With this coronavirus crisis and response and now the invocation of the Defense Production Act, I am beginning to get a very vague idea of how our parents and grandparents must have felt. But, let me emphasize, a very vague idea.
Back during World War II, gasoline, sugar, various foods were rationed. They were rationed precisely to prevent the type of hoarding that some people are now engaging in. There were also laws that were still in place to prevent price gouging. Some of those laws have already been invoked against the unscrupulous who have chosen to take advantage of the unnecessary panic by rushing to buy products.
Here is what I cannot imagine. I cannot imagine being under that type of regulation for four years. I cannot imagine a quarantine (during the end of World War I) that lasted for months while friends and neighbors were infected and some died. And, yet, our grandparents and great-grandparents experienced this type of life for extended periods of time.
We are complaining about what looks like a limited length of time experience of social distancing. We are complaining because we do not get to do what we want when we want it. We have yet to have the idea of being one country with one limited-time mission which is to get rid of this virus.
Mind you, we have the same legitimate worries as our grandparents and great-grandparents. Will we have money to live on? The World War II generation faced a Great Depression before the war. What will happen to us and our jobs? How will we pay our bills? These are legitimate questions and legitimate worries. I do not have simple answers for them. But, I do know that our grandparents and great-grandparents faced the same issues and managed to get through them.
We often talk about the Greatest Generation when we wish to invoke a time when this country was united in purpose. We have the chance to experience a very small bit of what it was like. Let’s use this experience to learn how to face a national time of distress together as a united nation.
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