In an illuminating article in The Atlantic, George Packer argues that America is a failed state. Trump didn’t “make America great again.” He took its weaknesses, frailties, fault lines, and failures and deepened them. He didn’t create them. They were there, the bullies, the racists, the white nationalists, the haters. He gave them license to come into the daylight. He encouraged them.
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…
Trump came to power as the repudiation of the Republican establishment. But the conservative political class and the new leader soon reached an understanding. Whatever their differences on issues like trade and immigration, they shared a basic goal: to strip-mine public assets for the benefit of private interests. Republican politicians and donors who wanted government to do as little as possible for the common good could live happily with a regime that barely knew how to govern at all, and they made themselves Trump’s footmen.
Like a wanton boy throwing matches in a parched field, Trump began to immolate what was left of national civic life. He never even pretended to be president of the whole country, but pitted us against one another along lines of race, sex, religion, citizenship, education, region, and—every day of his presidency—political party. His main tool of governance was to lie. A third of the country locked itself in a hall of mirrors that it believed to be reality; a third drove itself mad with the effort to hold on to the idea of knowable truth; and a third gave up even trying.
Perfect. Packer nails it.
Watching reports of protesters demanding their state “reopen” and reading posts of those who call this a hoax makes me take a look back at history.
Overall our nation has been the “experiment” that has been called the shining example on the hill. But with the good we must also recognize our own shortcomings.
Indian removal and genocide, slavery and Jim Crow, Civil war, KKK, The Dust Bowl era, poverty , and more.
So what does this have to do with today?
Our Native American communities are being hit hard with this virus, their abject poverty has severely limited their access to health care.
African Americans are also getting hit hard because of their limited access to ongoing health care.
Poverty is also driving this pandemic. Those working for Food processors making minimum wage are increasingly falling ill with Covid because they work in conditions that promote the spread of this disease. Often these people have no choice but to work due to their economic needs.
Nursing homes, and Veteran facilities are experiencing a nightmare scenario due to a lack of supplies and protective equipment.
At the same time, protesters are out their waving their American Flags along side of Confederate flags, Nazi Flags, Don’t Tread on Me banners and Trump banners demanding their barber shops, gyms, restaurants and other ancillary businesses be allowed to open.
Also, conspiracy theorists are saying this is no worse than the flu and that the government has an effective treatment but are preventing the use of it.
So if we look at our checkered past, history will judge us as well and I am sorry to say, this will also be written as a dark mark on our nation.
We have an President who continues to lie to us. His “task force” has failed miserably and continues to cover up his missteps.
That said, I still have faith. Faith in our national ideal that we keep moving to be that light shining on the hill. The majority of my fellow citizens believe in this as well. We all need to stand tall, call out the lies, shut down the naysayers and conspiracy theorists, and hold the Trump administration and any other elected officials accountable to us.
So yeah, you post some idiotic crap.. I am calling you out. If you don’t like it, too bad.
Who, exactly, posts “idiotic crap”? Trump? He doesn’t post. He tweets.
The phrase about the “city on a hill” comes, of course, from the speech made by John Winthrop in 1630 aboard the ship Arabella, headed to the new world. In this speech, he called upon the Puritans with him to “abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities” and to “make others’ conditions our own.” In other words, he was calling upon them to create a society in which people would take care of one another and ensure that no one experienced want. Theirs would be, according to Winthrop, a “city on a hill” because all eyes would be upon it to see whether a society organized according to Christian principles of loving one’s neighbor and doing unto the least among them as one would do toward God was, in fact, possible. So, so important. And not what happened, as the superb post, above, explains.
Maybe you’re saying the Packer article is crap for its dark view, the supposed historical inevitability of our dealing badly with crisis. I’d agree there; we’ve had our moments [FDR comes to mind.]
Jon Meacham had an essay in the 3/24 NYT Book Review “Great Leadership in a Time of Crisis,” using works on JFK & Churchill at two pivotal moments to delve into key components. He doesn’t even mention Trump (he doesn’t have to). Worth reading.
My posting crap comment is not in reference to Packer. It was in response to all the social media posts I am seeing, not this article. My apologies for the misunderstanding
That’s a relief! I thought something I wrote offended you.
Ha ha I get it – you were tying back in to your 1st para!
Guess I’m just lucky: too low-techy to be social-media-aware. I am back on FB for the first time in yrs – had gotten tired of even my brilliant friends 😉 posting nothing but “Hi all, I’m eating a sandwich here (photo) or the equivalent. They have more to say now. [None, neither friend nor relative, posts about hoaxes, or wears MAGA hats (as far as I know)]. We’re not precisely a liberal bubble; there’s a good number of [old-style] conservatives among my clan. But fortunately we vacationed together for decades & know how to avoid jerking each others’ chains.
Here we are again, presented with the “REDO” button. An Invisible Boogey man has pushed us over the edge this time. The 3rd time’s a charm is the old adage…..will it hold true?
I read it and sadly agreed with it.
This is from my governor’s Twitter this AM:
Governor Mike DeWine
The recent Internet post by Ohio State Senator Andrew Brenner, likening Ohio’s Department of Health Director’s actions to fight coronavirus to those taken by the Nazis in Germany during World War II, must also be condemned.
I mean, seriously? This state senator can’t find anything better to do? He’s got this much time on his hands during a huge state health/economic crisis?
Andrew Brenner is a fool. He is the same guy who chaired the education committee and declared that public schools are socialism.
Why does Ohio elect people like Brenner and Jim Jordan?
that billion dollar question
I disagree with almost all the conservative policies that Governor DeWine supports. But like Angela Merkel, one does not have to be a progressive to respond to crises in a way that demonstrates a modicum of concern for the people whose well-being the politician is supposed to be concerned about. DeWine is responding the way a NORMAL politician would respond. He is one of the few Republican politicians left who – while very conservative – actually cares about something other than pleasing and enabling Trump. the fact that DeWine is the very rare exception is why this country is descending into near-Fascism.
Scary that those few Republicans left — Mitt Romney is another one — are likely to be thrown out of the Republican party for not adhering to the Republican requirement that the Great Leader Trump is always right, and if he changes his mind, his previous position never existed.
Mitt Romney is the only Republican Senator NOT on the panel to “reopen the economy.” Charming, huh?
Vice News recently aired the videos from missing journalist, Li Zehua, in Wuhan. The Chinese were also unprepared for the virus in the beginning, and the state tried to suppress the news. They also lacked PPE and ventilators. There were bodies lined up in the streets of Wuhan. The difference is that China had the capacity to be more nimble than we are. Being a dictatorship, the Chinese did not have to argue the issue with fifty different state representatives. They also own their own manufacturing facilities. They were able to respond quickly on a large scale.
The current administration was “asleep at the wheel” when the COVID-19 invaded our country. Trump insisted the virus was not coming here because he had a “gut feeling” about it. In January he sent a lot our medical supplies to China. In February he did his best to ignore the fast spreading virus. If we had reacted sooner, we could have saved thousands of lives. Our response has been a tale of too little, too late. Now some knuckle headed red states are opening too early.
It still blows me away that they just didn’t do ANYTHING. There are thousands of people employed in the “Trump Administration”- thousands of political appointees.
None of them did anything. Not one was prepared in any way- not the Dept of Ed, not Labor, not Homeland Security, not FEMA, not HHS.
Every single person Donald Trump hired failed to act. 100% failure.
I just saw that Trump is planning a gigantic July 4th military celebration to distract from the epic fail of the COVID-19 response. BTW I live near Pensacola, and I rarely see the Blue Angels fly over my house. I am not near their usual practice area. This week both the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds flew over together. I imagine we are supposed to forget that so many people are dying because of failed policy. He may also plan to use them in his July 4th stunt. Trump is a P.T. Barnun huckster.https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/2020/04/22/trump-says-military-jets-perform-over-cities-not-all-thrilled/3009028001/
The Blue Angels are doing a flyover Long Island next Tuesday, a gift from Trump.
There’s a terrible irony in watching Don the Con puff himself up onstage during his now daily Trump Pep Rallies, playing the “wartime president,” for he LOVES that role at the same time that he did nothing to fulfill it. Compare how Roosevelt ramped the country up for the conflict in Europe. That’s how a wartime president behaves. Trump could have used his powers to ramp up, massively, the production of tests and PPE. He could have created a single national portal for contact tracing and for reporting symptoms and the need to take a test. He could have mobilized to create field hospitals around the country. Instead, he
denied that there was a problem,
claimed to have contained it,
passed the buck to governors,
tried to blame the virus on China and linked fighting it to his racist anti-immigration policies,
blamed the lack of preparedness on Obama after Trump’s own clown car posse had gutted responsible agencies and ignored warnings from its own officials,
lied daily (and for weeks) about the availability of tests and ventilators and PPE,
touted fake cures,
advanced fake timelines,
stopped funding the WHO in the middle of a pandemic that will be devastating for third-world countries,
slapped his name on everything, including the stimulus payments that his maladministration is taking MONTHS to distribute, and
is now calling for opening things back up without having ubiquitous testing and containment systems in place.
What a horror. We haven’t seen the worst yet. His pathological self-obsession and incompetence and ignorance of science are going to kill a lot of people, here and around the globe. How well I remember people saying that it didn’t really matter who was president because the president really doesn’t have that much power. Well, here we are. We have no leader because he is our leader, and as a result, a lot of people are going to die who didn’t have to.
So far, despite this lack of leadership from Jabba the Trump, we have done a pretty good job of flattening the curve, but at tremendous cost. No thanks to Donnie Boy. Now, since that has worked fairly well, he wants to stop it. He’s actually fomenting insurrection against stay-at-home orders, without yet having adequate testing and medical supplies and contact tracing in place. He’s an utter moron. Something has worked, no thanks to him, so he, naturally, wants to end it. And so the worst, by far, is yet to come. Alas, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
I’m reading today that China’s death count is likely four times what they’ve reported, because they kept changing the def of what dying from covid looks like – e.g., early on, it didn’t count if folks hadn’t been exposed to travelers from Wuhan etc. Fourfold represents what the count would have been, had the most recent def applied, per WHO monitors. Guesstimating, half of the uncounted can be attributed to learning curve on a novel virus – the other half to cultural-political face-saving. Plenty of that going on here too no doubt, but how do you justify that tothe world, when it originates in your country, & you’re allowing natives to fly wherever [300k to US alone in January]??
After Trump declares he was not allowing travelers from China, at least 40,000 travelers arrived from China.
It didn’t happen but it’s interesting to think about what a competent federal response would have looked like. That’s possible. We could have had that. There are people who could have managed one- not these people- but the capacity for that exists.
What if we had seen an all hands on deck approach from every federal agency instead of this incredibly irresponsible approach of pretending it wasn’t happening?
To get better one had to imagine what “better” looks like.
It isn’t “impossible” to achieve basic competency. We could have it. We’re allowed to demand it.
If only we had FDR instead of DJT!
Or HRC! I think HRC would have been a lot like Angela Merkel. Not particularly progressive, supported too many pro-business policies, but in the end, a great person to have in charge in a crisis.
Hillary would have been a great leader in this crisis.
She has some things that Trump does not have: a brain, a heart, a soul, and wisdom.
No surprise that that DUMP got rid of Obama’s National Security Council team focused on pandemic preparedness. AND ALL because Trump is jealous of Obama.
https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/04/14/obama-prepared-for-a-potential-pandemic-trump-gutted-his-work/
Trump is: Making America GRATE. Trump should just move to Russia.
Packer is a good writer, but we get to write the next chapter. I don’t disagree with anything he said, but let’s not let hopelessness finish us off. There have been very bad times in the past, as well. We’ve survived several plagues. Our biggest problem, I think, is that we’ve surrendered the media to corporate interests, to narrow personal interests. Fox rules. We need to sue or occupy Fox and the other media to ensure they actually are fair and balanced, as required by the original Communications Act or ’33 (?). We need to restore PUBLIC education, as corporate education and parochial education miseducates and divides us, tribally. People only know what they are told–and Fox and mangled education, and TV junk for kids, is doing most of the telling. (Also, today’ it’s young white guy know-it-all’s on the internet). Most of all, we have to get folks to VOTE, and make sure the votes are counted–in the states that count electorally. We need to act within the two-party system–oh, where would we be if Nader had supported Gore in Florida? No war on Iraq. No further destruction of the MIddle East and destabilization of Europe–and the world’s #1 power setting such a horrid example. No healthcare prescription law that forbids the govt. from negotiating prices! No it didn’t start with Trump, and it won’t end with him, unless we can get folks together (mentally) to vote for the least bad, if necessary. Get your under 40 kids, grandkids, contacts, friends, to vote for–yes–Biden. With an ordinary Democratic president and Congress we can still work out of this mess of Endless Wars on others, Global Warming, and Trumpism. Please, get everyone to vote.
Jack, thank you for an excellent comment and reminder that our future is in our hands.
Indiana has no idea of how many people are infected.
………………………………
Swab shortage slows state testing
INDIANAPOLIS – Indiana continues to struggle with increasing testing for COVID-19, largely because it can’t find the swabs needed to take a specimen from a person. “Yes, we have tried to buy swabs, but do I know how many swabs we have bought directly? I cannot tell you,” State Health Commissioner Dr. Kris Box said Wednesday.
Notice that Trudeau’s task force will operate with the TOP HEALTH EXPERTS AND SCIENTISTS FROM LEADING INSTITUTIONS ACROSS THE COUNTRY. How does this compare to Pence, Jared and Ivanka? Oh, I forgot. We also get the knowledge of Dr. Trump.
……………………………….
Trudeau’s daily coronavirus update: $1.1 billion for medical and research strategy (Full transcript)
In the PM’s April 23 briefing to Canadians on the COVID-19 pandemic, he announced funding for research on vaccines and treatments, supports for clinical trials and expanding national testing and modelling
By Maclean’s
April 23, 2020
…Let Me Start With The First Pillar On Research. Under This Plan, We’re Investing Close To $115 Million For Research Into Vaccines And Treatments Being Developed In Hospitals And Universities Across The Country. This Is On Top Of The Funding We’ve Already Provided To Support Vaccine Development In Canada.
The second pillar of the plan is to make sure that once we have potential vaccines and treatments, we can test a wide range of options. Under this plan, we will invest over $662 million for clinical trials led by Canada. A vaccine is the long-term solution to this virus, but these drugs will take months to develop, test, fabricate and roll out. So until we have something ready, we need to control the spread of the virus.
And that’s where the third pillar of this plan comes in. We’re investing $350 million to expand national testing and modeling of COVID-19. This includes creating COVID-19 immunity task force. The task force will operate under the direction of a leadership group, which will include Dr. David Naylor, Dr. Catherine Hankins, Dr. Tim Evans, Dr. Theresa Tam and Dr Mona Nemer. We are bringing together top health experts and scientists from leading institutions across the country...
https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/trudeaus-daily-coronavirus-update-1-1-billion-for-medical-and-research-strategy-full-transcript/
I love this essay. Packer tersely lists the outrages resulting from our fed govt’s lack of response, & kicks it up a notch to the spot-on parallel: “like a Pakistan or a Belarus.” “Failed state” hews chillingly close– much closer than my usual go-to of dark moods, “banana republic.” Because we’re not a perennially-weak state that transited from colonial feudalism to dictatorship-military coup-dictatorship to thoroughly-corrupt “democracy.” Belarus is an unfair comparison: they went from feudal to eons-long dictatorship to weak flirtation with democracy. But we’re not so different from Pakistan, where democracy flowered for a while after colonialism. Ours just flowered longer. I think it can be rescued, but time is growing short.
“Republican politicians and donors who wanted government to do as little as possible for the common good could live happily with a regime that barely knew how to govern at all, and they made themselves Trump’s footmen.”
I swear, Congressional– and media– conservatives don’t understand the meaning of the word “emergency.” The foot-dragging and equivocation in the name of civil rights and balance of power [fed-state, mostly] is mind-boggling.
We have historical precedents, and the Patriot Act is not one of them. It’s the only emergency response I could think of where the shoe was on the other foot & liberals were issuing dire warnings about loss of civil liberties and upsetting balances of power.
9/11 was terrible, but the emergency phase was short-lived and hardly justified such outrages as 6 years of indiscriminate warrantless NSA wiretaps on American citizens, and 19 yrs of war collapsing the fragile political balance in the Middle East and triggering the worst refugee crisis in decades.
My guess is McConnell & Co are all twisted up over how any centralized-gov success at handling social disaster equitably might (shudder) awake the populace to the benefits of moving the needle back to center or even left of center policy. Meanwhile their quibbles over balance of power are a joke: like Dems, Reps have been ceding power to the exec for 60 yrs; the only way they share power today is by backing pres whims 100%.
My online comment: “Trump is a product of grotesque social inequality.” The war industry is making out very well and corporations are taking over people’s rights. My voice no longer counts because politically, I don’t have a million dollars to ‘invest’ in my Congressmen. It is very sad to watch the degradation of society. Now, with COVID-19, the situation is more dire than ever before. Millions now are jobless. Small businesses are going bankrupt and too much of the stimulus money is going to the wealthy.”
Chris Hedges, “America: The Farewell Tour”
Aug 30, 2018
Chris Hedges, “America: The Farewell Tour”, at Politics and Prose on 8/22/18.
A longtime foreign correspondent, Hedges has reported from more than fifty countries. His latest book is a profound exploration of one of the most troubled: today’s United States. Hedges, author of American Fascists and War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, cites the opioid crisis, the increases in gambling and magical thinking, and the explosion of xenophobia as symptoms of a society that has lost hope. He traces this disillusionment to the twin ills of a de facto corporate coup d’état and a failed democracy. The anger and frustration these have spawned helped bring Trump to power and Hedges issues a passionate call to action to reverse them.