He's an idiot. He can't tell a virus from a germ. He doesn't understand testing or tracing or the conditions on which a lockdown can be lifted - in stages. He just doesn't care except for how this impacts his chances for re-election.
We're witnessing a nation coming apart at the seams, Lorne. This is terminal-stage neoliberalism and it's getting ugly and volatile. The center isn't holding as America splits into tribes.
Civil war, revolution, something is coming. This cannot last.
Agreed, Mound. Whenever I watch American news, I am struck by how dysfunctional the U.S is. That dysfunction, of course, has been in evidence long before our current situation, but the pandemic really has set in bold relief that they are not one nation under God, as their mythology would have people believe.
Consider this passage from a recent Livesey op-ed in Nat Ob:
"The journalist and author George Packer noted in a piece entitled “We Are Living in a Failed State” in The Atlantic recently: “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.”
"And esteemed Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs recently told The New Yorker: “Basically, American politics has become deeply corrupt over decades, and it became so corrupt that normal governance already collapsed many years ago. Nobody here has viewed government as actually very functional for a long time, and not because it couldn’t be. It has been increasingly designed to fail. Specifically, it’s been designed to respond to powerful lobbies that want deregulation or tax cuts or some special privileges rather than to function in a normal way… We’ve had widening inequalities and massive suffering.”
"Due to this dysfunction, America is now ground zero for the pandemic. Of the world’s 3.6 million known cases of COVID-19 (with 251,000 deaths), more than 1.2 million are in the U.S., with 70,000 fatalities. And this is only the first wave of the virus.
"Madness is caused by many things. But I would argue capitalism encourages mental illness. And no other country has bound itself more tightly to a brutal, heartless form of capitalism than America. So much so that, against all reason, it still doesn’t have a socialized health care system, which means 87 million Americans have no or inadquate medical coverage. And many of those Americans being thrown out of work because of COVID-19 are also losing their health insurance.
"Capitalism breeds madness because it generates relentless stress. The stress from competition to make money, the insecurity of never knowing whether your job, company or entire industry will collapse or be moved offshore."
I found it a compelling analysis. It makes a compelling argument for a society ruled, not governed - ruled, by a government so broadly and deeply corrupt that it can no longer function, creating such fears, insecurity and pressures that people crack, break down mentally.
I did read your blog entry, Mound, and the searing analysis rendered therein is hard to argue against. Were more Americans given to critical thinking instead of mindless patriotism and jingoism, their future might be different, but past results are, unlike investment planning, indicative of future performance.
He's an idiot. He can't tell a virus from a germ. He doesn't understand testing or tracing or the conditions on which a lockdown can be lifted - in stages. He just doesn't care except for how this impacts his chances for re-election.
ReplyDeleteWe're witnessing a nation coming apart at the seams, Lorne. This is terminal-stage neoliberalism and it's getting ugly and volatile. The center isn't holding as America splits into tribes.
Civil war, revolution, something is coming. This cannot last.
Agreed, Mound. Whenever I watch American news, I am struck by how dysfunctional the U.S is. That dysfunction, of course, has been in evidence long before our current situation, but the pandemic really has set in bold relief that they are not one nation under God, as their mythology would have people believe.
DeleteConsider this passage from a recent Livesey op-ed in Nat Ob:
ReplyDelete"The journalist and author George Packer noted in a piece entitled “We Are Living in a Failed State” in The Atlantic recently: “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.”
"And esteemed Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs recently told The New Yorker: “Basically, American politics has become deeply corrupt over decades, and it became so corrupt that normal governance already collapsed many years ago. Nobody here has viewed government as actually very functional for a long time, and not because it couldn’t be. It has been increasingly designed to fail. Specifically, it’s been designed to respond to powerful lobbies that want deregulation or tax cuts or some special privileges rather than to function in a normal way… We’ve had widening inequalities and massive suffering.”
"Due to this dysfunction, America is now ground zero for the pandemic. Of the world’s 3.6 million known cases of COVID-19 (with 251,000 deaths), more than 1.2 million are in the U.S., with 70,000 fatalities. And this is only the first wave of the virus.
"Madness is caused by many things. But I would argue capitalism encourages mental illness. And no other country has bound itself more tightly to a brutal, heartless form of capitalism than America. So much so that, against all reason, it still doesn’t have a socialized health care system, which means 87 million Americans have no or inadquate medical coverage. And many of those Americans being thrown out of work because of COVID-19 are also losing their health insurance.
"Capitalism breeds madness because it generates relentless stress. The stress from competition to make money, the insecurity of never knowing whether your job, company or entire industry will collapse or be moved offshore."
I found it a compelling analysis. It makes a compelling argument for a society ruled, not governed - ruled, by a government so broadly and deeply corrupt that it can no longer function, creating such fears, insecurity and pressures that people crack, break down mentally.
I did read your blog entry, Mound, and the searing analysis rendered therein is hard to argue against. Were more Americans given to critical thinking instead of mindless patriotism and jingoism, their future might be different, but past results are, unlike investment planning, indicative of future performance.
Delete