Let's talk about the politics of this brave new world.
What will the left learn from this?
Nothing. They never learn.
Will The Public Change Its Views?
The American public is largely right-of-center. I would say the numbers are 55% right, 45% left. For a number of reasons, the voting doesn't turn out that way, but in terms of values, this is what I see time and again in terms of fundamental values. Will this change?
Believe it or not, both ideological sides are terrified the public has gone the other way. Neither is correct. That said, the left has more to worry about.
Trust in Government. The right frets that people will now look to government for solutions. That's wrong, though. The government has screwed this up so badly that no one is happy with them. The response has been chaotic and incompetent. Decisions were made, criticized, reversed, criticized and abandoned. Medical equipment was lacking, broken and ineffective. Quarantines came too late and a poor case was made for them. Between Trump and the Democrats, there has been constant whining and name calling. The shutdown orders have been bizarre. Who is essential? Who the hell knows! What's legal? Who the hell knows! The bailout is a mess. Congress can't get out of its own way. Bill Maher actually pointed out that the Democrats have been so gloom and doom that they've handed Trump the high ground. That's true. And interestingly, a study of Twitter found that the vast majority of people have kept a really good humor during this period... which runs counter to how the Democrats are acting, showing the public isn't believing them.
No one trusts the government.
No one trusts the experts anymore either. Trust in experts is the liberal sneak-totalitarianism, but it's failing here because the experts have accurately predicted nothing, ludicrously-wrongly predicted everything, and have no idea how to solve anything except to say get used to the new normal. No one wants to hear that. Of course estimating that 40,000,000 20,000,000 1,000,000 500,000 150,000 80,000 60,000 Americans will die didn't help either. Nor did not knowing the symptoms. Even worse, the Democrats are now tearing the experts apart for political reasons, which has freed the drones to hate the experts who are ruining their lives, and even now people are only listening to the experts they like and only the things they say the people agree with.
Trust in authority is weaker than ever.
So will we shift right? Not in a general sense, but to a degree. Take the election...
The Election. Elections are hard to call, but the left definitely hurt themselves. For one thing, they've made Trump look like a genius. They attacked everything Trump said would work only to be proven wrong and do an about face a few days later. If you make Trump look smart, then you're a fool. They have been so nasty too, at a time of crisis no less, that they are leaving a disturbing taste in people's mouths. Lindsey Graham made the first solid attack on this basis today, saying Pelosi hates Trump to the point of hurting our nation. All of that hurts them, as have missteps in blocking the stimulus package.
Add in that the virus deprived the Democrats of all the free PR of the election campaign, that Joe Biden looks even dumber than ever, and that the left is just not lining up behind him and things do actually look ugly for the left at the moment. And in trying to make this virus about blacks, they will alienate the very white voters they need in swing states who lost their jobs or were scared to death. So, I would say Trump's odds have improved.
But elections are temporary. The real question is, will this change people's views on the issues? For that, let's look at the specific issues.
Prison Elimination. The left has been trying to shut down prisons for some time, with considerable recent success. This virus gave them the perfect moment too to open the doors and let out all the minor convicts. But then they lamented the death of a pedophile in prison. Bad choice. And a killer they let loose in Florida immediately killed someone when released. Bad choice. And they laughed at Harvey Weinstein getting covid, a total undercutting of their own argument. The public wasn't thrilled with prison reform as evidenced by the lack of clamor for these releases, and how it played out killed the movement. Prison reform looks dead.
Welfare/Guaranteed Minimum Income. Will people become dependent on the government for money? Hardly. The government's efforts (at the state and federal level) have been such a cluster-fudge that no one views the government as a reliable way to make a living. No one qualifies for unemployment. Those that do still aren't getting their checks. And the system is broke. Anyone who sees this as a new way to remake society is smoking crack. Perhaps even worse, the people who have gotten their $1200 checks have not been grateful for the "gift," they've pretty much seen it as "finally getting something back." That's not an attitude that shows any positivity toward government largess... it's an argument to stop taking as much in the first place.
But there won't be jobs! We'll see. I suspect the economy will rebound much faster than people think, and even those who are hurt, they won't see a piddly, late government check as the solution. They will want jobs. Is this enough for the public to move right? Possibly. It is for sure, though, that there will be no move to the left.
It's All Racist! This argument has worked in terms of scaring blacks into staying on the reservation. It's been so effective they are trying it on Hispanics now... first major article today. But this is just preaching to the choir and the left knows it. I don't even see the Democrats pushing some sort of fake race bill to protect blacks to try to exploit it. That tells me it's not resonating with whites. And that makes sense. They did their best to scare whites and those whites will not be sympathetic to the diminishment of their fear in favor of others' fear. No change with the public.
Gurl Power! The feminists have tried to exploit this by screaming about a wave of domestic violence and Trump being rude to delicate female reporters. Neither has gotten any traction. We know this because there's zero follow up by the Democrats and little airplay. Add in the left sweeping Biden's alleged sexual assault under the carpet and feminism seems like an issue to be ignored. In fact, perhaps the biggest piece of evidence is that despite the millions of parents who are currently home schooling (and the healthy market in hilarious memes for how much they supposedly hate it) there has been zero support for paying K-12 teachers (most all women) more. All of this confirms the trend of the public just not caring about "women's issues."
As an aside, Yahoo did something interesting with sports last month. They ran contests to vote on the best teams in each sports league's history (e.g. NFL, NBA, MLB, etc.). Looking at the number of votes gave a great indication of the level of interest the public has in each sport. The best women's sports came in far below every male league, and did so on the order of 1/10 of the number of votes. This is despite decades of Title IX and the feminist media pushing the "female sports are loved" narrative.
The Environment. Environmentalists have been thrilled with the changes: cleaner air in China, pollution down 44% in India, animals returning to abandoned areas, clean water in Venice. They think this will help the bees. They haven't caught on to the fish thing I mentioned last time yet for some reason. Either way, these are all admittedly good things... but terrible for their cause.
Why? They think people will see the cleaner planet and say, "Yay, let's fight for more!" But the reality will be different. People will see the earth healing itself in a week and will say, "That was fast. I guess pollution is not really as deep a problem as we've been told." That's what the public did when the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act worked... they decided that was good enough.
Think about global warming too. If temperatures don't noticeably drop this year, then the whole argument that economic activity creates warming will be seen as a fraud. But if they do drop, then people will think it's easy to fix... or has been fixed. Shouldn't we have reversed almost all of mankind's warming in the past month? Why not? Good luck explaining that! Moreover, people will have seen the extreme cost of what it takes to do this, i.e. what the environmentalists want, and the lack of benefits to them. That will make them less likely to see that as an acceptable fix now. Even worse, notice where the pollution improved. There are no vanishing clouds of pollution over the US... just China and India. That tells people we already have done a great job of cleaning up here, so they will ask why we need to do more? This was a trap for environmentalists and will set them back generations.
Even the anti-plastic campaign, which was on the verge of victory-level social acceptance is about to implode as people now turn to plastics to improve health and safety, e.g. visors and barriers and plastic test kits and devices that facilitate "no-touch" shopping.
Hard shift right.
Peaceniks. The out-of-commissioning of the aircraft carrier and China's provocative moves in the Pacific combined with the fear that China is engaging in chemical/biological research and lied through its teeth to let the world be infected has scared people enough that there will be no desire to make peace. People felt vulnerable. They will want strength so they never feel that way again. Shift to the right.
Unionists. There have been steady attacks on Amazon and then on grocery stores for keeping their workers working despite the risks. "They need unions to protect them in the future!" Yeah, except neither job actually seems hazardous and we needed Amazon and the grocery stores to keep us alive, so any threat to cut those lines and hinder them will not be taken well. Besides, both sets of companies seemed to act responsibly. Look for this to have hardened views against unions as the public will not want to be held up by unionists in a crisis. This play was a mistake. Heck, Democratic governors didn't even chastise these companies.
I think these are all long term changes. This current generation will always be colored by what they saw during this period and the above was it. The left tried to scare them, would not stop whining, tried to make this political to exploit it, and pushed all kinds of things that felt wrong to the public. The public's reaction will be to distrust their policies even more.
So how does it all end?
Forget the rallies. Political rallies never change anything. They come after the change has happened. What changes the world is spontaneous disobedience.
Look to the fall of communism. What killed communism was nothing political. It was average people deciding en mass that they simply weren't going to follow the rules anymore. So they left their homes and did things that were forbidden. In so doing, others joined them spontaneously and their sheer numbers overwhelmed the authorities (like with speeders) and suddenly the system collapsed. This is how it's happened throughout history in almost every country and with every instance of true social change. Bad regimes collapse when normal people suddenly decide to go to the beach.
Now, in this case, there is an interest caveat. American politicians are generally better than their oppressive counterparts and they keep their fingers on the public's pulse. Thus they know how to give just enough freedom to prevent the rebellion. Let the guy going 5 over go and focus on the big speeders... keep the system alive. It's the same here: the lockdown is phony. Colorado is a good example of this. We are under a cower under the bed order. Yet, I can go anywhere and do anything without fear. Really, the only people being held prisoner are hair dressers, dentists, and a few small businesses. Everything else is open. I went to the park today to walk the track with over a hundred other people. Grocery stores are hoppin'. The lines at McDonalds are long. The gun stores are packed, as are the liquor stores. Got my oil changed. Neighbor bought a car. We are under lockdown, but there is no lockdown.
In Texas and Florida, they opened the beaches because those governors knew that if they didn't, crowds would soon appear and the whole lockdown would collapse. So now the beaches are open. The parks are next. Colorado initially closed the liquor stores and pot shops until people growled... then the governor made them essential. Michigan's governor seems to be the only one with a tin ear and it will cost her. Show me a celebrity in California who isn't posing out for exercise or on a drive or getting groceries or doing a photo shoot. All of this is for show, so it will end when people get tired of the pretending, and at that point the governors are going to declare the crisis magically over.
That's how this one ends.
Thoughts?
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