Good Riddance Trump

As the COVID-19 crisis deepens three things are emerging in our common awareness. One is that we live on a biological planet. Human existence is not separate and or the thriving and dynamic ecosystem of life forms, whether plant, animal or microbial. We depend on the function and support of this ecosystem for our health and well-being,

If the ecosystem breaks down, or if one aspect of it disproportionately affects another, serious consequences can result. Climate change is a perfect example of system breakdown, causing forest fires, droughts, floods, hurricanes, blizzards, species decline and extinction, rising sea levels.

The Coronavirus is a perfect example of one aspect of our biological ecosphere disproportionately affecting another. Animals living in close proximity to large masses of people can transmit naturally occurring bacteria and viruses to humans, and if some of them are disease-causing, the spread of illness can be planetary and devastating.

There are almost eight billion people on the planet, and the 68% of them live in urban areas. This makes them vulnerable to rapid spread of transmissible diseases. The steady growth of mass transportation worldwide has made it easy for disease to quickly travel all over the globe. Our human institutions – the city, the gathering place, the buses, steetcars, trains, planes and ships all are facilitate the spread of disease.

If a disease spreads to a sufficient level to cause a widespread curtailment of human activity, whole economies are affected. The panic in the stock market is the first evidence of this vulnerability. The cancellation of sports and other entertainment events came soon afterward. The supposed great “health” of the economy doesn’t appear to be such a certainty. In fact, what we are seeing is that our economic system is a house of cards. A change in the winds of circumstance can blow the house down.

Add in the aggravating factor of a deranged criminal sociopath as the overall manager of the crisis and you have a recipe for disaster. A disease pandemic, a house of cards economy and a deranged sociopath all mixed together in a toxic brew. In all likelihood the pandemic will get worse, and with the added factor of Trump’s malevolent incompetence it could result in a total system collapse.

It might be helpful in looking at this situation to look backwards from Trump, to reverse engineer the crisis back to the virus itself. Trump, completely out of his skill set and mental disposition, will likely become irrelevant soon. His day in the sun is pretty much over anyway, just a common crook who went way beyond his level of incompetence, in Peter principle parlance. We can look back in amazement that he lasted this long.

For the economy, a similar predicament exists. We can look back in amazement that it lasted this long. An infinite-growth system that destroys the ecosystem is unsustainable, and will inevitably fail. That inevitability has finally come to pass. There may be a stock market "recovery" when this crisis passes, but there may not, and the devil-may-care attitude of doing whatever we want to the planet is over.

For the virus, who knows? What is likely is that there will be a peak level of illness, many deaths, then a gradual decline, a vaccine will be developed, and changes will be made in how humans prepare for and respond to such emergencies.

It can safely be said that we are entering a new era. What we thought was the world we lived in is no longer the case. There will be no return to business as usual. We can at least celebrate one thing: Good riddance Trump.
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