> Let's not act like this attitude emerged out of thin air. Trump also had an opportunity to bring Americans together against a common threat, and he (and his lookalikes abroad) decided to turn it into the cultural catastrophe that you're now supposing was inevitable.

This kind of depends on the "great man" view of history where these figures have the kind of influence needed to move entire cultures. I don't put much stock in this. No matter how much togetherness rhetoric one threw at the problem the mistakes made in handling the pandemic, while understandable, emboldened and enabled forces that would result in an eventual backlash.

Witness Canada, where we had a government that constantly emphasized togetherness against a common threat, and yet we also got the trucker convoy. Some of this was probably cultural contagion from the US, but not all of it.

>> The real problem is that the political capital needed to get people to agree to something like lockdowns or wearing masks was all spent in 2020

> Let's not act like this attitude emerged out of thin air. Trump also had an opportunity to bring Americans together against a common threat, and he (and his lookalikes abroad) decided to turn it into the cultural catastrophe that you're now supposing was inevitable.

I don't agree with your implication, because I don't interpret the original statement the same way. The attitude was present, Trump turned into a cultural catastrophe. What political capital that remained was spent. We have less agreement now among the population as to what is acceptable and what is useful than before the last pandemic. The trenches have been dug, the no-man's land will be filled with mud and bodies.