Covid-19 Is Peeling The Veneer Off Of American Exceptionalism

[Celerity]

Some Americans are surviving Coronavirus just fine. But many are perishing in an economy that was already making their lives miserable.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/covid-19-is-peeling-the-veneer-off



It’s been a while since I’ve written an article about privilege but as the national suffering from Covid-19 continues to mount, I thought it might be a good time to revisit the topic. Unlike a very significant percent of the country, my family happens to have avoided the worst social and economic effects of the pandemic (so far). Part of this was through preparation (as I mentioned last week, we started stocking up three weeks before the national meltdown) but a lot of it was simply luck.

For instance, both my wife Debra and our next door neighbor Claudia have government jobs that allow them to work from home. That means we still have money coming in to pay the bills. It also means they’re not being exposed to infection outside the home nearly as much as essential workers. At the same time, since we’ve been acting as an extended family unit for the last three and a half years and our apartments are literally next to each other (by design), we have a lot more room. We’re not confined to a single apartment for the duration of this pandemic. This is especially important for the kids because being able to move freely from one apartment to the other removes the feeling of being trapped.

We’re not “lucky” in the sense that we needed good fortune to be in this particular arrangement. Both Debbie and Claudia worked very hard to get where they are. And we all put in a lot of effort to build our extended family unit to be the close-knit group we are today. We are, however, lucky in the sense that all of this just happens to make it relatively easy for us to weather this particular global catastrophe.

Not Everyone Is So Lucky

Ironically, even as Bernie Sanders drops out of the running, the nation is experiencing first-hand the kind of problems he based his campaign on fixing. Unemployment, poverty, food insecurity, etc. These are all significantly worse than they were just two months ago and they’re spreading. The Washington Post reports:



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[Karadeniz]

1. Hoping things continue to flow smoothly for you all.....❤

[Moostache]

2. American "Exceptionalism" in the 21st century was always a sick joke...

This pandemic is simply revealing the moral and intellectual bankruptcy at the heart of the entire conservative agenda...stripped of their bullshit and culture war bullshit, they are very simply a bumper sticker philosophy and not a very good one at that:

Profits matter, People don't.

That is it in a nutshell. The whole BS narrative of American Exceptionalism for them was mindless jingoism disguised as patriotic waxing and waning to remind old voters of a time that seemed better in retrospect that it was in reality. It was also a way of getting people to ignore the damage the last 40 years have done in terms of distribution of wealth between labor and capital and just how insanely out of whack that has become.

[Ohiogal]

3. America is like a Easter egg

All pretty on the outside, but once it’s cracked, empty on the inside.

My best friend’s husband, her son-in-law, and her brother-in-law all lost their jobs due to Covid-19. Her daughter and son-in-law have a 3 month old baby. That family is hurting. And I am sure there are millions more just like them struggling right now.

[Bradshaw3]

4. Well said n/t