It's remarkable how perfectly Covid-19 slotted into all of the worst tendencies and most malevolent trends in Western politics. It made every bad trend much worse. It was rocket fuel for civilizational decline.
Control freaks had a field day. Authoritarianism and totalitarianism are flourishing as never before in the postwar era. It's the Super Bowl for expensive, ineffective, inept managerial liberalism. Tribalism is running wild. Collectivist moralism is everywhere.
Societies that were already going insane due to the constant neurotic fits of social media suffered complete nervous breakdowns. Panic and hysteria are rampant. The American election was turned into a joke by coronavirus-inspired "emergency measures."
The Left's merciless war against the middle class moved into the victory phase - there's a good chance no meaningful middle class will remain when the pandemic recedes. Collectivism will not willingly release the white-knuckled grip it established on us this year.
A brand-new class divide blew open in Western society, between those who can live more-or-less comfortably during lockdowns and those who cannot. The obsession with credentialism became a psychosis. Paranoia reigned as people turned against each other with vitriol born of fear.
Media that was already a politicized dumpster fire somehow got even WORSE - but censorship grew worse still, restoring guild privileges to our degenerate professional media while the uncredentialed were accused of "spreading disinformation" and silenced.
Our already dangerously weak appetite for freedom and respect for individual sovereignty suffered terrible blows. We enter 2021 with the "free" world increasingly inclined toward authoritarian rule on everything "important" while freedom is relegated to a shrinking playground.
The Wuhan coronavirus hit us like a set of shaped charges planted by skilled demolitionists to blast open the cracks in a dam. Every weak point was struck with devastating power and accuracy. It will be the work of a generation to repair the damage...
... but the coronavirus did incredible damage to the next generation, too. Our already terrible public education system was all but destroyed, and all of its worst tendencies will be reinforced when it comes back online. The coronavirus completed the sabotage of the future. /end