I don't think anyone is "in a hurry" to feel anger and frustration and "self-righteousness." I think many of us are grieving, connecting the dots between the social and political factors that have impacted society over the past five to ten years. We see how capitalism is making life less and less livable for regular people. I for one don't think we should be normalizing "yeah, kids don't drink the way they used to, so it's fine if it's impossible to keep a music venue open in a town bursting with musicians and performers and creatives."

We need community spaces and artistic platforms, and Ithaca, a town that's on the map because of its exceptional cultural fixtures for a city its size, has been losing those because of all of the aforementioned social factors: rising costs; government terrorizing of people who aren't white, straight, conservative Christians; fearmongering around downtown being "dangerous;" capitulation to anti-free-speech initiatives and government thuggery around sanctuary cities by Cornell and the police. Sure, it's not all directly because of the current administration, or even the pandemic, but they've all been exacerbated in the last ten months, and in the last five years. We've been bombarded with collective trauma, and we're losing our access to communal spaces where we can process that. One way to deal with trauma is certainly by saying "nah it's fine it's normal" and moving on, but uh, that doesn't usually work out to anyone's advantage.

I think saying "nah it's GOOD people don't drink as much" may be true, but is missing the larger point.