It’s so tempting to believe that somehow we’re going to emerge stronger from this crisis. It’s so tempting to believe that we’re going to Be Better. That, somehow, we are going to be able to see the error of our ways, learn from our mistakes, and strive to make a more perfect union once the worst is over.

But what if we can’t?

I have a fairly idealistic liberal worldview. I believe that a strong nation is defined by having an educated, wealthy, healthy citizenry that understands and admires individual responsibility and accountability, and yet also grasps in a deep, fundamental way that we are all stronger when we work together. I believe that a government’s main responsibility is to invest in the lives of its citizens. That means I believe in a strongly regulated capitalistic society where basic standards of living such as education, childcare, and healthcare are easily accessible and as inexpensive as possible. I believe in taxing the shit out of the top 10%.

In short, I believe in everything that this country does not.

So as this pandemic sweeps across this nation like a brushfire across the Outback, it’s impossible not to look for silver linings on the black clouds of carnage.

For one, I think the anti-vaxx movement has peaked. I can’t imagine Jenny McCarthy getting booked on The View a year from now talking about how dangerous the coronavirus vaccine is. (Of course, just because I can’t imagine it doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Because if there is one thing our national media love it’s controversy.)

Another silver lining is that maybe this will be the death knell of the cruise ship industry. Journalists have been reporting for years on the pollution and filth that those floating cities are spewing into our planet’s precious oceans. Maybe this virus will force many of them to shutter operations. I’m sure our oceans would thank us for it if they could.

And then there are the political currents in the United States. An idealistic old liberal like me can’t help but look at this incompetent, grossly negligent, proudly corrupt administration and think that surely people will see the importance of good governance now. I was a child when Ronald Reagan said that the worst words anyone could hear were “I’m from the government and I’m here to help,” and everyone in this country since then has endured the painful legacy and devastating effects of that mindset. Surely, with the ineffectiveness of the federal government under Donald Trump on hideous display for every American, every citizen of the world, to see, surely people will now see that good government is a vital necessity. Surely.

But that hope presumes conservatives and libertarians will change their thinking because of this crisis. Expecting things to improve in government presumes that the voting public will rest its impartial gaze upon the leadership of Mitch McConnell and find it lacking.

And there is nothing built into the structure of these United States that leads me to believe that will happen.

The right-wing of this nation has its own self-sustaining universe. It has it’s own television network in Fox News. It has its own television station network in Sinclair Broadcasting. It has its own newspapers in everything owned by Rupert Murdoch and every other conservative rag in existence. It has think tanks. It has magazines. It has websites. It has radio personalities and podcasters, from Michael Savage to Joe Rogan. It has conservative columnists who get to add their voices to more neutral newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. It has provocateurs such as Roger Stone and whatever Jack Posobiec and Charlie Kirk are. And it has the churches. Oh, Lord, does it have the churches. And they all have one mission: To ignore the glaring problems inherent in laissez-faire capitalism and help the rich get richer. They do this by blaming everything they don’t like on the Democrats.

So I don’t know if the millions of citizens who are umbilically-latched onto that right-wing universe will suddenly realize that they’re affiliated with a sinking ship. I don’t think it’s going to work like that.

I fear that, once the pandemic subsides and we’re reviewing our dead, many things will happen, none of which I will view as “progress.” All of those conservative voices–the ones out there right now, blowing Trump’s horn, they’ll look at the number of dead and immediately start the “it would have been much worse without Trump” argument. Trump saved this nation. If it wasn’t for his firm action, more people would have died…it’s straight from the authoritarian playbook. Refuse to accept that mistakes were made. If you have to admit that mistakes were made, make sure you’re blaming your political opponents. Therefore, imagine all the Sean Hannitys and Laura Ingrahams and Rush Limbaughs of the world ruthlessly criticizing Democratic governors around the country.

The churches won’t be much help. Evangelical churches, for whatever reasons having to do with power and control and influence, they’ve cauterized themselves to Donald Trump’s breast. When he gets hot they sweat, they’re that closely linked. This pandemic–they’ve already established that it’s God’s will. They refuse to believe that any human reaction would have altered its course. If God wants you to live, you will live. So, when the crisis has passed and the churches are still standing, they will raise their hands to heaven and praise Donald Trump for being the human manifestation of God’s Will on Earth. And they’re not going to change their beliefs.

Every faction in this nation is going to see this pandemic as an opportunity to remake the world in its image. So, for every one of me there are, hoping this crisis gets us closer to universal healthcare, there will be a religious zealot convinced that this pandemic is a sign that the United States need to be disbanded altogether.

The belief that people are going to “come to their sense” after this crisis is over is the hope in humanity that I need to keep living in this dystopian society. It’s the silver lining that I need in order to be able to sleep at night. I need to hold onto Anne Frank’s belief that “in spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart.” Because we have to believe that. Because to accept the alternative–that this country has slipped into a irrevocable vortex of evil, one lacking of empathy, where compassion is mocked as a weakness, just as it was in Hitler’s Germany, where humanity is distilled down to its tribalistic essence of only having enough energy to care for one’s immediate family, shattering this society into some sort of Mad Max hellscape with warring factions fighting over precious resources–is to accept the death of the principles of the Enlightenment that have guided western civilization for four hundred years. And I just can’t do that.

But what if I can?