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We Are Living In A Failed State
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/underlying-conditions/610261/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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We Are Living In A Failed State (Original Post)
Arkansas Granny
Apr 2020
OP
Elections have consequences. I'll take Obama's handling of the ebola crisis over...
brush
Apr 2020
#1
While that is definitely true, the issues are bigger and started well before Obama
Merlot
Apr 2020
#2
brush
(53,764 posts)1. Elections have consequences. I'll take Obama's handling of the ebola crisis over...
the stupid, orange blob's handling of the coronavirus any day.
Merlot
(9,696 posts)2. While that is definitely true, the issues are bigger and started well before Obama
brush
(53,764 posts)3. O put a response mechanism in place and left a playbook for pandemic response.
trump stupidly dismantled or reassigned anything he could that Obama created. This could have been significantly lessened with competent WH leadership.
Merlot
(9,696 posts)4. Yes, we all know that. The gist of the Atlantic article: not about what Obama could have done.
nancy1942
(635 posts)5. Thanks for posting this.
A very sobering read.