Be proud of our national self-control
Somehow, we got through. And we taught ourselves a new way of carrying on in education, medicine and management: Online carrying-on.
When the history of our era is written, an amazing act of national self-control will be seen as unique in human evolution. Do not underestimate the achievement despite the messiness of politics.
During the COVID pandemic millions of Americans and their kids invented a new victory garden, a touch-screen victory garden, which fed the hungry, including the emotionally and educationally hungry, and buoyed the national resolve to defeat a different deadly enemy than Hitler’s Nazis: the COVID virus.
Nobody complained. Nobody explained.
We just quietly went online and learned how to tend our digital crops, frustration and all.
If the pandemic had occurred before the computer and the internet had been invented, our death toll in America would not have been one million, but many multiples of millions.
So let’s honor the digital victory gardens which enabled us to cope with the largest public crisis since World War II.
Now that we are getting back to normal there are a few complaints: “We lost two years educationally;” “We lost two years socially;” or “We lost two years emotionally” are what I hear.
That’s not the way to look at it. Can you imagine any World War II American saying “We lost four years of full stomachs” after the war was over and victory gardens were put to bed for good?
We survived. Our civilization could have been ruined but it wasn’t. Let’s honor that as a real achievement.
I read that 55 million Americans traveled by air, rail, or car this Thanksgiving 2022.
But as a high-risk person over 65, I’m able to stay home, isolating and socially distancing after most mandates have been abandoned, precisely because America has created a digital workaround for almost all problems: medical, financial, consumer, you name it.
By continuing to isolate and cultivate my digital crops I have the choice of protecting myself further even though I’ve had two vaccine jabs and three boosters.
And the 52 million traveling folk resuming their crowd behavior this holiday season are able to travel for the same reason I am still able to thrive in isolation: Millions of Americans did their patriotic duty and stayed home for a full year and followed medical advice.
So be proud America. Be proud.
As messy and expensive and controversial as the lockdown was, it was pivotal to avoiding catastrophe. Operation Warp Speed produced vaccines in record time. Congress appropriated trillions to cushion the worst hardships of the national lockdown from restaurant closures to airline shutdowns and job loss. Vaccines were distributed free to every citizen.
Somehow, we got through. And we taught ourselves a new way of carrying on in education, medicine and management: Online carrying-on.
Our digital victory gardens have snatched defeat from the jaws of politics.
Be proud.