How the American Idiot Made America Unlivable

[G_j]

https://eand.co/how-the-american-idiot-made-america-unlivable-7531e917181b

America is a Poor Country Now, in Ways that are Likely to be Permanent

umair haque
Jul 13 · 10 min read

New Zealand declared victory over Coronavirus yesterday. “Team New Zealand,” as Kiwis refer to themselves, celebrated having a virus free country. America, on the other hand, had close to 70,000 cases. Seventy thousand — and exploding.

What the American Idiot has done to America is to make it an impoverished country. Not just any kind of poverty — what you might call deep poverty. Let me explain.

New Zealand has zero new cases of Corona. In America, they’re spinning out of control. One way to think about it is to say that your chances of dying of this lethal pandemic are now…infinitely higher in America than in New Zealand. Compared to Europe and Canada, they’re about a hundred times higher.

That’s a kind of poverty, too. A poverty of public health. Americans have spent decades being impoverished of public health by the American Idiot — the kind of person who votes against better healthcare for everyone, including themselves, their kids, their parents. What the? What kind of idiot does that? A very, very large number of Americans.

The result of that attitude was a society poor in a gruesome and strange way — poor in public health itself. What I mean by that is that American life expectancy is the lowest in the rich world, and plummeting, that Americans have the highest rates of all kinds of preventable chronic diseases, from diabetes to obesity to heart disease. You can see it on American faces, in fact: a society poor in health is a society of unhealthy people.

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[PJMcK]

1. It wasn't just Trump

America's demise has been over 50 years in the making. In the mid-1960s, Barry Goldwater and his band of ultra-Conservatives began the death march to today's sad results.

The Republicans, and later Teabaggers and Trumpists, have been responsible for:

- The diminishment of our public education
- The diminishment of our public health systems
- The rise of Corporatism
- The diminishment of our infrastructure
- The court-packing with ignorant right-wing judges
- The militarization of our police forces
- The divisions between our police forces and the citizens they are meant to serve
- The diminishment of American influence in world affairs

There are so many more things they've done to damage our country in their greedy pursuits of money and power.

In fact, Trump hasn't even been that effective in these pursuits. I'd suggest that Republican Senators and Congressmen have been far more influential in these negative goals than Trump. And let's not excuse the many State-level Republicans who damaged their own communities in their avarice.

[enough]

2. Yes. NT

[2naSalit]

3. +100000000000000000!!!

[Laelth]

5. Just so.

This is nothing new, and it wasn’t an accident.

-Laelth

[hunter]

6. The Republican Party needs to die.

I hope to see it mortally wounded in November.

When the Republicans started attacking immigrants and LGBT people in California they destroyed themselves.

The Republican's utterly incompetent response to the coronavirus will soon be obvious to everyone, even the Trump supporters.

Supporting Trump was a very stupid thing for the Republicans to do.

California elected Arnold Schwarzenegger in a similar fashion, but for all his faults and political inexperience, Schwarzenegger is not a narcissistic sociopath like Trump. California has had worse governors.

[PJMcK]

7. "California has had worse governors"

Reagan comes to mind.

[Happy Hoosier]

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