Ever nostalgic for the less divided times, I am hopeful that this crisis will bring Americans back to a more civil, even friendly conversation about what America really means to all of us. It's hard to see any light during such times but I'd like to see what good everyone here at PF thinks might come of this. It's difficult to frame our thoughts without some political tinge to them and that's okay, this is after all, a political forum. How about it?
What good will come of it? Almost the only good will be that another of the horseman's all to numerous arrows will have been jammed back into his quiver by modern medicine. Beyond that it isn't going to change who people are and how and more importantly why they think what they do.
What if people would realize that escaping the rate race of work, work work, shop, shop, shop, mostly buying stuff they don't need, is not that bad? One can dream. Or, maybe, that's exactly what Trump is afraid of, which is why he wants people go back to the rat race asap.
If it ends up helping all of us realize that what is important is PEOPLE and not PROFITS or PRODUCTS it will have gone some way towards finding common ground on which to have that civil conversation.
Perhaps you are right about the difficulty of changing people. I hope not. I don't think America will remain a great country if people's value is defined by who they hate, if progress is defined by how badly we can make our political opponents look, and if what we wish were true replaces what is true. We cannot govern by prejudice and accusation.
If people can figure out we are being herded, and a behavioral change is needed, it will work out. Of course we are clueless as to what behavior we are supposed to conduct, and can’t make the first move to create relevant discussion to equitably determine it, so herding may turn into culling.
The silver lining I see is trump exposing himself more than he has in the past. There's got to be a fringe percentage of trumpers out there who are realizing for the first time what a total duffus he is which will have an impact on the upcoming election.
I love all the talk of peace, love and harmony across the political spectrum. But I think of us all united by a rubber band, and the Dems keep stretching it further and further to the left. That results in stress. And eventually, the rubber band will break.
This could make us all more mindful about the need for preparedness, individually and as a nation. Owing to the nature of this virus, all of our collective efforts thus far are essentially a practical expression of the value we place on the lives of our Parents and Grandparents and those already afflicted. It is love in the midst of war.
The silver lining I'm already seeing is happening in my small community. The amount of togetherness and helpfulness by everyone here has been heartwarming. We've always been a fairly supportive community but watching folks come together to help one another during this crisis has been great. We have a few Facebook groups for our community and they are filled with folks asking if anyone needs anything at all during their day to day lives. It was the community itself that pressured the local grocery stores to implement senior shopping hours to help our senior citizens. Many people are riding to the store for the elderly to shop for them so they don't have to leave home. We even had a guy buy up a large truckload of toilet paper at Costco that at first enraged everyone. Then the community realized he wasn't buying it for himself, he bought a large amount because he saw that stores were running out all over the place and he gives them to families for free. He even drives them to your house and drops it off for you if you ask on the Facebook page. And pretty much every day I read a post about someone here thanking a random stranger in line behind them who bought all of their groceries for them. We just had a snow storm and folks were volunteering their time to run around and clear driveways free of charge. Many of whom are folks whose full time job is snow removal and they aren't charging people because they know a lot of folks don't have jobs right now. This isn't surprising based on the type of community we have here but hopefully these sorts of things can continue throughout the country going forward. I am cautiously optimistic though....I know this country and we can be very short sighted. We may come together during a time of crisis but unfortunately I see us going right back to ripping each other apart once this is all over. America is facing a very deep divide on a baseline ideological level right now and I don't know if a pandemic that makes us forget that for the time being will make us forget that in the long run.
Sorry, I look at things a bit differently. A person's values are defined not by whom they hate but by what they love, care for, respect and cherish. Hate is an instinctive response to those who attack those things.
I think it will come down to our take on economics. I believe the conventional wisdom is in the Friedman (neoliberal) camp and highly destructive. Psychologically the conventional economic wisdom goes against our nature or we’ve conformed ourselves to a model at odds with our nature. Our current model highlights and promotes our divisions and I’d go as far to say relishes in them. Highly destructive. I’m not talking Capitalism v. something else but rather our incredibly poor view of Capitalism and our species in which we’ve conformed to over the past four decades. We’re better than this model.
I think the infected metro populations are going to end up further resenting the relatively uninfected rural areas even more after all this. Heres to hoping Im wrong.
Too many people try not to find common ground. Too many people prefer to attack people instead of ideas. We are divided by this. One can begin by assuming that most Americans love and care for this country. Where we are falling short is respecting those with which we share this country. Hate is an emotion.
A bit of that friction is starting where I live now. We are a very rural community within a very rural state and the local folks around here have been imploring the Governor to restrict travel from the only major city here because that's where most of the cases are obviously. They have been staunch advocates of even completely closing our state border off for the time being as well. The friction is actually coming from the rural community more so than the urban one. They're the ones living on top of one another spreading this everywhere, us folks out here are "socially distant" from one another by our default way of life. The locals here don't really want the city folks leaving their infected city and bringing that virus out to the countryside with them. Can't say I necessarily blame them...We don't have anywhere near the medical facilities of even normal American rural communities. An outbreak here would devastate this place from a medical standpoint and we simply cannot afford for that many people to get sick. I don't want to sound harsh but we are pretty much the hub of the most beautiful natural landscape in the northern hemisphere that I know folks want to see and visit but everybody needs to seriously stay the hell away from us right now....