A Nation Ablaze: As The Pandemic Worsens, America Chooses To Look Away
I wish it wouldn’t have been this predictable.
The United States of America, bored by quarantine and misled by Donald Trump’s continued destruction of reality, has simply given up on combating the coronavirus, limiting unnecessary exposure and human suffering, and decided to run full bore into the maw of a generational pandemic screaming, “Mission accomplished!”
The anecdotal evidence is overwhelming, particularly here in rural America, where my fear of a smalltown genocide is sadly coming to fruition. Even while cases and deaths are rising, people are flocking to restaurants and businesses, refusing to wear masks and mocking anyone who chooses to do so, and generally behaving as if the country isn’t on fire.
Maybe it’s to be expected. After all, politicians of every stripe and every party are pretending as if the pandemic is behind us, all of them motivated by complete subservience and ceaseless dedication to the inhuman market and economy. Even as they all swore that reopening America would follow strict guidelines and that any uptick in cases would result in another shutdown for the sake and safety of Americans, now we’re watching the truth unfold. The doors have been opened and there’s no shutting them again.
What a frustrating, terrifying, bewildering moment.
The supposed richest and most powerful nation in the world reduced to paranoid ramblings about conspiracies and computer gurus seeking to implement “the Mark of the Beast,” public health experts harassed and intimidated into silence, the government itself unwilling to even address the crisis and choosing, instead, to ignore it wholesale.
America, as a nation, is failing. After decades of being bought and sold by special interests and the wealthy elite, our government is incapable of addressing any problem, large or small. It is a figurehead, a gaggle of cartoon characters we watch wrestle one another on the nightly news as if watching a premiere cable drama or, worse, an insipid, pointless reality show. While other countries have met the pandemic head on, fought it tooth and nail, provided extensive testing and support programs, America has shrugged and gritted its teeth, preparing for a disaster that is totally unnecessary and murderous in its scope.
Future readers of history, most of then, undoubtedly, hiding or huddling from climate disasters or future pandemics the United States should have addressed had we cared about addressing anything, will read this chapter of our history - perhaps the final chapter - and shake their heads. It is a baffling thing, how a civilization can implode like this. They’ll need to study our white supremacist problem, our religious decay and paranoia, the misinformation and radicalization brought on by cable news and burgeoning internet channels, but the picture will still be muddled.
How could they let this happen? they’ll ask, like ourselves when we read about Easter Island or the Fall of Rome.
How could they let this happen.
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.
