It’s easy to forget that a little over five years ago U.S. schools were closed, public events were canceled, dining inside restaurants was illegal, the operation of all manner of businesses was deemed illegal, socializing among humans was demonized as the sign of a “super spreader” of the novel coronavirus, and Americans were broadly confined to their homes since contact with others was presumed dangerous, and possibly lethal by the experts. Some (including your reviewer) pushed back against this hideous taking of freedom, economic viability, and yes, suffocation of useful knowledge for how to deal with a virus, but for the most part Americans accepted their new, locked down to varying degrees existence.
To this day it’s a mystery why so many Americans so willingly gave up their freedom. In a country founded on liberty as the foremost ideal, how did so many so blithely give up what is precious? It’s a question that people are still trying to answer today, and that historians will arguably study for centuries to come.
These questions and memories of 2020 came up a lot while reading Peter Baker and Susan Glasser’s (at the time both were with the Washington Post) excellent 2005 book, Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the End of Revolution. The questions came up because so much of their book is about Russians who, upon achieving the freedom long denied them, quickly revealed an eagerness to give it back.
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