Go read my piece on Covid Corner
I posted my little entry for the Covid Corner here https://covidcoffeecorner.dreamwidth.org/3418.html
For those of us who are not directly suffering for the virus (as patients or doctors), who are safely at home and are not experiencing other kinds of troubles, the mai source of stress, I believe, is the constant stream of news and of talking, on tv and social media. Staying at home in itself wouldn't be that bad if we didn't know that there's a sword of Damocles contantly hanging on our head.
Understanding what's happening while you are buried deep into it it's very difficult. I believe this it the first time I am directly involved into something that will make history. I watched the fall of the Berlin Wall, I watched 9/11 on tv, but I wasn't there, and while I, too, lived with the effects of those events (and others), I didn't participate to them. Now, I am participating in the great lockdown, and hopefully seeing what will happen next (if and when we'll reach a post-lockdown - there aren't any signs for that).
I am an history enthusiast and I, as other people, have often asked questions as "how could nazism spread in Germany? How could people do this, ignore that?". With all due differences between the two events, I think that those of us watching the present situation with some coolness will observe some similar mechanisms. Our politicians don't know what to do, or they try to do something, but no one seems to know the "right" way to get out of the quagmire. People are foolishly believing any king of fake news they receive on their whatsapp. People are transforming into informers who report their neighbours walking in the streets. The social paranoia is so extended that people fear other people queueing with them for the supermarket. Social pressure and the stress is so heavy that many people who were normally reasonable become hysterical and believe in plots.
Do you now find so strange that, under some specific historical contexts, people can support the Nazi parti or become Nazis themselves? That people could report Jews or other social groups considered dangerous?
I find more and more understandable each day. May we all keep our logic and our humanity.