America's Search for Solidarity
Still waiting for leaders who bring us together...
I was in a thrift store the other day (there are lots of them where I live in semi-rural Pennsylvania) and noticed that it still had the spots on the floor for standing in line while social distancing. Stickers to mark where to stand so you kept apart from the other shoppers, to minimize the risk of spreading COVID-19.
Well worn, as they have been there since presumably 2020, trod on by countless bargain hunters ever since.
Remember the pandemic, and that for a brief period we took social distancing seriously, and everyone (mostly) wore face masks in public, people working together to protect one another’s health? I remember being impressed by how resilient everyone was, quickly adapting to new behaviors like standing in line a few feet apart, or picking up items curbside. I remember taking inventory when I went out to the grocery store early in the pandemic - we got to over 90% of people masking in public.
There were always a few die hards who refused to comply with the simple public safety mandate of wearing a face mask. I suppose they imagined themselves to be resisters of tyranny, but with everyone else masking what they really were was free riders, benefiting from a safer environment by taking advantage of other people’s willingness to make a small sacrifice.
It didn’t take too long for even that short burst of cooperative spirit to come to an end. The pandemic got pulled into the partisan conflict that roils our nation, exacerbated no doubt by the Trump administration’s feckless response to the disaster. Willingness to follow mitigation behaviors such as masking fell off pretty fast where I live in MAGA-land.
But it still sticks with me that even here in MAGA-land, for a brief period, there was solidarity among the people. We were willing to work together, to follow a consensus of what needed to be done. We were united against a common threat, experiencing the coming together in the face of danger that forges a sense of community.
As I stood in line at the thrift store, looking down at the worn stickers on the floor, I actually felt nostalgic for the pandemic era.
Of course, I did have it better than others back then. As a stay-at-home nonessential worker (computer job, in other words), I benefited in many ways from the lockdown - lowered cost of living, more free time. I’m sure other people who didn’t have it so lucky are very glad the lockdown era is behind us.
But consider the following. There was a 2024 election post-mortem article in The Guardian that offered its own explanation for Trump's victory. It argued that voters ditched Biden-Harris in favor of Trump because of the shock of having the benefits of the pandemic welfare state pulled out from under them.
I propose a different explanation than inflation qua inflation: the Covid welfare state and its collapse. The massive, almost overnight expansion of the social safety net and its rapid, almost overnight rollback are materially one of the biggest policy changes in American history. For a brief period, and for the first time in history, Americans had a robust safety net: strong protections for workers and tenants, extremely generous unemployment benefits, rent control and direct cash transfers from the American government.
Trump may have bungled the pandemic in 2020, but then Biden bungled the post-pandemic during his term! People were finally enjoying having a government that looked out for them, and then that all ended and it was back to “normal,” Democrats having apparently forgotten that for a great many Americans, “normal” sucked.
How to get back to big, interventionist government taking actions that are broadly popular? How to restore that sense of solidarity, that feeling of being a people united to a common purpose? It's clear to me from the initial pandemic response that we are primed as a society for this to happen.
Our current Mad King is not a good leader for inspiring public consensus. He is only sowing more disunity and chaos with his authoritarian crackdown.
Could the Resistance fight against him be that Solidarity movement? I get that sense - the energy is there. The people have risen up in response to the brutality and lawlessness of the ICE Troopers in Minneapolis.
I have been heartened by the sense of hope uplifting folks who share my cause, and by Democrats in the Senate who have drawn a line against further ICE funding. But there is still not a movement at the national level to stop the administration from ignoring the U.S. Constitution. Can you imagine a nation-wide general strike, possibly the only option left to save democracy? It seems so unlikely, given that this country is vast and disorganized, assailed by powerful forces working against the people.
There is too much apathy, too many heads in the sand. The Mad King still has his loyalists - I see their laughing emojis in my Facebook feed all the time. They actually think what ICE Troopers are doing is justified. We are a fractured nation, with large swaths of people living in different realities.
Ex uno plures.
We are still waiting for a common cause, and for leaders who can bring us together.