The shape of things to come

[SinisterPants]

It's time to start thinking long-term (or at least past November).

Everything has changed, and even as we re-open, there will be no "new normal".

The nature of cities is going to fundamentally change for a long time. Music festivals, pro sports, great bookstores and restaurants are never going to be the same, the things that make cities desirable to many might never return.

Online education and medicine are probably going to be primary delivery systems. Food production and processing will change forever. Ways of interacting and romancing each other will change in ways we can't even predict.

The world economy right now is basically playing with monopoly money, but that's completely unsustainable (cf. Wiemar republic). Long-distance travel will be both rarer and much more expensive.

These are just a few things that you don't need a crystal ball to predict. It's gonna be brutal hard the next few years, no matter what. But it doesn't have to be all bad.

We could be heading for a more distributed, local, and egalitarian way of life. A rebirth of local music and art, a new respect for both nature and each other. Or we could be heading for the unending boot stomping on your face of neo-fascism.

I can't see the future, but I can see what's in front of my face. Progressives might finally have a lever big enough to move the world. Or we might end up abject slaves to Evil Corp (tm).

The choice, more than it's been in a very long time, is ours.

[Arthur_Frain]

1. I've been opining for quite some time now that this election...

will be notable due because there will be a “before” and “after” which will leave America either far more authoritarian or far more socialist, essentially unrecognizable from the America I grew up in.

The pandemic, or more precisely its fallout, only seems to make that more inevitable.

[SinisterPants]

3. I really believe that Covid-19...

will be an even sharper "before and after" than 9/11.

[appalachiablue]

4. "It's either Hitler or FDR" as one poster recently

wrote.

This election and pandemic are highlighting even more the course of democracy and future society.

SEE:

The Coming Greater Depression of the 2020s: Economist Nouriel Roubini
https://democraticunderground.com/1016254290

[napi21]

2. I hope the DTers recognize just how much he has failed when they compare HIM to Cuomo

daily briefings. One has pretty much complete cooperation of their citizens, while the other spends his briefings patting himself on the back & campaigning. If it wasn't for the Governors & Mayors in the 50 States, We'd be in total disaster with hundreds of thousands more DEAD!

[First Speaker]

5. Maybe. The blunt fact is, *no one knows* WTF the world will be like...

...when this nightmare is over. I only know that the Consensus Wisdom will be wrong, because it always is. None of the major events of my lifetime were foreseen by the pundit class before they happened. It might work out the way you say--less travel, more egalitarianism, etc. Or, maybe, when the virus finally passes--whenever that is--there'll be a massive pent-up demand for, say, air travel and foreign tourism that will sweep over all objections like a wave. Maybe there'll be a new New Deal which will arise out of this economic debacle. Or there might be a new super-austerity that will result in a third of the country locked into extreme poverty and constantly on the brink of homelessness and hopelessness. Maybe our politics will get less vicious and we'll enter a new Era Of (Relative) Good Feelings. Or else everything will get so brutal that the whole structure collapses like a house of cards. There will probably be some of this, some of that, and some things that are totally new that we've never imagined before. I can't wait...