Deadly Summer
By Mowahid Hussain Shah
Summer 2020 shall go down as unforgettable. Multiple crises kept converging: a global pandemic, the BLM civil unrest, socio-economic devastation of lives and livelihood, and Election Year. The pandemic seemingly finishes, then starts again. In places where they thought it was receding, it is coming back.
The world as we know it has turned upside down. There is a dread of touch, of the air we breathe, of enclosed spaces, of indoor dining. The conviviality of social gatherings and social security has been punctured by fear and paranoia. America today is marked by division, discord, and disparity. Author and historian Garrett Graff writes in The Atlantic of September 10: “Today, whatever shared national spirit existed in the first weeks of the pandemic has been fractured beyond repair.” Social media has exacerbated tribalism.
Officialdom and ‘experts’ in charge have blundered and floundered, sending mixed signals and conveying misleading information. End of summer coincided with the marking of the 19 th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. America has yet to relinquish the anguish of 9/11. It remains etched in the public psyche. 9/11 marked America’s tumultuous entry into the 21 st century, whose seismic aftershocks continue to reverberate.
As observed in the Independent (London) of September 11, 2020:
Nineteen years later, the United States has waged two wars in that region that delivered few strategic goals. It’s cost us billions in treasure and thousands of lives – with thousands more military troops permanently maimed as a result of their combat service. And our citizens are divided on just about every issue of the day, from whether Biden knows his own name to whether covering one’s mouth and nostrils can help prevent the spread of an airborne disease. …Sadly, bin Laden continues to be the victor.
Uncertainty and confusion hover, with US Presidential elections looming ahead. It may be relevant to mention that Biden went along with endorsing Bush. Jr’s catastrophic decision to attack Iraq in 2003 – which midwifed Daesh. More significantly, the New York Times of September 9, 2020, cites Trump:
President Trump mounted a public attack unusual even for him over the Labor Day weekend, accusing his military leadership of advocating war “so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy.”
It eerily echoes President Eisenhower’s warning 60 years ago during his farewell speech of January 17, 1961, to beware of the Military-Industrial Complex.
The pandemic has enhanced aloneness and social isolation and has depleted human companionship. Nearly 2,500 years ago, Aristotle, the tutor of Alexander the Great, had concluded that man is a social animal. Down the centuries, those who have suffered solitary confinement can easily verify to the veracity of Aristotle’s position.
Social isolation, which was considered as a threat to human living, is now being preached as a tool for survival. Its consequences could be far-reaching. England has just imposed a draconian 6-person rule. The Daily Telegraph (London) of September 9 had this to say about it:
This new regime will be especially devastating for families and friendships. They will bear the brunt of the social distancing, and our society will end up more atomized. Traditions will be eroded, and millions of irreplaceable occasions will never now happen. Grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, birthdays, big gatherings: the rich tapestry of family life will stand horribly impoverished. As Zoom fatigue sets in, the six-person rule will be a psychological calamity. We are in for a grim, painful winter.
There is a sharp transformational contrast between pre-Coronavirus America and now. The pandemic and its politicization have exposed polarizing fault-lines within. The common purpose necessary to confront an invisible enemy, which poses an existential threat to lives and livelihood, is just not there.
The uncomfortable fact is that all of the aforementioned could be signposts to America’s foreseeable decline.
