Wednesday, June 17, 2020

A REOPENING



I first wrote this post about a month ago, but things delayed my moving forward on posting it.  Since then the world has changed yet again.  I decided to go ahead and post it as originally written as a relic of a simpler past and because it is time to get get going or give up. 

This is my (new) personal blog about the coronavirus and how it has, is, and will change the world.  I will explain why I decided write this blog, but first I should address the readers (few as they were) of my prior blog which focused on the Southampton Saints football club and English football in general. Based upon my prior readership level, there could be as many as one hundred people who have set themselves up to be notified whenever I posted a new article.  The next three paragraphs are addressed to those people.

I have not blogged since August 16, 2017.  My job as an appellate lawyer involves reading things, researching things, thinking about things, and then writing about those things.  That is also what I did with this blog.  I stopped blogging because my workload became significantly heavier. This meant that I had less time to focus on our club and I had fewer insights to share about our club and its squad.  Reading the forums and thinking about the concerns expressed on those forums was a fertile source of ideas for my blog, but I could no longer devote a couple hours a day to our club and football in general.  Also, the club’s recent poor performance was simply less interesting to analyze.  Also, the Golden State Warriors provided a nice distraction.

In 2018 I was tempted to write an article arguing that—in retrospect—our club’s outstanding performance in 2015-2016 was primarily due to the fact that we had two of the world’s best players, Sadio Mane and Virgil van Dijk, in the squad, but that wonderful situation could never last.  However, I didn’t think that argument really needed to be made.  It certainly seemed indisputable to me.

I should acknowledge that while I stand by my reasoning in my last substantive post from August 8, 2017, I was wrong to believe there was nothing serious to worry about.  Something fundamentally changed in how the club was run back then. Or perhaps the loss of two world class players plus regression to the mean put us into the relegation zone.  On the other hand, the club’s recent problems do not prove that the doomsayers were right all along.  Doom is an extraordinary event.  As Carl Sagan said “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."  Throughout the club’s good run, there simply was no extraordinary evidence of systemic problems with the club.  Maybe things are different now, but that is no longer my focus.

On to the new blog.

I have called my new blog “The Before Time—The After Time” based upon original Star Trek season 1 episode 8, “Miri,” where—SPOILER ALERT—the Enterprise finds a planet very much like 1960s Earth except a plague has wiped out all the adults.  The children have survived for hundreds of years because the disease prolongs their life until they become adults and then go crazy and die.  These children referred to the time before the plague as “the Before Time” and that seemed on point to me.

My reaction to current events is heavily focused on my experiences as an American.  This will distinguish my current blogging from my former bloggings which were much more focused on English things because the Southampton football club was in the English Premier League.  I even made a major effort to use English terms rather than American terms—hence, the slightly off, to the American ear, references to our “squad” earlier.  Given the nature of our President and his response to the COVID-19 problem, some of what I say will have less relevance outside the United States, but I am good with that. 

It is my belief (concern?) (fear?) that, while our situation is nowhere near as extreme as the one in Star Trek, a major change in our world has happened and that things will not come close to returning to the Before Time normal.  Of course, I could be wrong.  And, even more of course, this change could go any number of ways.  Our world could become a kinder and better one.  We might start paying more attention to the poor and disadvantaged who are extraordinarily more likely to suffer serious consequences from the pandemic.  We might start addressing other problems such as global warming, income inequality, and racial discrimination.  Or we might turn to authoritarian leadership and all become fascists.  Or things might get back to the old normal after we get a vaccine or, without a vaccine, the new normal will like the old normal but with a lot more routine death.

I do think I have something useful to say about all of his because I believe I am good at spotting stupidity and explaining why it is stupid.  There is a lot of that going around right now.  This does not mean that I will focus my articles on calling people stupid.  There is also too much of that going on right now.  Some of that stupidity gets enough attention—such Trump’s suggestion that doctors investigate the possibility of injecting disinfectant to fight the coronavirus.  But some of it isn’t getting nearly enough attention.  And some things that are not getting enough attention do not involve stupidity.

But that is not really the reason I am writing this blog.  I am writing this blog because I am already spending lots of time thinking about these things.  When I mentioned to my best friend the possibility that I would start blogging about the Coronavirus, she responded “Yes!  It would be a better outlet for you than telling me about it.”  Then she added a smiley face.  I trust her judgment.

On the other hand, I am not an expert in any relevant field except American Law.  When I address issues that require some other expertise I will be relying on internet sources that appear reliable to me and I will be linking to them—assuming I can remember how to do that.

My current plan is to post a blog at least once a week, but I don’t want to start until I am sure I will be able to follow through –at least for a little while—so I will not post this until I have written two more articles.  I will probably try to incentivize myself by never posting a blog until the next blog is ready to go.  My target will be articles of about 1000 words.  Finally, if you are new to my blog, feel free to go back and read my posts about football.  Some of them are still relevant and interesting.

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