The Final Solution: One Year Later

If you keep a journal, look back at the same day, one year ago. Trump was on the road or had already dismantled the Paris climate accords and the Iran nuclear treaty and every day represented some new blow to animal species or the environment. The basic idea  was to remove the fetters of regulation (including Obamacare) and globalism. Freedom received a particularly literal interpretation, which always seemed to conveniently circumvent the notion of individual liberty as conferred by the Bill of Rights. Of course, if you were tiring of the pieties of the #MeToo movement or political correctitude, you might have secretly felt a tinge of victory from listening to the profanities ushering from the Trump’s bully pulpit, Twitter. But the fact was the world looked remarkably the same. What could be worse, to reiterate the old joke? It could happen to you. Trump hadn’t succeeded in dismantling Obamacare for one and a thriving economy covered over long festering problems. Today’s diary entry will undoubtedly tell a different story. If you had tired of Greta Thunberg’s Cassandra-like exhortations, you now saw she was speaking the truth. The pandemic was only the first of a series of catastrophes that could bring about the equivalent of a new Ice Age. Within a matter of days sturdy old New York  was foundering. What about Park Avenue with its fortresses of pre-war elegance and its renowned towers of industry leading to Grand Central and the old Viaduct. The streets were suddenly empty with many stalwart Manhattanites fleeing, as the coronavirus brought life to a standstill. Would NYC become like the set of one of the Mad Max films with modern day cowboy/survivors cruising the city in abandoned armored vehicles and tanks? It's hard to believe how fast the illusion of an organized society can become dismantled. Now with the advent of summer, tropical storms present a trilemma to the survivors who remain, hanging on like gamblers who're willing to lose everything in order to win back their gains.