What is a plastic hour?

I am trying to understand a plastic hour. What a strange phrase. It is from Gershom Scholem. 

In the October edition of the Atlantic, I read this: 

Large majorities say that government should ensure some form of universal health care, that it should do more to mitigate global warming, that the rich should pay higher taxes, that racial inequality is a significant problem, that workers should have the right to join unions, that immigrants are a good thing for American life, that the federal government is plagued by corruption. These majorities have remained strong for years. The readiness, the demand for action, is new. 

Really - and here is the response the author, George Packer, gives to the question: What explains it? 

• Nearly four years of a corrupt, bigoted, and inept president who betrayed his promise to champion ordinary Americans. 
• The arrival of an influential new generation, the Millennials, who grew up with 
• failed wars, 
• weakened institutions, 
• and blighted economic prospects, making them both more cynical and more utopian than their parents. 
• Collective ills that go untreated year after year, so bone-deep and chronic that we assume they’re permanent—from 
• income inequality, 
• feckless government, 
• and police abuse to a shredded social fabric 
• and a poisonous public discourse that verges on national cognitive decline. 
• Then, this year, a series of crises that seemed to come out of nowhere, like a flurry of sucker punches, but that arose straight from those ills and exposed the failures of American society to the world.

Pretty strong stuff. I wondered what I could remember an example of each of the above points.

Inept: yes. There has been no doubt in my mind that Trump is inept as a manager. Obama is too kind to say that he failed to grow into the job. He, Trump, has failed in all aspects of his work. He continues to fail. How is it that he has not been voted out yet? I picked management as his first failure, because he cannot find and keep competent and trustworthy people around him. His turnover rate to September is 91% for his 'A-team'. See this article from the Brookings institute.

But hope in the Millennials? Who are they? I remember the failed wars - we have had them before. But there are also warriors who like wars whether they fail or not. Weakened institutions - that's a conservative mantra == small government. This is a mistake that conservatives make in all countries, whether in the name of freedom or efficiency. It's just not that simple. You cannot make species conservation, research into strange data patterns (pandemis research)  or the arts into profit centres.

Collective ills? Yes - but also the plague of what I might call self-protection, a necessary component of human living, but prone to complacency and excessive self-interest. Jonah displays this when the tender plant frazzles in the heat of the sun. Jonah is a sign for our time. He does not mention the pervasive prejudice that arises from skin tone, poverty, mental illness, and so on. The militarization of the police is serious. 

Sucker punches, yes, and some of them directly the consequence of the untreated collective ills.

But do they answer the points in the lead paragraph?

1. universal health care, 
2. that it should do more to mitigate global warming, 
3. that the rich should pay higher taxes, 
4. that racial inequality is a significant problem, 
5. that workers should have the right to join unions, 
6. that immigrants are a good thing for American life, 
7. that the federal government is plagued by corruption.

What would you say? 

Here are my answers, 

1. of course. We must care for each other.
2. of course. The evidence is overwhelming.
3. of course. The motive for more is highly overrated.
4. of course. What could be more obvious?
5. maybe - this is a partial solution to other problems.
6. of course. We are all immigrants from somewhere. Some 1000s of years ago, some not.
7. really? I doubt it. Corruption is a problem. That's why we have regulatory bodies. We know these are being dismantled in lots of places - the small government problem that conservatives love.

You may be able to access this article here.  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/10/make-america-again/615478/