Looming Disaster?

Death on a Pale Horse - Benjamin West 1796

Supposedly the economy is going to hell, zillions of people are out of work, out of money and out of luck. It hasn't impacted me, living in my suburban paradise like I am, other than I see the homeless encampments in downtown Portland incrementally enlarging on a daily basis.

Like I said, this COVID-19 lockdown is like the third major blow to the lower tier of American society. The first was Nixon opening trade with China. The second was computer automation of American industry. Now you can't even work as a waiter or a busboy because of the COVID-19 panic.

All the protests and riots that claim to be protesting racism and police brutality would have turned to dust if these people had anything better to do, but they don't, so we're going to see protests and riots going on indefinitely.

I was thinking we need a new religion, but given that we don't have anything substantial that everyone believes in (substantial as in a coherent set of beliefs), we invent things, like lining up to buy coffee at Starbucks, and now that we can't do that, we all wear masks.

I am afraid that if we don't come up with something better we might be going to war with China. That would be awful, as wars always are, but it could also put a lot of people to work and eliminate a lot of the petty bullshit that the bureaucrats have saddled us with. Besides, war is traditional. It's like the most traditional of all our traditions. Every society on Earth has a history of fighting wars. Shoot, that's what history is, a record of all the wars we've fought.

There are some things wrong with our society. The protesters have some legitimate complaints, but even if we magically fixed all of those problems, it's still not going to get this society moving. Okay, 'moving' might not be right word here. Do we even know what we want? Some people want peace and prosperity, they want a comfortable life, a house and family. Some people just want to be left alone. You can still take a tent and go set up camp in a National Forest. Kind of a rough life, but that might suit some people very well.

Some people have no idea what they want. Planning ahead is not something they do. That could be due to their personality or their circumstances. With no money, no family and no home, your options are kind of limited. With no plan, it is easy to get swept up in whatever the people around you are doing.

I don't think a war with China is in the offing, nor is a civil war. You need a demagogue to stand up and holler, and since hollering is now done via electronic social media, all hollering for war is going to be censored. But eventually someone is going to say Enough! and then things will get interesting, as in ancient-Chinese-curse interesting.

Update a couple hours later to make some corrections.