"I'm surprised we've seen so little protest on a world scale to date, but maybe the initial shock and fear will have to begin dissipating before people not only feel disgruntled, but emboldened enough to start exploring politics seriously and asserting themselves. Or maybe it'll again be back to business as usual."
It can't be back to business as usual because that's exactly what has changed. There will be no more business as usual. The post WWII American dream of working class families attaining stable work, modest housing, and education and resulting upward mobility for their kids has just been destroyed for at least a generation. Everybody's hoping of course that this is not the case and that they will find the rabbit hole that saves them from life-long indentured servitude (at best). It will take some years before they realize that there are no more rabbit holes or before they realize that this is mean dream for humanity. Another thing that has changed (and will not change back) is the dispossession of the middle class and the reliance upon the middle class and the intelligentsia to reconcile the workers to their lot. Both of these changes might result in radical mass mobilizations.
We'll see.
Joanna