Disaster and Direction. Right, left, and center

I have a long slumbering post that I started at the beginning of the pandemic on the topic of what societal changes it may bring.  I didn't finish it as other things came up in the meantime, I'm not a full time writer, and as things evolved it risked being obsolescent.  That particularly became true following the death of George Floyd which put societal protests on top of the pandemic, and it may frankly have altered, and significantly, the likely outcomes that the pandemic seemed likely to bring.

Anyhow, and I through this out only for consideration and hopefully comment, I've started to read and hear a lot of commentary about how this will politically impact the country, long term. And interestingly, there's two very distinct views about how that will go.

One set of views holds that this crisis has shown the weakness of decentralization in the modern era.  There's been no concentrated overall national response, and the United States is suffering for that, this view holds.

The other holds that recent events, in particularly the overlay of the George Floyd protests, and implicitly the rise of left wing activism, will have the opposite effect and revive the law and order, anti gun control, conservative localism impulse in society.

It's interesting in part as the roots of both of these views is sort of planted in the same soil, fertilized by a person's pre disaster political views, and referenced with bonafide cites to history.

On the first view, it's very much the case that prior titanic disasters, and this is one such disaster, have in the past resulted in political centralization and a big concentration of power at the national level.  The Great Depression caused that to occur at a massive scale as states proved to be completely incapable of handling the events that followed October 1929 and the White House was slow to get around to it.*The Depression, in turn was followed by World War Two that amplified that trend.  Following the Second World War the nation shortly went into the Cold War, and it wasn't until the 1970s that there was any concept of reducing Federal involvement in anything.  

Indeed, up until Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, it was universally accepted by Americans that the Federal Government was the government and we've never come close to going back to the reduced role for the Federal Government, indeed all government, that existed in 1928.

Moreover, following World War Two there was very wide consensus that concentration of power at the Federal level was just fine.  It would surprise modern Americans to learn that 1) in the 50s Americans generally regarded the creation of a single world government as a fine development, should it occur; 2) Americans overwhelmingly supported the elimination of handguns as late as the 1970s; 3) Americans fully accepted Federal programs that had the accidental collateral impact of eliminating strongly ethnic neighborhoods.  It wasn't really until the late 1960s when Americans began to first balk at conscription followed by the 1970s when the courts ordered busing that this began to change at all.

So liberals have reason to suspect, as they openly are, that the Coronavirus pandemic will result in a Democratic administration which will centralize the pandemic response but which will also bring a host of left wing views and actions into government, which people will generally be fully accepting of.

In contrast, conservatives have been noting the turmoil of the 60s and 70s and how that gave rise to a law and order, my own is my own, pro gun set of politics in the mid 70s that bore fruit in the 1980s, starting with the election of Ronald Reagan.  And they likewise have reason to do that.  The Civil Unrest that has developed mirrors, from a distance, that of the 60s and 70s when the nation seemed to be coming apart.  By 1980s a population that had, only a decade prior, supported the elimination of handguns in public hands, heavy concentration of Federal power and which had not seen a real conservative in power since Hoover changed its mind.** ***What brought that about was the lawlessness and rootlessness of the 1960s and early 1970s, combined with a deep dive off the left end of the politica diving board by a significant portion of the Democratic Party in the very early 1970s.

So conservatives have reason to suspect that a population that's deeply concerned about a leftward societal and political trend that started in the last year of Obama's Presidency and which the Democrats have now fully embraced, combined with massive societal unrest, will cause a reaction mirroring that of the late 1970s.

Which will be correct?

Well, it's not impossible that both will be, with the fist followed by the second.  But which is ultimately the trend, and how it impacts the nations, is all speculation right now.  Maybe neither will rapidly, although my guess is that one of the two will quickly.

*Indeed, the Trump Administration ought to be recalling right now that while Herbert Hoover is widely acknowledged to be one of the most intelligent men to occupy the White House, his slowness in reacting to the Depression, getting around to it only late, doomed his reelection bid.  Hoover did get around to trying to address the Depression, but by the time he did, it was too late to save his Presidency.

**Note that even a Southern Rock band like Lynyrd Skynyrd could have a hit with a song that declared "handguns are for killing" in the 1970s.  

***There were, to be sure, Republican Presidents following Franklin Roosevelt . . . well two. . who were more conservative than their Democratic opponents, but none of them were Buckleyite philosophical conservatives.  Eisenhower was a centrist who basically looked back to the GOP of the Depression era which was instinctively, but not philosophically, conservative.  Nixon was philosophically conservative, but of a different stamp than Reagan, and accordingly very comfortable the concept of massive concentration of power at the Federal level.  Ford was a centrist.