A recent cnn.com
article about the coronavirus pandemic opened by stating, “try to take
heart in one discomfiting fact: Things are most likely never going ‘back to
normal.’” (Yes, who doesn’t “take heart” at “discomfiting” things. Anybody at
CNN have a dictionary?)
The piece mocked “back to normal”
as a “well-worn phrase” that people “like to lean on,” nothing more than
simple-minded “nostalgia for the world of January” when “life more closely
resembled our past decades.” Perhaps, the author(s) mused, people yearn for
things to “get back to normal” as “a bid to show control, to revert to a time when change
was not so universally imposed upon us.” You think? It is, among other things,
a desire to get out from under the heel of a tyrannical government and recoup
their Constitutional, God-given rights.
The post suggests that those who
hold jobs will continue to work from home, that shaking hands and embracing
others will be things of the past, and that the majority of our interactions
will be virtual rather than in person. It infers that many jobs are not coming
back and that certain relatives might just have to continue to die alone, our
goodbyes put on hold forever. It cites Thomas Davenport, the
president's distinguished professor of information technology and management at
Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. The professor states: "Politicians
who pretend that 'normal' is just around the corner are fooling themselves or their
followers, or perhaps both.” It went on to cite another Davenport remark: “People
who suffer tragedies eventually return to their previous happiness level.”
Pretty sure that’s not always the case, Tommy. Especially as regards those who
once lived in a free society and have had their freedoms taken from them
suddenly and capriciously. And, if this CNN article is correct, permanently.
The
post notes that people who don’t quickly adapt to change tend to believe that what
they remember as “normal” will return someday, and therefore delay modifying
their outlook. (I love how leftists frequently put “normal” in quotes, as if it
is the most preposterously unknowable word in the English language.) Professor
Davenport opined that those who refuse to wear masks may be guilty of “normalcy
bias,” the article states, “since they perceive
this intrusion into [their] lives as a passing fad they don't need to embrace.”
Translation: You do need to embrace it, so just deal with it. Forever. But
do we really want to permanently live in a society where a petite young woman
is tased and
arrested by a policeman for not wearing a
facial mask at a sparsely attended outdoor sports event?
The piece says that “permanently severing ties with
January is not necessarily a bad thing,” according to psychologists. In fact, “The danger comes from hankering
for normalcy again, rather than getting on with working out how to deal with
whatever is ahead.” (Emphases mine.) What is “normal” after all? Leave your
freedoms, your dignity, your religion and your lonely relatives behind. See,
it’s not so bad, is it? You can take heart and worship us,
instead. Because, you know, we progressives have your best interests in
mind. “Arbeit macht frei, ja?”
The article eerily concludes that,
“January is long gone,
and it's not coming back. And, psychologists will tell you, that's only bad if
you can't come to terms with it.”
It’s “only bad if you can’t come
to terms with it?”
One could say that about
anything. The Holocaust. Slavery. Painful rectal itch.
Or CNN.
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