We seem now to be experiencing, in direct and painful ways, the consequences of having ceded too much of our independence. We’ve let ourselves become dependent on an unfriendly world power for too great a share of our manufacturing in general and critical drugs and medical supplies in particular. We’ve become too reliant on our own federal government to step in and solve problems that many of our state and local governments are too under-prepared to handle. Those of us with children in public schools have had a closer-than-usual look in recent weeks at the shortcomings of those institutions and their curricula. (In our kids’ case at least, “remote learning” has consisted of a lot of parent-assisted busywork and precious little teaching.) In trying to deal with this crisis as best we can, we find ourselves having to dig past the biases exercised by both our “mainstream” press and the social media sties (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) that we’ve allowed to capture our clicks and attention. What was once a more theoretical discussion about decentralization and “building parallel institutions” seems to have been brought into sharp focus by this pandemic. I find myself thinking with renewed urgency about fixing the situation, and wonder if the bright light COVID-19 seems to be shining on these issues may illuminate them for enough people to create some beneficial momentum. We can only speculate at this point about enduring effects on the culture from what we’re going through right now, but if this doesn’t make us seriously rethink and change our approaches to some of these issues, I’m not sure what could.
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