Given the highly individualistic nature of American society, the coronavirus was always going to be a lethal challenge here. But it didn’t have to be as devastating as it is.
Instead of tens of thousands dead, we might’ve has a few thousand — terrible, I know, but still less than the catastrophe before us. What has made the difference? A dreadful lack of Alexandrian leadership — leadership from the front — from the federal government for sure. President Donald J. Trump is an incompetent narcissist, and narcissists fear death. That’s why he can’t face illness or funerals. It’s not just that he doesn’t care about the dead. (He doesn’t anymore than he cares about the living.) It’s that he’s afraid to face a virus that is all about death.
But Trump isn’t the only one. The nation he “leads” remains in arrested adolescent development. Live for the moment, got to have it now, push the panic button. The funny thing about the fear factor is that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. We Americans are afraid to grow up, grow old, die — the inevitable journey of us all. We’re afraid to be without money and all that money can buy. So what do we do? We run headlong into the arms of the very things that will ensure both death and poverty. Open too soon? Check. Open the wrong things first — hair and nail salons, gyms, restaurants, tattoo parlors — tattoo parlors? Check. Let everyone run to the beach, house parties and bars. Check, check and check.
Now these “adolescents” can’t wait to shove kids back in school so the parents can go back to work and make oodles of money to boost the economy and Trump’s reelection chances. But none of this is a foregone conclusion. Life is riddled with uncertainty, a notion the coronavirus underscores. But the immature can’t tolerate uncertainty. So they act in a way that only prolongs it.
No wonder we’re foundering.