Cliff’s Take: Getting Our Bearings

The past few weeks have been a moment for America to catch its collective breath. Someone seems to have turned down the volume.  We need this pause.

We can finally take a moment to think about where we’ve been and where we’re heading. COVID has bent space-time for many of us—a disorienting malaise.  But what comes next? Before we can answer that question, we have to find our bearings from a nautical, directional sense. Practically speaking, we need to mark our spot first.

The round up—we are changing as a society. That pace of change is moving even faster in the pandemic on some things; others less so. The dual ills of tribalism and racial injustice are still very much here. But there are glimmers of hope in both the short and long term.

Below are the most relevant polling data points of the week:

1. In with the new, out with the old. The slow march of history is underway—under the nose of COVID.  When it comes to sexual orientation, look at the difference between baby boomers and Gen Z.  Wow! Sometimes it’s easy to forget the tremendous cultural change percolating beneath the pandemic.  This is our emergent world. 

    

2. Glass half empty. Racial inequality is our intractable truth. Look at how it persists in our pandemic world.  The virus shaved off 2.7 years of average life expectancy among Black Americans, 1.9 among Hispanics and Latinos, and just under a year for white Americans. Unequal worlds, unequal experiences:  This is America. 

    

3. Begrudgingly compliant. The virus is here.  And we have adapted.  Masks are now commonplace—but we do it because we have to, not because we want to.  This is our reality, whether red, blue, or purple.     
4. Noise, not signal. Trust in COVID informatics is up. Is this a telling trend or just a consequence of regime change?  Not sure.  Seems like the hand-off from the red team to blue team is the most likely cause.  This is our partisan pandemic world—stability on the outside, turmoil on the inside. 

    

5. Light at the end of tunnel? Consumer confidence is at a pandemic high this week, after many ups and downs so far.  But hope springs eternal.  On this one, I think there is more signal than noise here.  We will see. 

    

The past year was supercharged, compressing what felt like decades worth of energy into just 52 weeks. What will society look like when we emerge from the pressure cooker? It’s not clear. But glints of it are here in the data.  This is our new course.

Be safe; be sane.