The Way We Were

 Mr. Grant doesn't understand that we're not practcicing law from Before. He wants things to work the same as they used to. He thinks that the world just has this out of order sign temporarily tacked to it. Any minute a maintenance guy is going to come along and plug the world back in and everything will go back to what it was." After the Cure, Dierdre Gould, 2013.

Will there be a Before that was drastically different than the After in the 2020s? One thing we know is that those in power in democratic governments the world over will have found that they truly enjoyed flexing their dictatorial muscle, How easy it was. It just took the big-city mayors and state governors to make never-ending televised speeches in concert with most of the national new media proclaiming how deadly and scary the pandemic was to shut down most of the world's economy, trap the majority of the free-world populace in their homes, and ridiculously sport a face mask in public. But the worst was restricting peoples' freedom to socialize. Why? Because it is through socialization that communication occurs, communication that tends to seek the truth. The last thing the power-seeking politicians wanted was a populace gathering to discuss how utterly silly the mandated restrictions were.

COVID-19 will eventually go the way the cases of flu have gone, but the threat will remain. We will have become but lambs, constantly threatened with the return thus justifying the codification through legislation and judicial support of significantly increased powers of federal, state, and local leaders at the expense of the people. Remember the response to 911? You can expect much worse.