Many have suggested that after this upending moment in history, our former lives will be examined and found wanting. The priorities we once had will seem parochial, too small by half. Our mostly unbridled capitalism will look cruel, uninclusive, divisive. This could be the moment we see our failures, our weaknesses and choose a new path, a path that finally embraces a governance of, by and for the people, the regular Jills and Joes, the people that demonstrated during the crisis that they are not disposable, replaceable parts in a bigger, more substantial machine, but rather they are the irreplaceable component to a machine that has become antiquated.
It is time to repurpose the parts and create a better machine, one that doesn’t choke and sputter every ten years. One that can’t be compromised so easily, manipulated for gain, and who’s product is distributed widely, a shared resource that everyone can enjoy and participate in, a shared pride in what we have all created.
This vision of the future, and variations on the theme, are showing up as social media memes presented much more eloquently than my paraphrase. But the underlying message is that we are teachable. We can learn. This is the moment we get better. It’s this unique moment that will be a unique catalyst. From the ashes we shall rise.
In 1918 America lost approximately 675,000 lives to the Spanish Flu against a total population a bit over 100 million. A catastrophe of epic proportions, even compared to our current situation. Wave after wave visited its carnage.
The time was one of epic divide. The Robber Barons were still hanging on and the workers were still taking strides to organize, to gain some control of their economic lives. The economic disparity in the country was second only to now in our history and it produced labor unrest around the country that would frequently become violent.
Needless to say the flu made things exponentially worse. Ciities closed down, opened prematurely and closed again. The personal impact was severe as almost everyone was touched by this plague through the loss of a family member, friend, or co-worker. The sorrow was ubiquitous, the calls for help deafening. Unemployment soared and the workers died en masse. They couldn’t afford to hide. The choice between the virus and starvation was a real one.
Against this backdrop a war raged. Human cruelty had been cranked up, new technologies that could kill with greater efficiency and horror were developed, invisible gases that could suffocate or mutilate the body were unleashed. They were so horrific they would later be outlawed by those entrusted to make the rules of the games of war. A new highpoint in self-destructive capabilities had been achieved, one that would be eclipsed just a few decades later, but at the time seemed game-changing. Like everything in the new century, killing was also becoming mechanized, efficient and dehumanized.
Such moments are what art is made from. Munch painted a self portrait of his recovery from flu. T.S. Eliot wrote The Wasteland, his poem describing the result of years of war and illness. Yeats chimed in with The Second Coming and like Eliot he acknowledged the many and varied influences that led to this moment of an unknowable future. Katherine Anne Porter wrote “Pale Horse, Pale Rider” where the world is forever forward divided between before and after the flu, that they are somehow fundamentally different.
In such times art is never silent. Art is the court stenographer for an era, for a moment in time. It will chronicle it all, from the carnage of the virus itself, to the cruelty of man’s response, to the aspirational potential of the moment. For such things art is made, and 1918 was no different.
This was the moment that would be the udeniable turning point in the trajectory of human evolution, the paradigm shift that would be the correction, the balm that soothes what ails us. Whether the solution was rooted in a monotheistic vision of the healing or in the common humanity that would be revealed, the truth had been exposed and man would leap forward in an obvious and necessary course correction.
Needless to say, that isn’t what happened. We immediately entered a decade of the most extreme indulgence, the means to that end defended by men with guns that slaughtered for profit. We would then fall off an economic cliff driven by avarice and greed and as 25% of the population had no work, we inexorably slid toward our next global war. All that had taken less than 20 years. The next twenty would continue our now necessary dependence on war for our success, with Korea and Vietnam providing the grease for the complex’s wheels. The end of this twenty year span found the country divided over the issue and found leaders of the voice for peace bleeding out on balcony and kitchen floors. Another twenty years saw the rise of banking as a thoroughly unprincipled engine for growth, growth at any cost. It engendered a generation with not just a desire for growth and success, but one that made a fetish of obscene wealth. Television shows were produced to serve this gluttony, to legitimize it and encourage it. The ultra-rich were the winners, the ones that “got it”, and as the public wildly self-gratified to the images of opulence and excess, it simultaneously was being eliminated from the economic design. The trickle-down boondoggle had been introduced to a gullible population by a skilled ringmaster. The total arrest of working people’s economic fortunes had been installed and the re-direction of the economy’s spoils to the 1% had begun, and continues to this day unabated. The Banking Kracken had been released.
Twenty years later we had been under attack by people we had manipulated for our own purposes. The WTC suffered its first attack, the U.S.S. Cole was crippled, and finally the WTC crumbled to the ground in a deadly cloud. By 2008 we had been in two wars that seemed to have no end and an uncertain purpose and a debunked premise for over five years. At the end of this period we saw the economy suffer the same fate as the Twin Towers, lying on the ground gasping for air, and we saw the system saved, the machine protected to live to kill again. Nothing had changed. The common people were still not invited to the dance.
And then there was Trump.
So as we are inevitably drawn toward soaring words of aspiration and hope, forgive me if I view it with kindness but more substantially ennui. I feel no connection to this vision of rebirth, renewal and renovation. I have no lasting examples to shore up my dreams, no historical context to place them in. Our curve of violence and self-destruction is not flattening. The signs of its dormant vigilance appeared in Michigan, and the steps of the Virginia capitol, defiantly armed and dangerous. It was then supported by the President of the United States, making it more than a silly, poorly attended display of adolescent grievance and gave it credibility. Being threatened into submission was a legitimate tactic, again. On May 1st the Governor of Oklahoma decreed that shoppers must wear masks when in retail establishments. The altercations at stores were immediate and escalated to the brandishing of a weapon to defend the wielders right to infect others. On May 2nd the order was rescinded, replaced with a “suggestion” that the public wear masks, if they want to. Public health policy at gun point.
I enoy reading the many messages of hope, of musings on a global transformation or a national moment of self-awareness. With the nearly instant cleansing of the globe due to our collective inactivity, the results of this realignment of priorties are obvious and dramatic, and in the end will prove irrelevant. If the impulse to reinvent ourselves seems like it is resonating, radiating out across the globe, history teaches us that this type of radiation has a curiously short half life. It decays quickly into obscurity, once again taking its more comfortable position as a quixotic fringe, a noble goal that lacks obvious practicality. How do you make money at that?
Those that see a triumphant end to this horror, a response of soaring human achievement, will soon be seen as the child that tells their parents they are going to university to study art history. The motivation is lovely and noble, of course, but how will you live? It’s just not practical honey. It will be discouraged with prejudice and more fruitful pursuits will be encouraged, and very quickly the business schools will be jammed to the rafters and the art schools will be threatened by lack of funding.
But I’m just being negative.