We are now embarked, again, on what William James called in a 1910 essay “the moral equivalent of war.” Nature has instigated it, but our government has issued the formal declaration. It’s become a familiar posture, although wars on poverty, racism, crime, drugs, terrorism, etc., are often fought by others and seem to require little from us. Not this one. Americans are summoned to a grand domestic project that will require military-like discipline and purpose, led by the federal government. We will fight this through pervasive isolation. The near-term devastation of our economy, particularly for many small businesses, will follow. We will live online. Even our churches and religions institutions are closed.
Should we fail, many will die, many others will get sick; the health-care system will be overwhelmed, harming others still. Even if we succeed — however we define victory — a large proportion of the population will get sick. And no one can state with precision how long this continues. It’s the full “moral equivalent of war” experience. A nation ravaged by deaths of despair, opioid abuse, declining rates of family formation, banal secularism, loneliness, gray divorce, high levels of private and public debt, irascible political disagreements, among other unpleasant trends, has been enlisted to fight it. You go to war with the army you have. And we don’t look so sturdy.
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