Chris

Eugene, Oregon

Actually, The Crisis seems so unreal, that we don't have much testimony to offer.  We're hunkering down on a sunny spring day, fearing everyone for no empirically confirmable reason.  Water the peas, surf the net, wait.  Tomorrow: same.  Looking forward to the weekend?  Same.  Maybe as things progress (if that's the word), we can offer some testimony from Oregon.  

The generation that lived through rationing is small and very old.  Rationing will be a shock, when it arrives for us.  This disease is perhaps an overture, a preface, for events to come.  And maybe corona will have salutary effect on a numb population, helping us shed our guilt over not achieving The American Dream, which has been the hopeless pursuit of Americans ever since the glory days of the 1960s and '70s.  That is, having received our dueling scar, we may be ready to assume a more pertinent and appropriate set of priorities and expectations.

A greater worry than personal vulnerability to disease (and I am 65) is the expectation of a wounded America going into another phony election.  There's already a lot of frustration in this country, and the economic damage and general disappointment will swell the homeless, add street crime, motivate evil tycoons to exploit in still deeper and more damaging ways, and cause governments to seek funds in surprising and creative ways (taxes being merely one option).

More important than whether we "make it through this" personally or not, is the changed character of the people generally.  Wisdom from valuable experience, the wake-up call, an observable tendency for neighbors to cooperate and for friends to reach out and care, possibly setting up future group formation and interdependence, will certainly be among the messy pile of results.  Will respect for the awesome healing power of the Central Government lead to more of a fuhrer mentality?  Or will the government's failure to protect us combine with many other failings (such as the gagful choice between Biden and Trump) to make "leaders" irrelevant?  And what will all the new desperation do to society?  Can we truly heal up?  Or will this be a punch that prepares us for a KO up the road?