I’ve mentioned my theory before: that there is a long COVID effect on mental health—even on those who didn’t get it. The violence, I’ve mentioned this before. My theory is that the lockdowns, the economic upside-downness, all the deaths and sickness, the failures of our revered institution CDC, were so sudden and so comprehensive that they were like a concussion, leaving us all bewildered and unsure of reality. And those were the immediate effects. The long COVID of my theory is the post-apocalypse normlessness that I see most vividly, but not exclusively, in the violence. It is as if in some people the unmooring by the disease broke the psychological connectors with societal norms. I would liken it to PTSD if the DSM were used to diagnose societies and not only individuals.
I only pay attention to crime that makes the news, I don’t know the stats, I only have anecdotes.
-The violent crime rate is up in many major cities. After COVID has receded.
-That guy who went berserk in LeBron James in a game last year;
-Jimmy Butler wanting to fight Erik Spoelstra;
-Draymond Green, just a couple of weeks ago, boxer-punching teammate Jordan Poole—in practice;
-Last night’s Rumble in the Bus—in the third game of the season.
-Antonio Brown ripping off his pads and jersey-virtually stripping on the field last season. There have been a number of instances in this early NFL season of players getting into Butler-Spoelstra confrontations on the sidelines. Robby Anderson of the Carolina "Panthers" being kicked out of a game by his own coach for his confrontations with coaches--like Antonio Brown.
-The great Conservative Party crack-up in Britain, I put that in this concatenation, you can say improvidently, but there were threats of violence on the House of Commons floor and some, at the least, bullying.
-The responses of the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department to the Surfside Condo collapse and the Uvalde School District Police Department. You can say I have wandered off the reservation but I see an upside-downness to the norms of first responders. Something changed--not in the norms, in the behavior of those whose job it is to follow the norms. Too hot, too rainy, "Didju see that lightning?", building too unstable. That was M-D Dire Miscue last summer. This version is best captured by the one Texas Ranger who was overheard saying to another cop "If my son was in there I would not be outside". As she was when she made the statement while other mothers' young sons were being slaughtered. Protect and Serve, run to danger to, Don't endanger your lives for theirs--that is the flip that occurred in first responders' minds.
All of these incidents seemed to flare up out of nothing and taking participants and on-lookers completely by surprise.
In some of those incidents nothing of the kind, perhaps better stated, nothing to the degree, had ever happened before. I would put that Detroit guy going after LeBron in that category. Of course I remember Malice in the Palace involving the same Detroit team but I hold the--oh hell, what was his name? Une momento...Isaiah Stewart...I hold that Isaiah Stewart's behavior
to be not an outlier variation on the norm but completely norm-less. Stewart was completely impervious to reason and oblivious to consequences, reputation and image. The LEAGUE'S! Stewart was out of control and literally out of his mind.
Butler-Spoelstra had never happened before during a game, in public. That incident was unlike any other that Erik had ever had in his coaching career--its effects lingered on him according to friends. 'Lingered", like COVID.
Liz Trust was the shortest-tenured PM in British history!
Why did these record-setting normlessnesses happen post-COVID? With the Conservative Party one answer I read was exhaustion. The Tories were exhausted after twenty years of rule. Aren't we all "exhausted" by COVID? Haven't its effects "lingered"?
I am well aware of how vulnerable I make myself with anecdotal evidence. "Yeah, but", "Oh, come on", "Wait", the dataists say dismissively. And they are right! A professional theorist would gather the data, there is no scientific evidence for the long COVID I present this anecdotal evidence on; (s)he would gather the data on violence in sport; (s)he could dismiss my groupings as apples and oranges
Some of you may know something about Wiemar Germany. To be short, it was Babylon, Sodom and Gomorrah, old norms discarded like worn out shoes, disobeyed as illegitimate and irrelevant. Those were the effects of the disease in the moment, they could be taken as adaptive behavior to conditions. But I read recently that while rampant, flourishing prostitution could be seen as adaptive to hyperinflation and so on in Wiemar at its most dysfunctional, "the introduction of a new currency and the end of hyperinflation did not make many of them [women] give it [prostitution] up." They liked it. What was, could be, adaptive behavior, became adopted behavior. Normlessness or a new norm without any sexual norms.
So I say with Louis CK of his quirky theories the same of my half-baked, data-less theory, "Of course not...But maybe. I mean, it is there."