Arthur Camins writes here about the disastrous consequences of governmental incompetence and failed leadership.
We need a government that is accountable to the people, one that protects us from catastrophes like the present, one that looks forward and prepares.
What we have instead is indifference and incompetence at the highest levels.
Recently Trump mused aloud about the value of ingesting poisonous disinfectants. When asked whether he was responsible for those who took his musings as advice, he answered that he took “no responsibility.”
Camins writes:
“Despite, or may because of, its vast wealth, the United States has utterly failed to perform its most basic duty to protect all of its inhabitants. It is morally, if not criminally, negligent. Four decades of withdrawal from the principle of government-led social responsibility laid the foundation for the avoidable rapid spread of the SARS-CoV2 virus, chaos, and resultant economic catastrophe. More of us should have seen this coming. For decades, Democratic politicians hesitated to alienate donors or imagined middle-of-the-road voters, the mainstream media played the phony both-side-story game, and Republicans purposefully ignored all the warnings. They are responsible for the resultant death and suffering.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“…imagined middle-of-the-road voters,…” Not sure who these people are. My perception of the American Electorate is that the inflation caused by high energy costs during the late seventies produced a climate in the country that made the anti-government rhetoric of the right wing stick in the minds of the voters. They moved by degrees over the last 40 years solidly to the right, some of them toward a sort of libertarian viewpoint and some toward a social control viewpoint (this latter group would include the evangelical conservative, anti-abortion, anti-homosexual crowd). With the migration toward the Sunbelt, the American body politic has moved solidly to the right. Voters who believe in the social responsibility of government have effectively been shut out of the process. Without massive participation of a concerned voting public that shares the belief that government can be responsive and effective, we will continue to be governed by voters on the right, who have thus far been more active in pursuing their vote as a matter of wielding power.
As my teen son would say, “Tru Dat”! This is EXACTLY why I am an angry Independent. I have to align myself to a Democratic Party that doesn’t align with my core beliefs so that I have the right to vote in a primary election for candidates that don’t hold my same beliefs. I don’t like to compromise my soul and I resent that I must do so in order to participate in the political process….which by the way seems more like a sham every single voting cycle. I know he’s done but I’m going to say it anyway Feel the Bern!! People should really be getting tired of the LOTE vote (for those who don’t know….lesser of two evils)….don’t you think?
“For leading Democrats, the decades after the election of Ronald Reagan were the era of prevarication concerning government responsibility for all people.”
The inherent problem with corporate Democrats is that like Republicans they have served corporations and abrogated most of their responsibility to the health, well-being and stability of working families. They have failed to acknowledge and address the struggle of working families in the heartland and elsewhere.
If we want a government of, by and for the people, we need to figure out ways to get the money out of politics. As long as winners are those with the largest coffers, we will not have have leadership responds to the needs of people. We need to work to eliminate Citizens United, even if it takes a Constitutional amendment. We need to provide candidates with equal government funding for elections instead of accepting money from corporate donors. One of the reasons our voter turnout is poor is that many people feel that the government no longer cares to hear them. Unless we make significant changes to the amount of money in politics, we will continue to destroy the common good to benefit the 1% and corporations.
Just the lack of anyone doing any actual work is amazing to me.
“It remains unclear what the coronavirus task force has been doing, exactly, besides attending the press conferences that the president has grown bored of. They haven’t created any sort of national testing and tracing program, though they have devoted some energy to acting as if they had. (The White House unveiled an eight-part national testing strategy just last week. Seven of the eight parts were already labeled as completed, and the eighth amounted to asking the states to design, fund, and implement mass testing programs themselves.)”
The standards are so low. They’ve done nothing but appear on television and smile and nod as the President makes things up, and yet we’re all supposed to pretend this is work.
This is in a country where we have an entire cottage industry devoted to scolding school children and telling them they don’t work hard enough, are “coddled”, all get A’s, etc.
I don’t know- are we in a position to scold them? We did absolutely nothing while a virus spread unchecked. How many people work for Donald Trump? What do they do all day?
https://newrepublic.com/article/157642/trumps-coronavirus-task-farce