We see a raft of predictions about the coming “New Normal” now that the nation has started reopening.
Not surprisingly, the forecasts or our doom-and-gloom political class are overwhelmingly downers.
Sports games will take place without supports. Elbow bumps will be instead of the warm handshake. Moreover, at restaurants, half-empty dining rooms will replace Happy hour crowds.
Moreover, behind barriers of plexiglass, friendly cashiers at our neighborhood markets will be forever encased. Not only for fall but beyond, facemasks will be the must-have fashion accessory.
Furthermore, one famous and “trendy” prediction is that the New Normal might consist of recurring contagions and lockdowns. Similar to the periodic brownouts experienced by third world countries and California.
Thus, some say that COVID-19 will alter not joust our habits. Nevertheless, it will include politics also.
Pundits on both sides tell us that substantial federal relief spending brought by the crisis means that expanded government control on our life is a must. Moreover, it is important in sectors like health care. Culture and culture will change forever in tomorrow’s not-so-brave New World.
“New Normal”
Nevertheless, we must be skeptical.
It is because the nation lived through a succession of New Normals.
People agonized concerning the New Normal in the period following WWI (World War I). Also, for example, we can say the Spanish Flu of 1918.
Nevertheless, the disillusionment of that era gave way of the Roaring Twenties. However, that exuberant New Normal did not last long. The Jazz Age slammed into the Great Depression and the Second World War, just when it seemed safe to party like it was 1929.
Moreover, energy scarcity and inflation were supposed to be the New Normal in the 1970s. Nevertheless, thanks to changes in the policy of the government, including the stabilization of the dollar, those critical conditions were supplanted by the prosperity of the Reagan era.
Thus, we don’t have to panic.
