I want 2020 to be America’s Examination of Conscience

By Anonymous / Fall 2020

The global pandemic caused by COVID-19 has been able to put the world on hold. If we can imagine that nothing new happens this year, then this time period will have been America’s Examination of Conscience. Growing up as a traditional Roman Catholic, this was a key tool of introspection that we used before the act of confession. It was a personal review of your day and/or week, and you would scan your thoughts and actions to find your faults, flaws, and any sins. It is never an easy task. It is painful. It takes time. It takes reflection. And ultimately, it keeps you honest. You essentially “carry” your history with you, and theoretically by keeping your sins in your most recent mind’s eye, it’s less easy to brush it away. This is what is what I believe to be the essential component of an Examination of Conscience. I want 2020 to be America’s Examination of Conscience. It may be a stretch to anthropomorphize America into this image of the consummate and repeated sinner, whom, on his knees awaits his turn outside the confessional booth; patiently awaiting both his penance, and fervently hoping for some future redemption. But is it really a stretch? 

I think not. What then, does America and the consummate sinner have in common? Like the repeated sinner, America repents, does its due penance, only to again make the same mistakes. We see it time and time again throughout history, we are currently in the swelling ebb of future revolution, and the rhyming of history cannot be ignored. We currently live in extraordinary times, but we have the luxury to look to the past to learn. The Great Depression was an extraordinarily difficult time, the economy was in shambles, rampant unemployment, the shuttering of small businesses-never to open again, and these all created an air of desperation. Part of this desperation led to the excessive overconsumption of the land, its materials and resources, these in turn ultimately led to the environmental issues that culminated in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s destroying much of “Middle America” ecology. 

Now, we are living through the pandemic times where we see very similar trends. Essentially a whole section of the economy, the tertiary service section has been obliterated by COVID. The service industry contains a huge portion of the workforce and halting these streams of income can be disastrous. Small business owners are also hit the heaviest during these times. Before coronavirus, my mother and grandmother ran a food delivery service in Singapore, where they made traditional Indonesian dishes and essentially catered for large-scale business lunches and events. With no more office meetings in person, big catering requests were no longer available. As a result, there just was not enough demand to justify keeping the side business going. The added risks of extra trips to crowded markets were also no longer justified.This was my mother’s retirement job, it wasn’t something that she necessarily needed for survival, and she’s lucky because of the safety net offered by the Singaporean government. 

However, most Americans are not so lucky. Undeservedly so. Times like these are trying. The normalcy of everything has just kind of gone away, and there is a sense of despair. There’s constant mention of “the new normal”, but the world feels like a pressure cooker, and that we are just coming up to pressure sometimes. This new pressurized feeling may in fact be the “new normal” but it is also part and parcel of revolution. Pressure is rising, people are unhappy, inconsistencies and mismanagement are now glaringly obvious. The people are primed for revolution, and the cliched adage that desperate times call for desperate measures would not be out of place here. Another historical rhyme is afoot. There is a growing modern discontented Giddy Multitude” and I count myself amongst them. The Giddy multitude of the past were portrayed as a ramshackle brigade of miscreants who were either slaves, indentured servants, or the lowest landless working classmen. They took up arms and revolted in Bacon’s rebellion, where the status quo was challenged for a time. 

We, the students of higher education are the modern Giddy Multitude. We are unhappy. We are in debt. We are restless. We want change. We will act. And where there is a giddy multitude, there is a ruling elite class that is “pulling the strings” and using greed and fear to drive their decisions. The times have changed but some trends remain the same. The wealthy elite grow in their riches, and the wealth gap in America widens to astounding levels. As the world grinded to a halt, select corporate few grew their wealth by the billions.