Back to "Normal" After The Inauguration?

Over the weekend I picked up some items at one of my favorite delis. Here in the New York Metro area, you get a good shot at good delis, particularly Italian. One of my own is an Italian deli owned for several generations by a Jewish family. Somewhere along the line, back towards the beginning of the 20th Century, this immigrant Jewish family, looking to set up a good business, wound up in an Italian neighborhood. No problem. They figured out how to provide quality goods at a good price - and have been doing so for around a century. May they continue on long past my time on earth so others can benefit as have I and my family.

This particular day, I engaged in some brief chit-chat with one of the family members who runs the place. It's tiny and typically busy, so there's not too much talking that goes on unless you hit the place when there's some lag time - hardly ever the case on a Saturday. But Eddy was kind of cheerful and talkative and asked how I was doing. I said something like "Great, except for everything being abnormal." Our exchange took place through our duly worn masks.

Eddy's comment was, no surprise, that this was the "new normal." And these guys - if anyone has - have managed to figure out how to make theis new normal work.

With many small businesses closing, I thought maybe these guys might face the same fate. Food service places have fared OK compared to other small businesses; but these guys, in addition to their retail location, have a (I'm guessing) substantial wholesale business. Their general customers: restaurants and hotels. Do I need to explain why I was wondering if they'd survive?

While there's been some bounce-back since all restaurants and hotels were forced to close with this C-Virus Mess started, it's nothing like it was. However they've managed, they've managed. 

Running a small business has its pluses and minuses. But there's maybe never been more minuses for small businesses than those imposed by the C-Virus Mess that started in March. For most of us (I run a small business), the minuses keep pressing, and more of us will likely close our doors in the foreseeable future. 

Given that reality, I was a bit bewildered and put off by the overnight classical DJ's comment this morning. I usually pick up the last bits of her shift when I get up early, as I did today. So I catch her typical "best wishes" comment before she passes the baton. And for months, those comments focused on a theme of common sharing during difficult times. This morning, though, she suggested that many of us were likely feeling (as I remember it) either uplifted or elated - or maybe some of both. 

When you live long enough and listen to someone like this long enough, you get a feel for their thinking, their views on the world, even their political leanings. And without beating us over the head these last months, but quite clearly, all the folks at this classical station (associated as they are with NPR) weren't big fans of Donald Trump. So my guess is that the elation had to do with Biden's Inauguration this past week. 

Elation? I suppose there's a strain of deluded folks out there that are thinking that Biden and his gang will bring waves of what's wonderful and happy, vs. the oppressive Trump and his MAGA minions - or some such twisted logic.

Now, no matter our political leanings or our feelings either way about Trump, it would behoove us to recall the direction the country has taken not over the last four years, but the last four decades or more. After a post-World War II surge in the fortunes of working middle class Americans, things have been slowly, steadily, and now brutally been grinding down. A new elite class consisting of super-wealth and powerful folks and those that serve their interests has arisen at the expense of the rest of us. And that's just on the economic front.

Since the 1970s (really earlier than that), our shared beliefs - political, religious, social - have slowly fractured. (Now not so slowly.) We lack common moral and ethical standards, our once basically stable families no longer exist for the majority of us Americans. And our young folks exit years of education less educated than any generation within memory. They don't read, can't write, speak at best glibly with little thought behind their words and are easily sucked in and manipulated by, among other things, their devotion to a world of social media.

Frankly this general summary only unveils the tip of the iceberg. But we'll leave at that for now. It's not a pretty picture.

So back to normal may sort of make sense if by that you mean back to what's been going on for decades - not that it ever really much changed under the great Trump. But feeling uplifted or elated about that, never mind because Biden and his ilk are back in power? Seriously?