The unique American attitude is on display
If there is one thing that will sustain America, it is attitude. We have always been a can-do people, and the current effort to suppress the populace with gloom and doom will be transient. The new shiny object of our world is COVID-19, but it will be replaced by something else in a few weeks, when there is nothing new to say. The discussion will fall back to the professional class acting on new policies, and the amateurs will no longer be inclined to do deep dives into the statistical works that are well beyond their pay grade anyway.
The vast unwashed of the thousands of rural counties that voted for Trump will go back to work, planting, welding, waiting tables, stocking shelves, driving übers, forecasting weather, remodeling houses, cutting lawns, assembling automobiles, changing oil, designing artwork, and a thousand other jobs. They will not focus on the media obsession, nor on the ongoing mortality toll, just as they don't focus on the death toll from automobiles.
This nation will be reborn, with the energy of the millions of entrepreneurial Americans. As with other crises Americans have weathered, lessons will stick. Some of the workers, doing the really essential work, will have earned a new measure of respect. Suddenly, being a Ph.D. will not seem to be so much more important than being a craftsman. The newly recognized will be the 21-year-old cashier ringing up groceries, the 25-year-old clerk at the gas station, the 27-year-old hospital orderly cleaning floors. They have come of age, and will do this nation proud.
Whoever keeps the power on, the water pumping, the products delivered, and the garbage disposed of will be recognized as an essential part of our preparedness. These workers have labored in jeopardy to save this country's people in a time of helplessness and ignorance and should never be taken for granted again. They are, in many respects, like the soldiers who protect the nation, at some risk to themselves. And they are everywhere. America's population is full of such wonderful people.
They were not recruited, not given bonuses, not told they had an obligation. They simply looked at their own little piece of the world and felt an immense sense of importance and pride. They knew what the elitists did not. This country needs them, their neighbors need them, and their families need them. They felt what Donald Trump has recognized and lauded, and they lived up to the esteem he has shown them.
As these Americans became bigger than they had ever been, a new infusion of the can-do spirit was transmitted to the younger workers, doing jobs the elite say Americans won't do. The elites are wrong — again. The spirit of America lives in the heart of millions of people of character, and it will not be extinguished — not by COVID-19, not by Chinese subterfuge, and not by the scorn of the elites on the left.
This is the greatest chapter of America's 21st century. So very many Americans are making choices about the serious things of life, and they are not choosing the easy path; they are opting for the challenges of a new world order. Not the idyllic world order that never existed anywhere but in the minds of the professorial class, but a new American-centric world. It has become apparent that Americans can always rely on Americans — and no one else. We can deal with everyone, but we can rely on ourselves. This is the new reality that has been imprinted on the American psyche.
China did Americans dirty. The Europeans proved they are no advance guard, and the community of nations around the world stood by helplessly. Only the United States seized the crisis and deployed its most valuable citizens to do the tough work of fighting back. Nurses, doctors, cops, and laborers have earned their place in the pantheon of heroes.
The disdain for China will grow and endure, and it will be accompanied by a new spirit of patriotism. In the same manner that mothers advised against consorting with criminals, Americans will urge our companies and our government not to consort with criminal nations. Trump is the first prominent leader to recognize and speak of the problem. The leaders in the international companies who fail to follow his lead will be digging their own graves. Attitudes will change, as they did after various conflicts. The elders of America can rest easy. The lessons they have sought to pass to the young have been well learned.
Out of darkness comes the light and the sun beginning to rise. This crisis will lead to a new seriousness, and the rising of America to heights that even it has never attained, on the shoulder of America's unsung heroes: the working class.