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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWe Are Living in a Failed State
The coronavirus didnt break America. It revealed what was already broken.JUNE 2020 ISSUE
George Packer
Staff writer for The Atlantic
When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic illsa corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted publichad 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 severityto 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 Belaruslike 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 quicklynot 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 planno coherent instructions at allfamilies, 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 couldnt 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 worlds richest powera beggar nation in utter chaos.
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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, andevery day of his presidencypolitical 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.
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the rest of this MOST XLNT article:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/underlying-conditions/610261/
abqtommy
(14,118 posts)the opening sentence of the original op: "When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly." Sorry, but a virus doesn't have that level of intelligence. But I understand, even if I don't like it...
secondwind
(16,903 posts)abqtommy
(14,118 posts)BComplex
(8,051 posts)some serious, and very deep, awakenings.
robbob
(3,530 posts)Why not more along the lines of when the virus arrived here it came to a country with...etc. etc.
The only thing a virus can find is a suitable host in which to replicate. It really has no awareness of the underlying political landscape.
SpankMe
(2,957 posts)The opening sentence is a metaphorical construction symbolizing a virus not only wreaking havoc in the body and exposing the body's weaknesses against the invading pathogen, but also wreaking havoc with a country's institutions, political effectiveness and its ability to adapt its resources and intelligence to combat it.
It's part of the author's artistic license in painting a picture for the reader.
It's a perfectly fine way to phrase it. It doesn't take an invader with "intelligence" to exploit a nation's underlying conditions.
Under Trump, everything is an underlying condition - with heavy emphasis on the "lying".
sarcasmo
(23,968 posts)cilla4progress
(24,733 posts)and my thoughts precisely. COVID is revealing the already brokenness it slammed into here. Exposing our muderous vulture failed version of capitalism.
Where to from here? Can this serve as a lancing of the pustulence? At such great expense. 100k innocent lives thrown on the bier.
CrispyQ
(36,464 posts)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 Trumps footmen.
Wounded Bear
(58,656 posts)bookmark to read later.
thanks