“It becomes increasingly evident … that our president suffers from a severe form of mental illness,” insists Slate’s David Masciotra. The refusal of public figures from the press to Democrats to pundits to say so plainly makes them the “silent partners” of an abuser. “[T]heir refusal to state the obvious forces the American public to feel as if we are the ones confined to a mental institution.” Then again, it was clear from the outset of his campaign that Trump is mentally imbalanced and unfit to be president. Yet, we as a country — our system — put him where he is. What does that say about us?
Donald Trump’s election and misrule, from his incoherent tweets to his windsock policy gyrations to his daily, whine-and-boast sessions (ostensibly public health briefings), say as much about our breakdown as a county as about the man we’ve watched unravel on live TV.
Decades of movement conservatism have shrunk the government. Trump arrived like an earthly Surtur to finish the job of drowning it the bathtub. Trump would bring about Ragnarök, not to fulfill conservatives’ ends but for his own revenge and aggrandizement.
The pre-Trump United States government was already “crippled by years of right-wing ideological assault, politicization by both parties, and steady defunding,” writes George Packer at The Atlantic. Faith in government had been systematically undermined. Sarah Palin was Trump’s John the Baptist, heralding that expertise and competence had been cast aside to make way for celebrity.
Following the September 11, 2001 attacks and the Great Recession came the plague, the third major crisis of the 21st century:
This was the American landscape that lay open to the virus: in prosperous cities, a class of globally connected desk workers dependent on a class of precarious and invisible service workers; in the countryside, decaying communities in revolt against the modern world; on social media, mutual hatred and endless vituperation among different camps; in the economy, even with full employment, a large and growing gap between triumphant capital and beleaguered labor; in Washington, an empty government led by a con man and his intellectually bankrupt party; around the country, a mood of cynical exhaustion, with no vision of a shared identity or future.
The virus might have united Americans against a common threat, Packer writes. Instead, it lays bare how much an economy that gives lip service to “hard work” rewards instead making money from money. “We now have two categories of work: essential and nonessential.” The plague makes clear many people we reward most highly are essentially nonessential:
We now have two categories of work: essential and nonessential. Who have the essential workers turned out to be? Mostly people in low-paying jobs that require their physical presence and put their health directly at risk: warehouse workers, shelf-stockers, Instacart shoppers, delivery drivers, municipal employees, hospital staffers, home health aides, long-haul truckers. Doctors and nurses are the pandemic’s combat heroes, but the supermarket cashier with her bottle of sanitizer and the UPS driver with his latex gloves are the supply and logistics troops who keep the frontline forces intact.
[…]
The pandemic has also clarified the meaning of nonessential workers. One example is Kelly Loeffler, the Republican junior senator from Georgia, whose sole qualification for the empty seat that she was given in January is her immense wealth. Less than three weeks into the job, after a dire private briefing about the virus, she got even richer from the selling-off of stocks, then she accused Democrats of exaggerating the danger and gave her constituents false assurances that may well have gotten them killed. Loeffler’s impulses in public service are those of a dangerous parasite. A body politic that would place someone like this in high office is well advanced in decay.
In the film, Thor realizes his destiny is not to prevent Asgard’s prophesied destruction but to bring it about. But not without hope of rebirth. “Asgard is not a place … Asgard is where our people stand,” Odin tells him. America is not a place either, but an idea. One of renewal built upon renewal, improvement built upon improvement. Even if interspersed with destruction.
Packer concludes:
We can learn from these dreadful days that stupidity and injustice are lethal; that, in a democracy, being a citizen is essential work; that the alternative to solidarity is death. After we’ve come out of hiding and taken off our masks, we should not forget what it was like to be alone.
[h/t NA]
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.