"What else do we forget about the pandemic? We forget how mesmerised we were as nature rebounded, how clean the air was in the absence of industrial scale human activity. We forget that carbon emissions fell at the sort of pace required to avoid cataclysmic climate change. We forget that no-strings cash payments saw child poverty in America plunge to record lows, that the UK slashed homelessness with schemes that found homes for people sleeping on the street.
We forget that there really was a sense of global solidarity, that the reflection demanded by a pandemic opened up spaces for us to consider truly radical and permanent change. Remember build back better? There really was a sense that the coronavirus, as we all knew it then, could be the catalyst for a better word.
It couldn’t last because of capitalism. This isn’t some glib statement, it is literally why such promises could never be fulfilled. Because such promises required redistribution and structural shifts to economies that billionaires don’t want shifting."
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Oh certainly there was a brief window for even me where yeah maybe something better can come from this. But then constantly being surrounded by people refusing to mask, masking badly, masking incorrectly, finding any excuse they could to slip the mask off to breathe or sneeze or whatever. And it's like people here in Canada, and america have no desire to actually fucking modify their lifestyle even superficially to accommodate better future outcomes of others.
I understand.
But a gentle reminder that this disappointment in other people is also a slippery slope to misantropic thinking that got hold of at least me when we got to the vaccine phase and so many people were left behind. This is where I faced the choice of whether to continue being angry and slipping down that path or going all in on understanding even this from a Marxist pov. I am glad I ended up the latter.
Because the media did highlight only the most crass or absurd behaviours, the worst of us. And the powers that be really put in the work in creating an environment of suspicion and doubt. The entire thing got neoliberally framed as individualism and Chinas zero covid was demonized from day one, with many horror stories to boot. Then roll in the Ukraine war and libs here were standing in lines for iodine pills with their covids and naked faces, fearing nuclear war. It's all very absurd, but the consent manufacturing was very effective. In our risk culture people have put their ontological safety in to the hands of experts who mostly told them it's fine.
I used to be very upset with them, but these days I am looking at this and things like the anti-vax movement and trying to understand how we got here.
Because the early solidarity was there I feel there is no reason why it would not rise again. Even the post is a bit doomer about that, but we have previous examples of this like from hurricane Katrina where this also happened. The media spin that eroded that solidarity is fairly well documented.