"We Are Living in a Failed State"

[handmade34]

posted earlier by douglas9 but deserves to be seen by the pm readers... excellent essay, a good read from The Atlantic

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=post&forum=1016&pid=253162


https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/underlying-conditions/610261/

would post an excerpt but the entire essay is worthy

[matt819]

1. This says everything I've been thinking, but says it more eloquently

Some Canadian relatives threw out the possibility that a Democratic rout in November could result in a new New Deal, v. 2020.

Interesting thought.

But you know what? Right now I'm feeling pretty damned down. I got some money from the PPP, and that should last a few months. Then what? Will my European suppliers reopen? Will my US customers be inclined to buy? In the meantime, tens of thousands of San Antonians line up for food distribution. Residents of nursing homes and related facilities are dying in the thousands. Health care workers will be well beyond their breaking points and will receive almost no support from their own masters who are focused on their bottom lines. We've already seen doctors and nurses and others fired, and of course they will continue to die. We have hundreds, maybe thousands, of Americans clamoring for the right to catch the virus, and that has already begun. For haircuts, beach outings, and to return to jobs that are no longer there or at companies that are currently shut down. Just continue to watch the numbers rise while even more Americans fall ill and die. And the monster that resides at the white house will claim credit when "only" 50,000 or 60,000, or 80,000 Americans die. I am glad, by the way, that he has not expressed any compassion for those who have died and their families who could be at their sides when they did, because we know that he doesn't care. As Dr. Bandy Lee has observed, he has anti-human tendencies. I'm pretty sure there are serial killers who could rustle up more believable compassion than this monster.

It's funny, just before the lockdowns started, I got the latest Nick Kristof book out of the library, about Americans dying deaths of despair and of some trying to climb out of that despair. Talk about awful timing. I can't bring myself to read the book, as the new reality is far worse than what Kristof wrote about.

And then I think about "what's next." I have no clue, but I can't see any of it being good. Politically, we'll be even more divisive, if that's even possible. Economically, the wealth divide - and the resentment of the have nots - will be even greater. I think we're going to see even bolder attempts to turn us into a theocratic state, and the rabid religionists on the supreme court will almost certainly pave the way for this.

The not knowing what's next is bad enough. The expectation that it will almost certainly not be good is really getting me down.

[Mersky]

2. Pretty much matches some of my waking thoughts

(Btw, Handmade34, the link to Douglas9’s post goes straight to a reply window. Otherwise, thanks for reposting ).

[BlueMTexpat]

3. This part REALLY hit home for me.

...
Donald Trump saw the crisis almost entirely in personal and political terms. Fearing for his reelection, he declared the coronavirus pandemic a war, and himself a wartime president. But the leader he brings to mind is Marshal Philippe Pétain, the French general who, in 1940, signed an armistice with Germany after its rout of French defenses, then formed the pro-Nazi Vichy regime. Like Pétain, Trump collaborated with the invader and abandoned his country to a prolonged disaster. And, like France in 1940, America in 2020 has stunned itself with a collapse that’s larger and deeper than one miserable leader. Some future autopsy of the pandemic might be called Strange Defeat, after the historian and Resistance fighter Marc Bloch’s contemporaneous study of the fall of France. Despite countless examples around the U.S. of individual courage and sacrifice, the failure is national. And it should force a question that most Americans have never had to ask: Do we trust our leaders and one another enough to summon a collective response to a mortal threat? Are we still capable of self-government?
...

This is indeed a thought-provoking, if terrifying, essay.

[handmade34]

4. ...

yes, how can you trust a system that allows a sick man to become president and continue in that role for a term?

[appalachiablue]

5. Check that, a system that permitted this to happen

[Celerity]

6. K & R