We are TERRIBLE at listening to warnings of impending disaster

Case in point: Covid19. We were warned years ago AND very recently.

A Washington Post article Friday night [March 20, 2020] reported that the U.S. intelligence community issued multiple classified warnings throughout January and February about the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus from China to other countries, the Chinese government’s initial efforts to play down the severity of the looming crisis and the increasing likelihood it would reach America’s shores. Throughout this time, President Trump continued to play down the threat in public.

Let's not even get started on how it may have been readily apparent during 2016 that if elected, Trump would have become the Orange Menace that he has. Or that beginning January 2017, recognizing that those Trump appointed to be his cabinet ministers would tear down every bit of safety net and environmental protection the people had, by way of Congress, implemented since publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring more than half a century ago.

This problem, about likely catastrophic electrical blackouts, is not something any ONE individual alone CAN solve. So, it IS a matter of what it takes to influence LARGE group decision makers. There are two basic groups that can gather the resources to address problems like this. One is corporations/consortia thereof. How do they decide things? The other is government. Theoretically government of, by and for the people. How is THAT working out right now?

But we are NOW in the middle of a catastrophic worldwide pandemic and those who have been charged with 

...establish[ing] Justice, insur[ing] domestic Tranquility, provid[ing] for the common defence, promot[ing] the general Welfare, and secur[ing] the Blessings of Liberty...

...aren't getting the job done. And we cannot rightfully say we haven't been warned about that either.

So, I would hypothesize that not only are we VERY bad at listening to such warnings, we're even worse at looking for and/or understanding the signals smacking us in the face trying to give us clues as to how soon the next disaster will fall upon us.

Now, as to the social safety net and environmental protections, we've been bombarded by distractions and misdirection in mass media that has foundations in and control by Corporations/Big Money. Namely, pervasive advertisements shouting at us in various ways to pay attention. Those interests aren't necessarily "in harmony with" YOUR interests or mine. Unless your financial foundation is in some kind of debt or equity instruments.

I have already suggested that before any of us listen to elected officials calling for premature re-opening of Arizona's or America's economy, we should mandate full and immediate disclosure of the financial details (financial instruments) of each and every one of those officials. Cases in point: Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) and Sen. Kelly Loughler (R-GA).

Given the development of the current pandemic and the political environment in which it arose, perhaps it would be wise to consider how we got conned AND how to prevent ourselves from continuing to be subject to current and future confidence jobs.

From a 2018 essay on 3 Reasons Why You Should Read Classical Literature:

As we near the end of the second decade of the 21st century we’ve developed widespread awareness that our devices have made us shallow thinkers. We’re less cognizant, however, of the effect of the content itself.

Perhaps shallow thinking is one of the keys to whether or how frequently we fall prey to confidence games. Also from the 3 Reasons essay,

In the book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (a 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist for general nonfiction), Nicolas Carr looks at all the research in neuroscience and psychology about what the Internet is doing to our brains and determines that, yes, our ceaseless attempts to skim this glut of information is making us shallow thinkers who are far less capable of deep, focused, intense thought than our parents and grandparents were. 

I am NOT suggesting you or I jettison the Internet from our lives, rather...

You should read the classics in 2019 [2020] to unlearn the shallowness and impatience you are learning in your hyper-accelerated 21st century life.

Maybe those people being tossed about by every wind of doctrine, subject to the whims of the Orange Menace's stochastic terrorism, would be happier if they were able to take this time of sheltering in place to read some classic literature. Of course, to do that, they will still need to be able to pay the bills. That takes us to the financial ramifications of the recent CARES Act, legislation intended to provide individuals/families/small businesses with financial relief due to shutting down the country's economy.

Unfortunately, it provides far more relief to Big Business. Because it did so with ineffective oversight (Congress tried, but the Orange Menace, in a signing statement, signaled he would totally subvert all oversight) money appropriated to provide relief for small businesses has already run out (not even a month after implementation).

One of the great American polemics written in the past hundred years (and a must-read book for anyone who is concerned about the harmful neural effects of the digital age) is Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman.

Postman wrote his masterpiece in 1985. He was concerned that television was turning public discourse into entertainment, and in so doing, was making Americans so shallow and superficial that they were no longer able to engage in the collective action necessary to make democratic republics function. [...]

Not only does classic literature provide the kind of stimulation your mind craves (a craving which is easily exploited by opportunists who know you’re going to click on their link if they make you ragey enough), but it also explores the timeless questions and struggles of what it means to be human.

And when you explore those questions, exercising the deep thought that classic literature demands, you emerge with valuable insights, which makes you better equipped to actually solve problems rather than simply gripe about them. [...]

Moby Dick is about how rage and thirst for vengeance leads to obsession, and obsession leads to destruction.

After you’ve read Moby Dick, if you took the time to truly grapple with it, you’ll start to recognize Ahab whenever he shows up in your own life, whether in the form of your own obsessions, or in the behavior of others. You’ll see how obsession is such a powerful salve, one that allows a person to hide from his own pain and those parts of his life he’s desperate to avoid.

Read Moby Dick and you’ll also understand, on a deep level, how obsession, when mixed with charisma, becomes a dangerous cocktail that draws in other people who form cults that are so hell-bent on meeting the primitive psychological needs of the narcissistic leader that the followers lose themselves to the cause. The destruction of one man becomes the destruction of many.

Does this sound like anyone you know? Does this sound like America, or more specifically, the various factions of American politics and culture right now?

Moby Dick is, of course, just one treasure in a chest full of them that our ancestors have left for us. Classic literature is our greatest inheritance and we are fools not to take it, not to use it. For centuries humans have been writing down their thoughts, and the passage of time has withered away all but the most useful. What’s left for us is time-tested wisdom from the greatest minds that have ever lived. [...]

The result of this is not only that we are becoming shallow and distractable, but also that we are losing the broader context in which we live. As Neil Postman noted, the information age has made the world into one neighborhood, but it’s “a peculiar one, populated by strangers who know nothing but the most superficial facts about each other.” [...]

Reading Moby Dick requires a good 20 hours of dedicated time with one voice who just happens to be one of the smartest, most poetic, most insightful voices America has ever produced.

To read a work of classic literature is to engage with the best work of the best minds, and do it in a way that challenges you to be better, to seek out and appreciate beauty, to ponder the big questions, to follow a line of thought, to concentrate, to transform symbols of language into an image in your imagination, to weigh assertions, to analyze, to exercise your faculties of reason.

To nurture your soul, rather than titillate your amygdala.

And since there is, according to scripture, no new thing under the sun, perhaps reading historical (fiction AND non-fiction) stories, along with classic literature can give us key insight on what to watch and listen for that might enable us to better anticipate impending disaster and how to prepare to head it off, rather than react to find ways to survive once we're face-to-face with it.

Nevertheless, these days, to get the attention of our society's large-group decision-makers, we may also have to raise a ruckus. But unlike the stochastic terrorism the Orange Menace has been stirring up this week, we must turn our rage into constructive political action.

We've seen, heard and read stories recently about heroic service by brave first responders. Notably, nurses and doctors treating people who have suffered severe respiratory distress as a result of infection by COVID19. Some of those medical professionals themselves have gotten sick and some have died.

Because this pandemic was foreseen but our country was not properly prepared, anger over these lost heroes is entirely reasonable.

What we do about it will make all the difference for the future of our children, grandchildren and more future generations.

Politicize those deaths. Eradicate the Orange Menace. Enact regime change on November 3, 2020. And start by working to strengthen the institutions that have built America. If you need ideas, you can start here.

In the meantime, join me in dedicating yourself to learning history and studying classic literature.