Feel-Good Friday: "The Unraveling of America" (Rolling Stone) and "Is the U.S. a failed state in 2020?" (Salon)

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Let's get the weekend kicked off in style!

 

The Unraveling of America: Anthropologist Wade Davis on how COVID-19 signals the end of the American era (Rolling Stone)

Quote

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.

 

Is the U.S. a failed state in 2020? Experts' answers range from "maybe" to "hell, yes" (Salon)

Quote

If the United States isn't a failed state in 2020, it is rapidly on its way toward becoming one. Economists, historians and public health experts I spoke to would generally agree with that sentence, even if they might disagree on some of the details or the severity of the crisis.

 

[Jason]

Just now, Emperor Diocletian II said:

In a dark season of pestilence, COVID has reduced to tatters the illusion of American exceptionalism.

 

American exceptionalism in the 21st century basically amounts to "what works elsewhere couldn't possibly work here!"

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Heck, I might even re-post this one from the COVID-19 Megathread for good measure!

 

How the Pandemic Defeated America (The Atlantic)

Quote

How did it come to this? A virus a thousand times smaller than a dust mote has humbled and humiliated the planet’s most powerful nation. America has failed to protect its people, leaving them with illness and financial ruin. It has lost its status as a global leader. It has careened between inaction and ineptitude. The breadth and magnitude of its errors are difficult, in the moment, to truly fathom.

 

Despite ample warning, the U.S. squandered every possible opportunity to control the coronavirus. And despite its considerable advantages—immense resources, biomedical might, scientific expertise—it floundered. While countries as different as South Korea, Thailand, Iceland, Slovakia, and Australia acted decisively to bend the curve of infections downward, the U.S. achieved merely a plateau in the spring, which changed to an appalling upward slope in the summer. “The U.S. fundamentally failed in ways that were worse than I ever could have imagined,” Julia Marcus, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, told me.

 

[Uaarkson]

This has been obvious to anyone paying attention the last 12 years.

[CitizenVectron]

What can someone inside the US (or someone living dangerously close) do at this point to maximize their life? Simply live through the collapse, hoping that it is gradual enough not to result in catastrophe?

[Jason]

Just now, CitizenVectron said:

What can someone inside the US (or someone living dangerously close) do at this point to maximize their life? Simply live through the collapse, hoping that it is gradual enough not to result in catastrophe?

 

Live in a non-shithole state? California and New York are probably way better situated to survive the collapse of the US than Kansas or Alabama.

[CitizenVectron]

Another good excerpt from the first article:

 

Quote

The American cult of the individual denies not just community but the very idea of society. No one owes anything to anyone. All must be prepared to fight for everything: education, shelter, food, medical care. What every prosperous and successful democracy deems to be fundamental rights — universal health care, equal access to quality public education, a social safety net for the weak, elderly, and infirmed — America dismisses as socialist indulgences, as if so many signs of weakness.

 

How can the rest of the world expect America to lead on global threats — climate change, the extinction crisis, pandemics — when the country no longer has a sense of benign purpose, or collective well-being, even within its own national community? Flag-wrapped patriotism is no substitute for compassion; anger and hostility no match for love. Those who flock to beaches, bars, and political rallies, putting their fellow citizens at risk, are not exercising freedom; they are displaying, as one commentator has noted, the weakness of a people who lack both the stoicism to endure the pandemic and the fortitude to defeat it.

 

That's really the root of America's long-term issue: Me, me, me. When nothing matters more than getting something at the expense of someone else (in even as simple an act as cutting someone off in traffic to gain 2 seconds on a journey), it is emblematic of a failed society.

[Zaku3]

8 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

Another good excerpt from the first article:

 

 

That's really the root of America's long-term issue: Me, me, me. When nothing matters more than getting something at the expense of someone else (in even as simple an act as cutting someone off in traffic to gain 2 seconds on a journey), it is emblematic of a failed society.

Who knew a nation build on the myth of white slave owners fighting for their freedom would lead to a failed state.

[rc0101]

The sooner and quicker it happens the better. Have some friends who live in the Republic of Georgia and lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union. Their advice was to buy a lot of gold jewelry lol. 

[CitizenVectron]

 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

[Signifyin(g)Monkey]

All empires fall; the question is how well it’s dealt with.  This is a prelude; the real determinant of how well we fare is how we handle the end of dollar hegemony.
 

My sense is that the government is very dysfunctional and it might stay that way for a long time, but we still have a tremendous capacity for technological innovation, so our future will look more like post-hegemonic Britain than post-hegemonic Russian empire or post-hegemonic Rome.  I.e., not what it was, and chock-loaded with issues, but still a pretty good place to live compared to many of the alternatives.

 

But, yeah, we didn’t handle the coronavirus pandemic all that well.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

25 minutes ago, Signifyin(g)Monkey said:

All empires fall; the question is how well it’s dealt with.  This is a prelude; the real determinant of how well we fare is how we handle the end of dollar hegemony.
 

My sense is that the government is very dysfunctional and it might stay that way for a long time, but we still have a tremendous capacity for technological innovation, so our future will look more like post-hegemonic Britain than post-hegemonic Russian empire or post-hegemonic Rome.  I.e., not what it was, and chock-loaded with issues, but still a pretty good place to live compared to many of the alternatives.

 

But, yeah, we didn’t handle the coronavirus pandemic all that well.

You're forgetting a couple of critical differences between the inevitable post-hegemonic United States and those other examples.

 

We're armed to the teeth and can barely stand the sight of each other.  Those other cases didn't have those variables.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

17 minutes ago, Emperor Diocletian II said:

You're forgetting a couple of critical differences between the inevitable post-hegemonic United States and those other examples.

 

We're armed to the teeth and can barely stand the sight of each other.  Those other cases didn't have those variables.

We also have conflicting ideas of our national mythology. We can't even agree on why our nation exists, or should continue to do so!

 

Add in a healthy dose of climate change to boot and you've got a dangerous mix going. It takes a willful blindness to see things in a Stephen Pinker-esque "things aren't as bad as they seem"