I think that's kinda what Wuhan looked like in late January and February. China is remarkably efficient at deploying large of numbers of people to do a big task, and they've got a legal and social structure that results in high levels of compliance with government requirements. But I think even China would've had trouble deploying that response nationwide: there are only so many people in the military plus the police force.
I'm not sure you're quite understanding my point. China is a very different story because they already had a highly centralized government and established norms of disregarding individual rights in favor of actions that are perceived to be for the greater good.
The U.S. is much more individualist and with a broad norm of civil liberties, albeit somewhat eroded after 20 years of the PATRIOT Act. For someone like Dick Cheney, any excuse to shift toward more military rule is an opportunity. We saw this following 2001. Almost none of the "War on Terror" stuff was actually effective, but there was suddenly widespread support both for giving up civil liberties in favor of the nominal greater good and for spending on new government programs for policing and surveillance. What is particularly terrifying about those changes is that they had bipartisan support. Politicians were willing to do absolutely anything if it made the voters feel like *something* was being done to keep us safer. And it is that exact infrastructure that Donald Trump has used to put immigrants into concentration camps and pick up peaceful protesters from the streets.
If the pandemic had hit under a Cheney administration, or a Bush-Cheney administration, I think what we would have seen was further shift toward military/police rule, it wouldn't matter whether it was effective, what would matter was that it would make people feel like someone was in charge of making the big scary thing go away, just as people were happy to see soldiers with assault rifles in the airports following 9/11. I think that both Democrats and Republicans would have been happy with these changes; the Democrats because it was perceived to be a responsible way of handling the pandemic, the Republicans because they love that kind of thing anyway. After the pandemic was under control, maybe there would be conversations about scaling back the police/military presence, but that would mean getting rid of jobs people had become dependent on, who wants to decrease security, and besides we all know that it's just a matter of time before the next pandemic. It's at least as likely that the voters would get sold on the idea of *further* increasing policing as that they would scale back the militarization. And, of course, we'd have all of the usual unpleasantness that goes along with greater police activity, including decreased respect for privacy, harassment of minorities, and so on.
It feels like a very plausible story to me, and as bad as things are right now, I'm inclined to believe that the above would be worse.
no subject
I'm not sure you're quite understanding my point. China is a very different story because they already had a highly centralized government and established norms of disregarding individual rights in favor of actions that are perceived to be for the greater good.
The U.S. is much more individualist and with a broad norm of civil liberties, albeit somewhat eroded after 20 years of the PATRIOT Act. For someone like Dick Cheney, any excuse to shift toward more military rule is an opportunity. We saw this following 2001. Almost none of the "War on Terror" stuff was actually effective, but there was suddenly widespread support both for giving up civil liberties in favor of the nominal greater good and for spending on new government programs for policing and surveillance. What is particularly terrifying about those changes is that they had bipartisan support. Politicians were willing to do absolutely anything if it made the voters feel like *something* was being done to keep us safer. And it is that exact infrastructure that Donald Trump has used to put immigrants into concentration camps and pick up peaceful protesters from the streets.
If the pandemic had hit under a Cheney administration, or a Bush-Cheney administration, I think what we would have seen was further shift toward military/police rule, it wouldn't matter whether it was effective, what would matter was that it would make people feel like someone was in charge of making the big scary thing go away, just as people were happy to see soldiers with assault rifles in the airports following 9/11. I think that both Democrats and Republicans would have been happy with these changes; the Democrats because it was perceived to be a responsible way of handling the pandemic, the Republicans because they love that kind of thing anyway. After the pandemic was under control, maybe there would be conversations about scaling back the police/military presence, but that would mean getting rid of jobs people had become dependent on, who wants to decrease security, and besides we all know that it's just a matter of time before the next pandemic. It's at least as likely that the voters would get sold on the idea of *further* increasing policing as that they would scale back the militarization. And, of course, we'd have all of the usual unpleasantness that goes along with greater police activity, including decreased respect for privacy, harassment of minorities, and so on.
It feels like a very plausible story to me, and as bad as things are right now, I'm inclined to believe that the above would be worse.