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Nothing less conservative than a pandemic?

David1967

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
I was listening to the news the other night and caught the tail end of an interview. I believe she was a doctor. She made the statement that "Nothing is less conservative than a pandemic". Thoughts?
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
I believe there's some truth to that. Plagues have through-out history been events that shook up established social orders. Sometimes even for the better (in some ways). For instance, the Black Death killed so many people in Europe that it drove up wages for those who were still standing.

It is hard to say what America would look like if the coronavirus proves to be as deadly as some of the estimates -- but should that happen, you can bet America will be a different nation in at least some ways.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I was listening to the news the other night and caught the tail end of an interview. I believe she was a doctor. She made the statement that "Nothing is less conservative than a pandemic". Thoughts?

I'm guessing what another person meant, but perhaps it is that conservatives resist change. The world is changing due to this pandemic, and we are told it will change much more soon.
 

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
I was listening to the news the other night and caught the tail end of an interview. I believe she was a doctor. She made the statement that "Nothing is less conservative than a pandemic". Thoughts?

Well anybody can catch it no matter who, rich, poor, privileged, down and out, so in that respect it is more an everyone is equal communist thing.

But i can guarantee there are some conservatives who are doing what conservatives do best and are making huge profits.
 

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
I was listening to the news the other night and caught the tail end of an interview. I believe she was a doctor. She made the statement that "Nothing is less conservative than a pandemic". Thoughts?

The Plague is first and foremost a story of habits, the everyday routines of the people of Oran, which are inevitably disrupted by the epidemic. Camus both celebrates and gently ridicules these rituals, from the man who every day goes out on his balcony and spits onto the cats below to the civil servant who dashes home after work and labors over a mysterious literary endeavor to the physician performing his rounds. So ingrained are these habits that the doctor, Bernard Rieux, confronted with early evidence of plague, simply can’t believe that such a devastating sickness could befall such a mundane place. Likewise is the rest of the populace slow to the uptake, even as dead rats begin to pile up in the streets. It isn’t until the town announces the collection of 8,000 such rats in a single day that they’re shaken out of their stupor.

These habits, whatever Camus might make of them, are inherently conservative. Man is not made for radical disruptions; he doesn’t like hearing, as CNN keeps haranguing us, that “life as we know it is about to change.” When George Will says we must be “open to perpetual dynamic change,” he might be stating a condition of the economy, but he is not capturing the human condition, which grows queasy under too much motion. We don’t like upheaval, yet we also can’t abide inertia, a state of standing still. Our habits are a kind of compromise between the two: they’re predictable yet they also keep us active. Those daily walks, those evening beers, even our commutes to work, provide a structure without which life would be intolerably chaotic.
There's Nothing Less Conservative Than a Pandemic | The American Conservative


I take it to mean we will be forced into accepting a new way of living. IOW we will no longer be able to hold onto our tried and true habits that have gotten us through life thus far.
 
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A Vestigial Mote

Well-Known Member
I was listening to the news the other night and caught the tail end of an interview. I believe she was a doctor. She made the statement that "Nothing is less conservative than a pandemic". Thoughts?
Could have been in reference to the non-political meaning of the word (there is one - shocking, I know!):

conservative - adjective
cautiously moderate or purposefully low​

In which case, it couldn't be more true. A virus has absolutely no interest in behaving conservatively in that context.
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
Could have been in reference to the non-political meaning of the word (there is one - shocking, I know!):

conservative - adjective
cautiously moderate or purposefully low​

In which case, it couldn't be more true. A virus has absolutely no interest in behaving conservatively in that context.
I was going to post the same thing.
 
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