The virus is the first interesting post-historical supervillain
If we can beat it, history will restart
If not it’s end-of-history reruns for the rest of time
It’s kinda funny how people are attacking it with all the traditional virtues that worked against human adversaries in the past: strength, honor, intelligence, compassion, imagination... each defined a century or three of history. None really works as the locus of response.
What kinda works is a bizarre kind of arbitrariness (distancing and masking) that requires adopting a kind of dumb-somatic identity that feels insulting. You’re a sneezing-coughing machine capable of projecting droplets a certain distance. That’s all the virus *can* see you as.
It’s not just Trump who can’t bully it...
The wokies can’t cancel it
The nerds can’t science the shit out of it
The entrepreneurs can’t disrupt it
Davos crowd can’t PowerPoint it
The military can’t nuke it
QAnon cannot red string it
Jihadis can’t suicide bomb it