Tweet [1]
George Will rightly laments the turbo-charging that crises give to the collectivist temptation [2]. A slice:
Today’s pandemic has simultaneously inflicted the isolation of “social distancing” and the social solidarity of shared anxiety. In tandem, these have exacerbated a tendency that was already infecting America’s body politic before the virus insinuated itself into many bodies and every consciousness.
It is the recurring longing for escape from individualism, with its burden of personal responsibility. It includes a concomitant desire for immersive politics, whereby people infuse their lives with synthetic meaning by enlisting in mass movements or collective efforts. These usually derive their unity from a clear and present danger or, when that is lacking, from national, ethnic, racial or class resentments (e.g., Donald Trump’s and Bernie Sanders’s not-so-very-different populisms of those who feel victimized).
Joakim Book explains that pandemics do not spread exponentially [4].
Jeffrey Tucker injects relevant information into the chaos of confusion regarding the coronavirus [5].
Scott Sumner argues that humanity’s experience with COVID-19 could be a boost for libertarianism [6]. (I’m less optimistic on this front than is Scott, but I do hope that he’s correct.)