We're On Our Own: Faced With A Generational Pandemic, A Depression, And A Broken Government, We're All We Have

This isn’t the best news.

It isn’t particularly hopeful.

But the truth is the truth: we’re on our own.

It is obvious now that the Trump Administration intends to sit out the entirety of the coronavirus pandemic with only one discernible goal, and that is do absolutely nothing while lying about it. This post-political strategy will be incredibly deadly and frustrating, but it’s what you would have to expect from an anti-president only concerned with personal profit and power.

In partnership with Republicans and businesses, the administration is pushing Americans back to work regardless of the obvious fact that nothing has changed regarding the virus’s strength or ability to spread. We have no plan for testing. We have no plan for tracing. We have no plan to reopen America safely and yet, we are reopening America and inviting the virus back into our lives.

The only reason is because to do otherwise would mean a massive reconsideration of who we are as a country and a people. It would mean a reconsideration of where we’ve been and where we are going, including a reckoning with the poison that infects our government and society and a reckoning with our own priorities and identities. It would mean a blanket rejection of our economy and mythical meritocracy in exchange for new infrastructure and a new means of living our lives.

For America to undergo yet another quarantining would mean a disaster in a marketplace that was built to be inherently unstable. That is one of the fueling myths in all of this, that our economy was ever meant to sustain itself despite the fact that we have seen it, time and time again, as recently as twelve years ago, implode and leave Americans suffering and terrified of the future. It is a machine that simply does not work, and our denial of that very fact is what keeps it running.

Already we are looking at 26 million unemployed, and, from some economists, possibly upwards of a 26% jobless rate. Our putrid government offered us $1,200 apiece as a salve while throwing billions at companies that would have done fine regardless. The game is rigged and we’re always on the losing side. Now, the administration and their constellation of Right Wing thinktanks are pushing against further stimulus, arguing instead to push Americans to borrow against their Social Security benefits.

Again, I wish the news were better, but it’s simply not.

Faced with a depression and a raging pandemic, we need to understand that we are on our own.

But that should not discourage you. Because if we are all on our own then we are in it together, in spite of our government and our representatives. To be on our own means we can find solace in one another instead of continuing in our strife and personal competition that has both poisoned public and personal life and inspired deep, deep unhappiness.

We must recognize, at long last, that politics is more than a spectacle. That it isn’t simply something we watch on the television and gossip about like the latest reality series. It is a form of social discourse meant to make our lives better and serve OUR business. It’s time to organize around that principle, to talk to our neighbors, our loved ones, our families, and start to remember that this government is meant to serve us.

There is no waiting anymore. There is no hero coming. There’s no Robert Mueller clad in Captain America’s suit. There are no adults in the room. The Trump Administration isn’t even a real presidential administration, but a cadre of corrupt criminals providing a thin veneer of halfhearted grins. That’s it.

At long last, we are all we have.

The glad tidings, and there are glad tidings, is that America is a nation of cycles. We can trace this moment back, surely, to the 1930’s as America suffered through a Depression after a market collapse and teetered on the brink of fascism. That era found their purpose in the New Deal and the collective fight against fascism. We can also look back to the turning of the 20th century, when robber barons controlled the country until regular citizens coalesced, organized, and took the nation back for themselves.

We are all we have. But surely that has to be enough.

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.