, has that piece of pavement ever been so deserted? Two days ago NY City Mayor Bill de Blasio stated that his schools would not close, because if they did, his health care system would come crashing down. Yesterday he closed the schools until “at least” 30 April.
My son had been one of a handful of Googlers still working at his office in Mountain View, California until yesterday. Then his and the surrounding counties declared an emergency mandating that citizens shelter in place. Noah always gets his groceries delivered, but now he must carefully prioritize what he wants, including second and third choices, as well as second and third choice delivery times.
His car repair shop now insists on picking up your car. That's a mechanic's social distancing strategy.
Rose is very strict about what she wants me to do — she's made a study of plagues and flu pandemics. I did persuade my trapping partner Laurie not to look for an in town yoga studio. At seventy-two, she doesn't belong out in town in the era of the current plague.
There has been no hand sanitizer or bleach on store shelves for a week, and little if any toilet paper.
While at Walmart, a cashier told Rose that a customer tried to buy more than the limit of toilet tissue. When told she was over, she threw the tissue at the cashier. The country is changing fast.
Americans are soft. They want their stuff, and their fun, and somehow, someone else should render them safe. I expect there will be fist fights in a few weeks over the discipline of a near national quarantine.
Nearly every college is out, and will reconvene via distance learning for the remainder of the year. But students aren't going home to shelter; they are heading to Florida beaches. Last night cars stuffed full of college age kids were cruising our normally placid Syria. Presumably they were trying out their new found freedom on Shenandoah National Park. Some sheltering in place at home, eh?. These kids are the twerps of our future, waiting to vote for empty suits like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez who will promise them free stuff. Maybe she'll keep them safe.
Could this be an upheaval similar to that of World War II? Could the great result be China replacing the West on the world stage? She suffered first and appears to have learnt the proper lessons, unlike the US. Additionally, she has stolen much of our intellectual property, and we have transplanted much of our industrial infrastructure over there. The shop floor is staffed by Chinese, so they have picked our pocket, with our help.
The other important issue was the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. Its star was fading as it botched the Hong Kong issue. There was no need to further control the semi autonomous city, but the Party couldn't help itself. The protestors were winning. Now no one remembers the protestors; the party is busy successfully saving the country, and it will come out of things having shown it is a doer, and it knows how to run the country and save the citizenry. If all goes according to plan, the Party will be able to absorb the protesters, having just shown its competence as never before.
Having brought the country back from the brink, the Party can restart the industrial plant while the near prostrate and highly indebted United States tries to crawl out of its virus induced ruin. Thanks to the worst US president in history, China can run its regimented and compliant working class while the United States attempts to rebuild its shattered economy that had begun life as a vibrant but hollowed out monetized service economy.
The United States has been going down hill for some time, but electing the the current fool may have finished us. Yesterday a legitimate reporter asked the President — “What do you say to Americans who are scared ?” The President's reply? “I say you are a terrible reporter.” As the Times reported, “The President has no tolerance for uncertainty.” He needs this thing to be over now. He will believe in any magic potion to get it done. The presidency was supposed to be the victory lap of his life. Instead, like much of the rest of his life, where he left bankruptcy and ruined contractors behind while he dined in gilded splendor, the country is sinking, sheltering in place, while it's reported that his supporters in Congress sold stocks at a profit based on secret briefings just before the danger of the coronavirus was made know to the public. Nothing is yet know of the Kushner family investments, but they always seem to get theirs.
Much as President Trump, and many others persist in thinking otherwise, the stock market is not the economy. The core of the market reflects production done outside the US by foreign workers who produce profits for a very small number of Americans. Given the President's great wealth, and the company he keeps, he and his apologists can be forgiven for not only not understanding this, but for insisting it is not correct.
When all is said and done, and the Coronavirus is finally conquered, it is likely that China will be the world's dominant power, with the only first class industrial plant in the world. We gave it to them. We may own it, but possession in nine-tenths of the law.
The United States will have saddled itself with trillions in debt, both from the pre virus profligacy and the post virus strategy of throwing hastily printed trillions at a population laid low. The US may have to have ceded to China all of her territorial claims. None of the other parties to those claims will likely have the power to dispute them. This means that China effectively owns the UN; there will no longer be juridical equality.
Weighed down by debt, the US will necessarily shrink its military, meaning that it will no longer be a counterweight to China in any theater. The extent of US commitments abroad will be made manifest as those commitments are withdrawn due to lack of US funds, just as once British commitments were withdrawn from League of Nations Mandates.
Europe will have shrunk to an entity that is little more than a small plantation owned by the Eurocrats. The Eurocrats never wanted a vibrant, united Europe; they just wanted power over their subjects. They will likely get it, though whether they will be able to tame the Middle Eastern refugees that will increasingly wash in is doubtful. Eventually they will toss out the Eurocrats. Fair is fair. Little if any of Europe's industries will be able to survive in the face of China's without the latter's forbearance, but the Eurocrats will have those failed industries to regulate anyway, which is all they and their partner labor unions are about.
These are all just possibilities, but very real ones. A periodic changing of the guard is inevitable. The enormous debt and hollowing out of the core in the face of the pandemic is as good a reason as any for it to happen now, just as an enormous debt, a hollowing out of the core, and a confrontation with Nazi Germany were the reason for the British Empire to leave the world stage in the thirties.
To see Donald Trump, the President of the United States, on the stage, contradicting some of the foremost epidemiologists in the world concerning Coronavirus treatment, is to realize that the country has sunk to the level of a third world power. We just happen to have a first world military protecting our crumbling infrastructure.
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