Tuesday Talk*: Will This Change EVERYTHING?!?

Whether it’s the Bernie bros arguing how the coronavirus proves we need his Medicare4All, or the fact that poor people are still poor even in a pandemic, and rich people get to use their money to obtain things, from toilet paper and masks to tests, there is much talk about how this pandemic will change everything.

Indeed, in one of the more unhelpful op-eds published by the New York Times, Viet Thanh Nguyen raises “ideas that won’t survive the coronavirus,” such as American Exceptionalism. After all, is there anything more worthy of discussion as people are dying than what a terrible nation this is?

If anything good emerges out of this period, it might be an awakening to the pre-existing conditions of our body politic. We were not as healthy as we thought we were. The biological virus afflicting individuals is also a social virus. Its symptoms — inequality, callousness, selfishness and a profit motive that undervalues human life and overvalues commodities — were for too long masked by the hearty good cheer of American exceptionalism, the ruddiness of someone a few steps away from a heart attack.

Is this it? Is America done, over, kaput? Are we the most awful country ever, a cesspool of “inequality, callousness, selfishness” that’s spiraling down the toilet bowl of capitalism?

At the same time, our world has gone online, from classes to medical consultations, making it far easier to reach out even if it means a massive loss of quality, whether of education or care. Ever try palpating a stomach over the internet?

Will our children, if such things happen in the future given that social distancing may make procreation more difficult, wear masks from infancy? Will schools be handing out A’s to all students, or will grades be reduced to pass/fail? Will law graduates take the bar or be handed a free pass, even if 50% of them aren’t competent enough to manage a pedestrian test of basic legal knowledge?

Will things change? What? How? Will this pandemic reduce us to the life of mediocrity and excuses for failure that have been held out as Utopia? Will the curse of personal responsibility, and success or failure, finally be vanquished as we all sit alone in our rooms pretending to be witty on the internet?

*Tuesday Talk rules apply.