When Facebook Becomes Blogging

1. The realities of politics are unfortunate and tragic. You have to wait decades, even generations, for the moment when necessary reforms can ever happen, and the only time we're able to implement them is when it's too late to save thousands and thousands and a critical mass of people realize that what they've spent lifetimes opposing is completely necessary. Transformational reforms can only happen in the moments when the world is already transformed. So this is the moment so many have been waiting for an entire lifetime: to enact an economic bill of rights, to draconianly curb emissions standards, to fasten regulations of iron on every big business in the world, to break up the monopolized companies of tech, credit cards, cellphones, agriculture, to tax the rich at levels they haven't been since the 1950's. But it's inevitable that these reforms will only kick totalitarian movements into still much higher gear too. Trump was not Hitler, he was never going to be Hitler, he's too stupid, and the circumstances weren't right. He's authoritarian alright, but he is much more like the authoritarian men-children of the generation before who somehow ended up kings like Kaiser Wilhelm and Czar Nicholas. But once we get the ball rolling on reform, THAT is the moment when the true dangers among dangers reveal themselves: you can only transform society for the better when society is already unstable enough that a path is clear to change it, and in such moments, other leaders arise too who will consider some people unworthy of a better society. That's how you get Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Tojo, Enver, Pol Pot at the very same moment when 20th century liberalism creates a middle class with hundreds of millions throughout the world. The dangers that come next make the last five years look like a Golden Age, and will be just as numerous as the rewards. This time, it may not even be the heads of state. The great danger in the 20th century was the size of governments, the great danger in the 21st is the size of businesses, and government can only struggle to barely keep up with them. The great mass murderers of the 21st century may much more resemble King Leopold and Cecil Rhodes than Hitler or Stalin.

2. The thought occurs: Hillary, unpopular as she would have been for every moment until now, would have kicked the shit out of this virus. The point of being a Head of State is not the leadership you promise when things are business as usual, but the leadership you exhibit when a true catastrophe presents itself, as it inevitably does. Obama presided over a 2nd-tier catastrophe at the beginning of his presidency and proved himself thoroughly up to the challenge. But Hillary is exactly the sort of President you want in a crisis, and because Americans didn't want to hear that true catastrophe was still possible, she lost. Her administration would have tracked it from the very first passenger to come over, the right people would have been isolated, it would result in a couple hundred deaths, maybe a couple thousand, the public would rally around her in a way New Yorkers aren't even to Andrew Cuomo, she could properly administer a stimulus, she probably wouldn't have passed all the necessary reforms, but we wouldn't have needed them as direly, and she'd have occasion to get the ball rolling much more quickly than we will, which will have to wait until January, and maybe another four or twelve years after that... and now she'd be sailing to re-election. And this until now do-nothing lame duck could have proven herself in this our greatest president since FDR if only Americans realized how much they still had to lose in 2016. 

...And still the Republicans would impeach her for how she handled it.

3. Not going to lie, for the first time in all this the black dog is truly getting to me. Experts who've spent their lives preparing for these things don't lie about their findings, you know exactly what's coming, and now it's here, and it's only going to get worse for a while. I'm amazed it took this long to feel this way. The loneliness is not getting to me all that much, I kind of enjoy it. Even the claustrophobia is bearable with music and online conversations. But it's the fear of unimaginable things that can to happen to everyone and everything you ever valued and the powerlessness against it, that's what's unbearable about it all. Whatever happens to any of us, I'm filled with love for so many people and institutions that we may soon lose, and I will be here to help in any little way I can, but the burden that it probably can't be enough is overwhelming.

....though maybe this is coffee anxiety.....