Virus Not as Effective as Alien Invasion

Ohio’s health guru, Dr Amy Acton, is quoted in TIME:

“I used to say if aliens invaded us, it would be a blessing. We’d all finally be on the same team. We’d have this common enemy—well that is now,” she argues.

I think she is right in that it would take a massive external threat to unite Americans. And we’ve seen a little taste of it as for most of us the non-issues of things like unisex bathrooms have dropped off the table. And somehow Congress passed a bipartisan aid bill, although admittedly spending money is a bipartisan proclivity.

But the virus was not a big enough thing (speaking now as the models have radically downscaled) to unite us. The anecdotal sign I look at is my brother-in-law's Facebook feed - if he ever sees things not in terms of politics then I’ll take that as a sign of unity. But, of course, it’s still all politics all the time. To say he hates Trump more than Michigan fans is really saying something for him.

Ultimately people need a scapegoat, need someone to hate (which is part of the point of Good Friday, Jesus offering himself as that scapegoat, becoming the focal point of hatred in order to show us the futility and error in that.) If aliens invaded us, they would qualify as the “people” to hate. But the virus is likely too impersonal to hate and the threat is too small given it kills only 1% and mostly the elderly. And so the polarization and the cold civil war continues.

Funny that Charlie Cook, respected political pollster and pundit, mentioned this topic in a column recently:

Fred Yang, a protégé of Peter’s at Hart Research, observed on Monday, ‘...Maybe the sheer magnitude of this pandemic and the fact that it is truly a national and global experience, might bring us together. BUT …. just like Donald Trump’s winning the presidency in 2016 was a confluence of factors years in the making, I worry that the current divergence of opinion is too wide and borne of fundamental factors (culture, economic status, values) that a big event, however searing, might not be enough to bring the country together, even temporarily.’

And Neil Newhouse, one of the most senior Republican pollsters in the business and another very wise person, observed, ‘Half the voters will believe the president took the right action, and the other half will believe he's failed to meet the needs of the country. Our divisions are extraordinarily deep. This is unlikely to change a thing.’”