The Unraveling of America -Must Read
In a dark season of pestilence, COVID has reduced to tatters the illusion of American exceptionalism. At the height of the crisis, with more than 2,000 dying each day, Americans found themselves members of a failed state, ruled by a dysfunctional and incompetent government largely responsible for death rates that added a tragic coda to America’s claim to supremacy in the world.
For the first time, the international community felt compelled to send disaster relief to Washington. For more than two centuries, reported the Irish Times, “the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the U.S. until now: pity.” As American doctors and nurses eagerly awaited emergency airlifts of basic supplies from China, the hinge of history opened to the Asian century.
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If and when the Chinese are ascendant, with their concentration camps for the Uighurs, the ruthless reach of their military, their 200 million surveillance cameras watching every move and gesture of their people, we will surely long for the best years of the American century. For the moment, we have only the kleptocracy of Donald Trump. Between praising the Chinese for their treatment of the Uighurs, describing their internment and torture as “exactly the right thing to do,” and his dispensing of medical advice concerning the therapeutic use of chemical disinfectants, Trump blithely remarked, “One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” He had in mind, of course, the coronavirus, but, as others have said, he might just as well have been referring to the American dream
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/covid-19-end-of-american-era-wade-davis-1038206/
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A must read.
I was struck on the difference of today verses how we mobilized as a united country during WWII.
If we had a real president today, we could do the same -- and be united instead of being pulled apart at the seams.
President Bush (43) began preparing for a global pandemic. President Obama strengthened that preparation. Then Donald destroyed it, and sat on his hands. What he did do, he made sure he shamefully benefited one way or another - monetarily or politically.
Anyway, this is an excellent essay. I'm going to read it again.
