We Are Living in a Failed State

[Tennesseer]

Excellent article.

We Are Living in a Failed State
The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken.

When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity—to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category.

The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational, and collective. The United States reacted instead like Pakistan or Belarus—like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering. The administration squandered two irretrievable months to prepare. From the president came willful blindness, scapegoating, boasts, and lies. From his mouthpieces, conspiracy theories and miracle cures. A few senators and corporate executives acted quickly—not to prevent the coming disaster, but to profit from it. When a government doctor tried to warn the public of the danger, the White House took the mic and politicized the message.

Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state. With no national plan—no coherent instructions at all—families, schools, and offices were left to decide on their own whether to shut down and take shelter. When test kits, masks, gowns, and ventilators were found to be in desperately short supply, governors pleaded for them from the White House, which stalled, then called on private enterprise, which couldn’t deliver. States and cities were forced into bidding wars that left them prey to price gouging and corporate profiteering. Civilians took out their sewing machines to try to keep ill-equipped hospital workers healthy and their patients alive. Russia, Taiwan, and the United Nations sent humanitarian aid to the world’s richest power—a beggar nation in utter chaos.

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?

Complete article here: We Are Living in a Failed State

[djAdvocate]

brilliant work. thanks for posting.

[Tennesseer]

A related article to the one in the opening post:

‘Sadness’ and Disbelief From a World Missing American Leadership

BERLIN — As images of America’s overwhelmed hospital wards and snaking jobless lines have flickered across the world, people on the European side of the Atlantic are looking at the richest and most powerful nation in the world with disbelief.

“When people see these pictures of New York City they say, ‘How can this happen? How is this possible?’” said Henrik Enderlein, president of the Berlin-based Hertie School, a university focused on public policy. “We are all stunned. Look at the jobless lines. Twenty-two million,” he added.

“I feel a desperate sadness,” said Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European history at Oxford University and a lifelong and ardent Atlanticist.

The pandemic sweeping the globe has done more than take lives and livelihoods from New Delhi to New York. It is shaking fundamental assumptions about American exceptionalism — the special role the United States played for decades after World War II as the reach of its values and power made it a global leader and example to the world.

Today it is leading in a different way: More than 840,000 Americans have been diagnosed with Covid-19 and at least 46,784 have died from it, more than anywhere else in the world.

As the calamity unfolds, President Trump and state governors are not only arguing over what to do, but also over who has the authority to do it. Mr. Trump has fomented protests against the safety measures urged by scientific advisers, misrepresented facts about the virus and the government response nearly daily, and this week used the virus to cut off the issuing of green cards to people seeking to emigrate to the United States.

Complete article here: ‘Sadness’ and Disbelief From a World Missing American Leadership

[Rukh O'Rorke]

While we do have the most deaths - we do not have the highest number of deaths per capita


www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
check on the deaths per million, the table is sortable.

Sadly - we may get to the most deaths per million.

Who were the posters hailing sweden for not shutting down? Sweden has a higher #deaths/million than we have.

[djAdvocate]

Sweden made a terrible miscalculation.

[justme]

Because they're either ignoring the updated news or the news they listen to isn't updating them. Yesterday I was talking with my mom about all this and she was like well then why is it working in Sweden. And I started laughing and said it's not it's now going spectacularly bad they just had a slight delay before it became and shitshow. And she was like really? When? They had been doing so good. 

[djAdvocate]

Apr 23, 2020 12:45:01 GMT -5 justme said:

Because they're either ignoring the updated news or the news they listen to isn't updating them. Yesterday I was talking with my mom about all this and she was like well then why is it working in Sweden. And I started laughing and said it's not it's now going spectacularly bad they just had a slight delay before it became and shitshow. And she was like really? When? They had been doing so good. 

i don't think I need to ask where she gets her news.

the HQC Network, right?

[Bob Ross]

Apr 23, 2020 12:17:14 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

A related article to the one in the opening post:

‘Sadness’ and Disbelief From a World Missing American Leadership

This is what happens when someone pinches out a loaf and nearly seven decades later it's elected President.

[justme]

Apr 23, 2020 12:52:37 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

Apr 23, 2020 12:45:01 GMT -5 justme said:

Because they're either ignoring the updated news or the news they listen to isn't updating them. Yesterday I was talking with my mom about all this and she was like well then why is it working in Sweden. And I started laughing and said it's not it's now going spectacularly bad they just had a slight delay before it became and shitshow. And she was like really? When? They had been doing so good. 

i don't think I need to ask where she gets her news.

the HQC Network, right?

Not sure what HQC is supposed to stand for, but yea they tend towards fox and such though not exclusively.

Ironically they're otherwise taking the virus seriously with social distancing, staying at home, wearing masks and such.

[NastyWoman]

Apr 23, 2020 14:14:36 GMT -5 justme said:

Apr 23, 2020 12:52:37 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

i don't think I need to ask where she gets her news.

the HQC Network, right?

Not sure what HQC is supposed to stand for, but yea they tend towards fox and such though not exclusively.

Ironically they're otherwise taking the virus seriously with social distancing, staying at home, wearing masks and such.

But only where it concerns their own skin, if it concerns others like CNN anchors, not so much...

"Fox News host Laura Ingraham and network contributor Raymond Arroyo took aim Wednesday night at CNN anchors who have tested positive for the new coronavirus, calling the infections a “deliberate attempt” by the network to “graft” the anchors onto the crisis and likening the situation to a reality show. ..."

www.yahoo.com/news/fox-news-hosts-fun-cnn-050430990.html

[justme]

Apr 24, 2020 12:30:45 GMT -5 NastyWoman said:

Apr 23, 2020 14:14:36 GMT -5 justme said:

Not sure what HQC is supposed to stand for, but yea they tend towards fox and such though not exclusively.

Ironically they're otherwise taking the virus seriously with social distancing, staying at home, wearing masks and such.

But only where it concerns their own skin, if it concerns others like CNN anchors, not so much...

"Fox News host Laura Ingraham and network contributor Raymond Arroyo took aim Wednesday night at CNN anchors who have tested positive for the new coronavirus, calling the infections a “deliberate attempt” by the network to “graft” the anchors onto the crisis and likening the situation to a reality show. ..."

www.yahoo.com/news/fox-news-hosts-fun-cnn-050430990.html

I was referring to my parents taking it seriously even though I know they watch a lot of fox. 

[Tennesseer]

Apr 24, 2020 12:30:45 GMT -5 NastyWoman said:

Apr 23, 2020 14:14:36 GMT -5 justme said:

Not sure what HQC is supposed to stand for, but yea they tend towards fox and such though not exclusively.

Ironically they're otherwise taking the virus seriously with social distancing, staying at home, wearing masks and such.

But only where it concerns their own skin, if it concerns others like CNN anchors, not so much...

"Fox News host Laura Ingraham and network contributor Raymond Arroyo took aim Wednesday night at CNN anchors who have tested positive for the new coronavirus, calling the infections a “deliberate attempt” by the network to “graft” the anchors onto the crisis and likening the situation to a reality show. ..."

www.yahoo.com/news/fox-news-hosts-fun-cnn-050430990.html