STREET DOGS

From Julio Vincent Gambuto at Forge:

Pretty soon, as the country begins to figure out how we “open back up” and move forward, very powerful forces will try to convince us to get back to normal.

Billions will be spent on advertising, messaging, television and media content to make you feel comfortable again.

We want desperately to feel good again, to get back to the routines of life.

And every brand will come to your rescue, dear consumer, to help get your life back to the way it was before the crisis.

What the trauma has shown us, though, cannot be unseen. A carless city has clear blue skies.

In a quiet city you can hear the birds chirp.

What happened is inexplicably incredible. It’s the greatest gift ever unwrapped. Not the deaths, not the virus, but the Great Pause. It is, in a word, profound.

What the crisis has given us is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see ourselves in the plainest of views. At no other time in our lives, have we gotten the opportunity to see what would happen if the world simply stopped.

Here it is. We’re in it. Stores are closed. Restaurants are empty. Streets and six-lane highways are barren. Even the planet itself is rattling less (true story). And because it is rarer than rare, it has brought to light all of the beautiful and painful truths of how we live. And that feels weird. Really weird. Because it has never happened before.

What is about to be unleashed will be the greatest campaign ever created an all-out blitz to make you believe you never saw what you saw. The air wasn’t really cleaner, etc.

But you did. You are not crazy, my friends. And so we are about to be gaslit [ie manipulated into doubting your own sanity] in a truly unprecedented way.