The Aftermath

We will survive this and in the best-case scenario, the United States will emerge as a better country than we were before.

One day back on 1996, when the Olympics were in Atlanta, we stopped at the local Kroger’s supermarket on our way to the games.  A tour bus was parked outside and the driver, an elderly gentleman of color, told us that if we saw any Russians inside to tell them that they had to leave NOW, the bus was already late for the next event. “They trick me every time,” he said. “They tell me they will only be a few minutes but once inside, they stay for hours.”

“They’re gonna make me lose my job,” he said.

Once we were inside, we couldn’t help but notice several old pasty-faced couples in humble, raggedy clothes just walking up and down the supermarket aisles looking at all the groceries on the shelves. They were amazed, and that’s when I realized that those were the hard, lean, pre-Putin years in Russia and they simply had no conception of the abundance and diversity of shopping choices in capitalist America. The cheeses, the breads, the pre-made meals, the desserts and ice cream, cleaning goods and hair-care products - just looking at all the overflowing shelves was more entertaining to them than the Olympic Games.

I always took it for granted, the abundance and diversity of shopping choices, limited only by how much I was willing and able to pay.  Empty shelves and limited choices seemed third-world or iron curtain problems, not something we experienced here in America.

I think about this now only because yesterday, when the coronavirus panic finally hit Atlanta, the stores suddenly had no more toilet paper, or fresh meat, canned beans, pasta, and or course, no hand sanitizer or soap.  A friend of mine here in Atlanta posted this picture to her Facebook page:

Unfortunately, it appears all but inevitable that many people will die as the virus plays out across the land - that's the sad, undeniable truth of the matter.  Not to sound callous about it, but on a large enough time scale, we're all going to die eventually anyway.  But it looks like many of us, the vast, overwhelming majority of us, will survive this pandemic, and what will life be like on the other side?

As a nation, the U.S. got just the briefest of glimpses over the edge and into the abyss of what life might be like without wealth, without privilege, and without a social infrastructure of support.  Might this result in a tad more empathy for the plight of the homeless and the immigrant, the refugee and the disadvantaged?

This will all be over in a few weeks and we’ll come out of this a better, stronger country, I believe. That which does not kill you makes you stronger, etc., plus as a nation I think a little adversity will do us good. Remind us of our own mortality, so that we can appreciate life a little more while we still have it.  

When it’s over, we’ll be sharing stories for years of Good Samaritans, people sharing food and stuff (even toilet paper) with neighbors in need, acts of random kindness and bravery, and American ingenuity and generosity.  Some others will have exhibited bad personality traits during the crisis, hoarding resources, price gouging, and exploiting the unprepared and the gullible.  We’ll shame the greedy, the hoarders, and the exploiters, and sing songs praising the generous, the helpful and the empathetic.

I may be wrong (I’m ever the optimist), and perhaps the one with the most toilet paper will become our next king. Maybe we’ll come out of this even crueler and meaner and more adversarial than before, but I hope not.

Could the health scare finally awaken people to the fact that human health is a shared, mutual commodity, that we're all in this together, and that health care should be available to all, not just the fortunately employed  and the wealthy? 

Could this be the event that turns us around from a nation of rugged individualists, each looking out for our own Number 1,  dogs eating dogs, and transforms us into a more collectivist society with the knowledge that the benefit of the many is the only way to sustain the success of the few?

Probably not.  But I do believe that on the meter of the national zeitgeist, the needle will deflect to some degree or another away from greed, hatred and ignorance and toward compassion and mutual cooperation and the angels of our better nature will emerge.