The United States is now nakedly exposed to contingent events for another 3.5 years, until Bush leaves office. Mediocre Republican minds and a philosophical antipathy to government intervention underpin this situation. Intelligence and planning will not be applied to anticipate and ameliorate future diasters; we just have to sit back and absorb them.
What will be next? My sense is a pandemic, possibly involving the much-talked-about bird flu virus or a variation. The flu vaccination fuck-ups last winter and the general Republican hostility to science and good government point to this.
We’ve still got 3.5 years to go.
