Enjoyed this article in Atlantic...comments? It's long, and there is some I disagree with..there is enough meat here to justify ignoring the fat..LOL
This second crisis, (the Great Recession) drove a profound wedge between Americans: between the upper and lower classes, Republicans and Democrats, metropolitan and rural people, the native-born and immigrants, ordinary Americans and their leaders. Social bonds had been under growing strain for several decades, and now they began to tear. The reforms of the Obama years, important as they wereāin health care, financial regulation, green energyāhad only palliative effects. The long recovery over the past decade enriched corporations and investors, lulled professionals, and left the working class further behind. The lasting effect of the slump was to increase polarization and to discredit authority, especially governmentās.
Both parties were slow to grasp how much credibility theyād lost. The coming politics was populist. Its harbinger wasnāt Barack Obama but Sarah Palin, the absurdly unready vice-presidential candidate who scorned expertise and reveled in celebrity. She was Donald Trumpās John the Baptist.
The virus should have united Americans against a common threat. With different leadership, it might have. Instead, even as it spread from blue to red areas, attitudes broke down along familiar partisan lines. The virus also should have been a great leveler. You donāt have to be in the military or in debt to be a targetāyou just have to be human. But from the start, its effects have been skewed by the inequality that weāve tolerated for so long. When tests for the virus were almost impossible to find, the wealthy and connectedāthe model and reality-TV host Heidi Klum, the entire roster of the Brooklyn Nets, the presidentās conservative alliesāwere somehow able to get tested, despite many showing no symptoms. The smattering of individual results did nothing to protect public health. Meanwhile, ordinary people with fevers and chills had to wait in long and possibly infectious lines, only to be turned away because they werenāt actually suffocating. An internet joke proposed that the only way to find out whether you had the virus was to sneeze in a rich personās face.
When Trump was asked about this blatant unfairness, he expressed disapproval but added, āPerhaps thatās been the story of life.ā
I have to say...that Trump spoke the truth--hard and bitter--but 'it is what it is' sometimes. There is no question in my mind that our incessant faction fighting is hurting us. It crippled our decision making process in the beginning..and now it threatens to taint our recovery.
We Are Living in a Failed State
The coronavirus didnāt break America. It revealed what was already broken.
www.theatlantic.com
This second crisis, (the Great Recession) drove a profound wedge between Americans: between the upper and lower classes, Republicans and Democrats, metropolitan and rural people, the native-born and immigrants, ordinary Americans and their leaders. Social bonds had been under growing strain for several decades, and now they began to tear. The reforms of the Obama years, important as they wereāin health care, financial regulation, green energyāhad only palliative effects. The long recovery over the past decade enriched corporations and investors, lulled professionals, and left the working class further behind. The lasting effect of the slump was to increase polarization and to discredit authority, especially governmentās.
Both parties were slow to grasp how much credibility theyād lost. The coming politics was populist. Its harbinger wasnāt Barack Obama but Sarah Palin, the absurdly unready vice-presidential candidate who scorned expertise and reveled in celebrity. She was Donald Trumpās John the Baptist.
The virus should have united Americans against a common threat. With different leadership, it might have. Instead, even as it spread from blue to red areas, attitudes broke down along familiar partisan lines. The virus also should have been a great leveler. You donāt have to be in the military or in debt to be a targetāyou just have to be human. But from the start, its effects have been skewed by the inequality that weāve tolerated for so long. When tests for the virus were almost impossible to find, the wealthy and connectedāthe model and reality-TV host Heidi Klum, the entire roster of the Brooklyn Nets, the presidentās conservative alliesāwere somehow able to get tested, despite many showing no symptoms. The smattering of individual results did nothing to protect public health. Meanwhile, ordinary people with fevers and chills had to wait in long and possibly infectious lines, only to be turned away because they werenāt actually suffocating. An internet joke proposed that the only way to find out whether you had the virus was to sneeze in a rich personās face.
When Trump was asked about this blatant unfairness, he expressed disapproval but added, āPerhaps thatās been the story of life.ā
I have to say...that Trump spoke the truth--hard and bitter--but 'it is what it is' sometimes. There is no question in my mind that our incessant faction fighting is hurting us. It crippled our decision making process in the beginning..and now it threatens to taint our recovery.