By Wayne Allensworth
As we ponder the impact of school closures, economic dislocation, panicky shoppers clearing the shelves of toilet paper, and the general disruption of our lives as a result of the coronavirus scare, there are a couple deeper points to consider about how this situation came about.
First, the warning signs of what globalism meant for our country have been accumulating for decades: outsourcing, the transfer of our industrial base overseas, growing dependence upon China for vital items like pharmaceuticals, the demographic and cultural transformation of our homeland, 9/11, the Iraq war, the endless war in Afghanistan, the creation of ghost towns in America’s heartland, infiltration by foreign organized crime—and now a global pandemic. No matter whether one believes the actual threat has been overstated, we can only hope that the troubles unleashed by the fear of the coronavirus will lead to a serious re-evaluation of the entire globalist project, as well as to serious consequences for its proponents.
Being a globalist has meant never having to say you are sorry, no matter how many times you have been wrong and your critics have been right. Globalists have never let a crisis go to waste; now that they’re responsible for this one, they will not miss their opportunity to capitalize on it. It’s time to start rolling back U.S. globalist policies.
And second, one of the most alarming and telling phenomena connected with the pandemic scare has been the firestorm of conspiracy theorizing and rumormongering that appears to be consuming the minds of many people. The rumors, which spread rapidly over the Internet—and which I will not recount here—are indicative of the sharp decline of social capital in America. Many residents of the sea-to-shining-sea entity still called the “United” States of America no longer trust one another. They do not trust the country’s institutions. They do not trust elected officials. They do not trust mass media or credentialed experts. And often they have good reason not to, for these are the people who have inflicted the globalist program upon them. It’s a sign of social decay or atomization common in “low trust” societies. A republic cannot function without high levels of trust.
“Diversity” is not our strength, and the ideological divide is wider than ever. One can no longer simply assume that one’s neighbors, or even family members, share the same baseline religious, ethical, and moral standards. If your neighborhood is like mine, one can’t even be sure all the residents even share the same language or any sense of common identity.
So far, there have been no major disturbances, which we can be thankful for. But the hoarding and panic-buying going on are the small tip of a much larger iceberg of potential disorder, should we experience a worst-case scenario such as an economic depression, continued disruptions in the supply chain, or some other unforeseen event adding to the atmosphere of anxiety and fear.
For now, all we can do is watch and wait.
