The Doldrums: America is Failing in the Pandemic and Failing as a Nation
The numbers continue to rise.
The number of American dead, as accurate as it can be in this time of altered reality, ticks toward 100,000 and it seems like every new minute of this fresh hell brings with it more confusion, more anger, and more despair.
We already know it didn’t have to be like this. Donald Trump’s failure and unwillingness to actually fight the pandemic sentenced thousands of Americans to unnecessary, lonely, agonizing deaths. The lies are never-ending and just expected at this point, an assault on our dignity and wills. Meanwhile, domestic white extremist terrorists have used the crisis for their own purposes, including recruiting and hastening the fall of America in order to install their own fascist dictatorship. Their activity has halted a legislature, threatened and intimidated scientists, politicians, journalists, and public figures. And now, in Frankfort, Kentucky, they made a startling statement by hanging Kentucky governor Andy Beshear in effigy, a metaphor for what they’re angling to do.
Meanwhile, Americans are beginning to break. Incidents are across the board of individuals lashing out against one another, confrontations over wearing masks or not wearing masks, showdowns in the street. In part due to the country’s identity being mixed with the myth of rugged individualism, the beaches and bars are flooded with people thumbing their nose at the concept of public health. It is obvious, as beaches are flooded with tens of thousands of people, that the pandemic is over in the minds of many, or that they simply do not care who they hurt or what damage they cause.
The projections show that summer is likely lost, and that deaths will increase in the coming months. Some models have shown we should jump from 100,000 to 200,000 dead in a flash, and Trump has already promised he will fight any effort to lock the country down a second time. Everyone knew fall would have another massive outbreak, followed by winter, and then into spring.
But there’s nothing telling us that anything can be done. The government has failed. We have failed. America has failed.
But Wall Street is not failing. As is the case with all things in the American economy, our stock market is inherently wired to boom when people suffer. The pandemic has served as a handy tool to wield continued austerity like a weapon and Trump’s refusal to honor his oath and protect the people has shown the wealthy in this country they are safe from taxes or reform. Their ceaseless pursuit of unimpeded profit and power will continue even as the solution is so obvious it’s comical.
This country is in denial, and has been in denial for generations. This check was always coming due and even now, as that fact is disturbingly clear, it is still just out of reach. We will shovel more of our fellow Americans into the maw of this deadly pandemic. Even as the numbers continue to rise we will pretend like everything is getting better, and perhaps some states will even continue doctoring their numbers to support that desire. In the fall, we’ll pour our college students back into the classrooms in order to have football. And the delusion will continue into perpetuity until there’s no ability to deny the truth.
That frustration and dull anger and sadness you feel is this realization. There was hope, perhaps momentarily, that a crisis such as this would catalyze our country and we might bind together, like past generations, in solidarity and take effective, necessary action. But no country that would ever elect Donald Trump, a staggeringly inept authoritarian with only a penchant for spewing cultural poison, could mount such a defense. We’re in a freefall, and unless something changes, something large and miraculous, the ground is coming to meet us in a hurry.
Jared Yates Sexton is the author of American Rule: How A Nation Conquered The World But Failed its People, available for pre-order from Dutton/Penguin-Random House. His work has appeared in the New York Times, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, Politico, and elsewhere. He currently serves as an associate professor of writing at Georgia Southern University and is the co-host of The Muckrake Podcast.
