The Lasting Effects of the Recent Unpleasantness

We have flattened the curve and weathered the storm.  The end is in sight.  Sadly,  many have died while the rest of us reassess the future, which will be indelibly altered.      

Much of the novelty of shopping at Costco on a Saturday afternoon was the liberal sampling the obscure new products which were  hawked by sometimes animated attendants. Practiced freeloaders could fill out an entire lunch by carefully planning their shopping routes from freebie stand to freebie stand. Always something different, always pretty good eating for diligent grazers.  Alas,  it all disappeared overnight as the Corona Virus swept across the intelligent world.  Gone too, are salad bars and  tasting rooms everywhere — banished for fear of spreading the deadly virus via droplets of someone else’s disease, which could fall upon the lettuce or a radish.  The salad bar will never come back.  How long has the handshake hello been the accepted formal greeting between two people of any rank? Well, no longer.  How about hugs?  Hugs of greeting, of compassion, of joy.   All gone!

I am truly angry that for a second time in my lifetime,  and our national life; that an unconscionable|outside force was able to so profoundly affect our habits and mores — first,  Nine Eleven, now this, a Black Swan of such monumental proportions and reach that our country will have to go viral to re-invent itself, in a hurry.           

The Corona Virus of 2019  came along at precisely the  right time to camouflage growing societal mischief of the ever-correct Progressive  Left.  Some day soon,  the government’s temporary (and abusive)  Covid-19 panic strictures  will be replaced by a stiffer, stronger bureaucracy.  Across the nation there is deep resentment at the loss of future  freedoms,  serendipitous coincidence has been bred out of our society; the game is fixed, it has been renamed “woke.”  There seems to be no spontaneity left, we all suffer some degree of Virus fatigue.  Still, this is a strong economy — we see signs of robust recovery everywhere, despite a year of lassitude and what Uncle Sam will dream up to derail it.   

The pandemic has blown-up real estate prices all over  California and America.  The booming housing  market is but one example.   Inflation is coming – big inflation.  Government has thrown hundreds of billions of dollars at a solution, a moving target, and that means the stock market will continue to astound.  

The pandemic will  leave a stain of regret in each one of us.  Many rich nuggets of human understanding are lost with the mandatory wearing of facial underwear.              

One result is the failure of the ability to read the subtle signs and signals of the other person, the one we are preaching to— we lose this ability to read  and understand someone else’s reckoning of ourselves.  Without human contact there can be no lucky coincidences which have steered the course of history.  Artificial rules and regulations of the so-called. “woke” administration are only reactions, not thoughtful crafting of useful legislation. 

On the bright side, perhaps the “social distancing” we have recently been bludgeoned with has taught us to be more mindful our situations and surroundings, perhaps it’s a good thing.  It’s not the proactive anti-virus you thought  it was, no, it’s a long overdue excuse to avoid mouth breathing oafs who constantly peer over our shoulder and offer unwanted advice on just about everything.  That’s forward progress of civilization.  That’s a good thing, indeed.  Perhaps the eggs of the Black Swan portend a bright future.