The world has changed, but how? [Has it, really?] – New modes of governance?

So, there’s this idea kicking around that everything thing has changed? What does that mean? No one knows, of course.

Consider this: I think we’ve got a default assumption that ordinary life is, every now and then, interrupted by extraordinary events and those events change how we go about living, both day to day and even longer term. Our political institutions, at every level, are designed to operate in ordinary mode, with various provisions being made for extraordinary events. Just how we transition from ordinary to extraordinary is not so clear.

In the current situation, the American transition from ordinary operations to pandemic operations, that is, extraordinary mode, has been poor in various ways. Some of that can certainly be attributed to the various dysfunctions of the Trump administration, but only some of that. I would like to think that, for example, the Obama administration would have done better. But still, it would have been difficult. Simply determining that we’ve interested extraordinary times would have been difficult.

Now, look back over the last century or so. Just how much of that has been ordinary? We’ve had the First World War, the Spanish Flu Pandemic, the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Korean War (only a “police action” you’ll recall – just a thorn in the side of ordinary?), the Vietnam Way (another thorn?), 9/11, other pandemics – just how much ordinary has there been? It seems to me that extraordinary times are as common as ordinary times.

How do we re-organize our political institutions so that regulating the transition between “ordinary” and “extraordinary” is a normal mode of government and not a matter of improvised exception handling. What DOES that mean? For one thing, it means that we assume that there will be more pandemics and that we’ll have to deal with them. What does that mean at local, state, national, and, yes, international, levels of governance?

[I know, it needs more work, a lot more.]

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Meanwhile, think about this (click over and read the whole thread, it's not that long).

If we don't take concrete ameliorative steps soon, the *best* possible short run political outcome that will be available to us at that point will be some ad hoc seizure of the institutional steering wheel by a coalition of tech companies and the defense establishment.

— Matt Parlmer 🌐 🌷 🌇 #MaskUp (@mattparlmer) April 10, 2020

Can't say that I agree, but it's something to think about. That, obviously, does not represent an orderly transition from extraordinary (i.e. pandemic) mode.