ThinkCivics News
Join ThinkCivics+
  • Culture & Society
  • Economy
  • Health
  • US News
  • Faith
  • Science & Tech
  • World News
No Result
View All Result
ThinkCivics News
  • Culture & Society
  • Economy
  • Health
  • US News
  • Faith
  • Science & Tech
  • World News
Join ThinkCivics+
No Result
View All Result
ThinkCivics News
Join TC+
Home Culture & Society

There Will Be No Return to ‘Normal’

ThinkCivics Newswire by ThinkCivics Newswire
October 3, 2021
in Culture & Society
Reading Time: 4 mins read
0
0
There Will Be No Return to ‘Normal’

The single element that Canadians most resent about Americans’ views toward their northern neighbor may be the conviction in the United States that Canadians are just like us. Last month, in the wake of a Canadian national election that Americans all but ignored, it is time to turn the tables — and to say, in oversimplification, that in a very important aspect Americans are just like Canadians.

Listen for just a moment to the columnist Robyn Urback, who in the day after Justin Trudeau’s return to office wrote this in the Globe and Mail newspaper about her country:

“Canada in 2021 is not normal. The country has endured a type of collective trauma; a disruption so thorough and profound that not a single person has remained unaffected. … Every single Canadian has lost something: a job, a loved one, a connection with friends, a routine, a sense of security, or a belief that, in the end, our leaders are capable and willing to make the tough choices to keep us safe.”

Change a word or two and that applies to our own predicament today. The United States is not normal. The country has endured a type of collective trauma.

In the past century, the United States has lived through several hinges of history.

World War II changed the role of women in American life, transformed the nation into a global superpower, created a baby boom and a mass consumer culture and — no one says everything changes — failed to redeem the “Double V” victory that the Pittsburgh Courier, the indispensable Black newspaper, yearned for: broad victory for freedom overseas and broad freedom at home.

The combination of the Vietnam era, the youth rebellion and the Watergate scandal produced a national skepticism of authority and institutions that we live with today. Though the Trump rebellion might be ascribed by historians to the age of disruption begun in the high-tech age, do not forget that the 45th president was born in the first year of the baby boom, and that he ingested that sense of rebellion in his youth.

The implications of the COVID-19 virus cannot be overstated. By month’s end, the American death toll may reach 700,000, about 12% more than in the Civil War, the deadliest conflict in our history.

The Civil War split the country, shattered families, altered economic relationships and created a new kind of politics that arguably dominated American politics for a century. (It was only in the late 1960s that there were cracks in the Democratic Solid South, an immutable force in politics that assisted military mobilization in the years leading to World War II but resisted racial integration in the years following World War II.)

In similar fashion, the virus split the country, shattered families, altered economic relationships and created, or at least amplified, a new kind of politics.

The Spanish Flu of 1918-1919 was, in terms of death rates, more deadly than COVID-19. But its cultural and political implications were far less.

That earlier pandemic occurred in a far different country, less tied by means of communication, less aware of the sweep of the disease. And the flu was less politicized; the World War I-era pandemic barely rated a mention in the last two scholarly biographies of Woodrow Wilson, the president at the time. He never once mentioned it in public. It is a disgraceful record, earning Wilson the opprobrium of Tevi Troy, former deputy secretary of Health and Human Services in the George W. Bush administration and onetime CEO of the American Health Policy Institute, who in his “Shall We Wake the President: Two Centuries of Disaster Management from the Oval Office,” considered Wilson the country’s worst president in a disaster.

But here’s the difference, or rather the indifference: The American response to the Spanish Flu was nonpartisan. The sitting president neglected to address it (and may have hastened its passage through the population by continuing troop mobilizations when they may no longer have been necessary) but did not politicize it.

The president who followed (Warren G. Harding) may have subliminally invoked the pandemic when he spoke of a “return to normalcy” — a return to a world without war or pandemic — but he didn’t make flu response an issue.

Americans were devastated by the flu. But they were not divided by it.

Today our politics are contaminated by the coronavirus, and so is our everyday culture.

The wearing of masks, the acceptance of medical warnings, even the willingness to take a vaccine that was produced in large part by the determination of Donald Trump to create one at warp speed — all of these are political indicators.

Since 1942, with the introduction of a book bearing that title, Americans have known the phrase “You are what you eat.” Today we are — Republican or Democrat — what we wear on your face, or don’t.

Now to the question of whether we ever will return to “normal.”

Mr. Harding argued that there was an American normal, but of course he could not replicate in the third decade of the 20th century what had been destroyed in brutal wartime carnage in the second decade.

Even with a prime minister bearing the same surname as a previous prime minister (Mr. Trudeau’s father, who held the position from 1968 to 1979 and 1980 to 1984), Canada isn’t returning to an earlier era. Mr. Trudeau’s leadership opponent, the Conservative Party’s Erin O’Toole, knew he couldn’t hearken back to an earlier age; he broke with party orthodoxy on climate change, abortion and LGBTQ rights.

We will not return to a pre-COVID-19 world. We won’t go to the office the way we used to, we won’t eat in restaurants the way we used to, we won’t travel the way we used to, we won’t have the comforting sense of national health and well-being that we didn’t appreciate before and now yearn for.

But it is important that we understand what we are experiencing.

Just as COVID was not the flu medically, our experience with this disease is not like the experiences of our predecessors. COVID-19 is a medical marker in the human story, to be sure.

But it is a historical turning point, too. All those cellphone pictures of people in masks will be the 21st-century equivalent of Brownie-camera snaps from 1945 of gatherings of people in uniform. They are time stamps, evidence of a transformative moment.

This article was originally published in the Post Gazette. Read the original article.

ThinkCivics Newswire

ThinkCivics researches, examines, and reports on issues that matter most. We deliver explanative, fearless, and insightful analysis for public consumption.

thinkcivics.com
Tags: Covid-19Normalsociety
<

Related Posts

Nonprofit organization exposed for  secretly pushing gender ideology on your young children: report

Nonprofit organization exposed for secretly pushing gender ideology on your young children: report

August 11, 2022
‘Slap in the face’: Pro-life Americans urged to boycott this major retailer

‘Slap in the face’: Pro-life Americans urged to boycott this major retailer

August 10, 2022

Teachers Union President Randi Weingarten Claims Conservatives The Enemy Of Educators

August 10, 2022

Watch: School board member admits to there being a ‘woke’ sleeper cell working with school districts

August 8, 2022
Load More
Next Post
Examining The Democrats’ Determination to Vaccinate Us All

Examining The Democrats' Determination to Vaccinate Us All

Report: COVID vaccine antibody levels drop ‘nearly 10-fold’ after about six months

Report: COVID vaccine antibody levels drop 'nearly 10-fold' after about six months

EXCLUSIVE: Maj Gen Ordered 50+ Evacuees Off One of Last Flights out of Kabul to Make Room for Taliban Souvenir

EXCLUSIVE: Maj Gen Ordered 50+ Evacuees Off One of Last Flights out of Kabul to Make Room for Taliban Souvenir

TODAY'S TOP STORIES

  • CDC Admits Scary Truths About Vaccine

    CDC Admits Scary Truths About Vaccine

    3 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Doorbell camera catches deliveryman’s unfiltered response to an Anti-Biden doormat and it’s perfect

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • New Details About the Mar-a-Lago Raid Are Truly Stunning, If True

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • LEAKED: Items Taken in Trump Raid Revealed

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • ‘Get her!’: Woman brings traffic to a halt starting a fight, then tries running away before eating pavement

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0

‘Preserve Your Documents’: McCarthy Threatens AG Merrick Garland With Investigation After FBI Raid Of Trump’s Home

by The Political Insider
August 10, 2022
0
‘Preserve Your Documents’: McCarthy Threatens AG Merrick Garland With Investigation After FBI Raid Of Trump’s Home
National Security

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, expressing frustration with yesterday’s FBI raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, sent a...

Read more

‘Civil War’ trending on Twitter after FBI raids Trump’s Mar-A-Lago

by ThinkCivics Newswire
August 9, 2022
0
National Security

FBI agents raided former President Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla. on Monday night. Among the wide ranging reactions from...

Read more

‘Some Third World Bulls***’ – Dan Bongino Goes Ballistic On Fox News Over FBI Raid of Trump’s Home

by The Political Insider
August 9, 2022
0
‘Some Third World Bulls***’ – Dan Bongino Goes Ballistic On Fox News Over FBI Raid of Trump’s Home
National Security

Fox News weekend host Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent, unleashed his anger over the FBI raid of former...

Read more

‘What Are Y’all Doing?’: Cruz Scorches FBI Director for Targeting Patriotic Symbols

by ThinkCivics Newswire
August 4, 2022
0
‘What Are Y’all Doing?’: Cruz Scorches FBI Director for Targeting Patriotic Symbols
National Security

In Thursday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with FBI Director Christopher Wray, Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz took Wray to task...

Read more
Joe Biden Accidentally Stumbles Upon the Truth About the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’
Economy

Joe Biden Accidentally Stumbles Upon the Truth About the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’

by RedState
August 10, 2022
0

Perhaps because they know kitchen table issues like the economy and inflation are typically the top priorities for voters come...

Read more
The 50 Most Radical Policies In ‘Inflation Reduction’ Act
Economy

The 50 Most Radical Policies In ‘Inflation Reduction’ Act

by ThinkCivics News Staff
August 8, 2022
0

Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) has laid out the 50 most radical policies in the Inflation Reduction Act. Banks, the chairman...

Read more
Here’s the Truth About What ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ Will Do
Economy

Here’s the Truth About What ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ Will Do

by The Daily Signal
August 7, 2022
0

As Senate Democrats achieve their goal of jamming  through the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, reality is becoming clear: The bill...

Read more
Sen. Kennedy Speaks for All of Us as He Takes Apart Dems for Passing Manchin-Schumer Bill
Economy

Sen. Kennedy Speaks for All of Us as He Takes Apart Dems for Passing Manchin-Schumer Bill

by RedState
August 7, 2022
0

It’s hard to believe that the Democrats passed a huge tax and spend bill in the middle of a recession....

Read more
Facebook Twitter RSS

Brilliantly

SAFE!

thinkcivics.com

Content & Links

Verified by Sur.ly

2022

Recent News

  • World Economic Forum Calls For Merging Of Human And AI Intel To Censor “Hate Speech” & “Misinformation”
  • ‘You done lost your mind’: Porch pirate learns what happens when you try stealing from a gun owner
  • LEAKED: Items Taken in Trump Raid Revealed

Category

  • Culture & Society
  • Economy
  • Editorials
  • Education
  • Elections
  • Energy
  • Environment
  • Faith
  • Health
  • Immigration
  • Military
  • National Security
  • Politics
  • Science & Tech
  • US News
  • Videos
  • World News

© 2022 ThinkCivics Media. All Rights Reserved.

  • Login
  • Sign Up
  • Cart
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • About
  • Store
  • Contact Us
  • Join
  • Contribute

© 2022 ThinkCivics Media. All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

OR

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.