You don’t have to live outside of America to feel heartbroken about how our country is being governed, but it probably helps to have some distance to get a truly objective opinion.
As coronavirus cases surge in the U.S. South and West, health experts in countries with falling case numbers are watching with a growing sense of alarm and disbelief, with many wondering why virus-stricken U.S. states continue to reopen and why the advice of scientists is often ignored.
“It really does feel like the U.S. has given up,” said Siouxsie Wiles, an infectious-diseases specialist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand — a country that has confirmed only three new cases over the last three weeks and where citizens have now largely returned to their pre-coronavirus routines.
“I can’t imagine what it must be like having to go to work knowing it’s unsafe,” Wiles said of the U.S.-wide economic reopening. “It’s hard to see how this ends. There are just going to be more and more people infected, and more and more deaths. It’s heartbreaking.”
This is hardly the first time in our history that our southern conservative culture has made things unbearable for the rest of us, but this is definitely the worst example since the end of Jim Crow. It’s almost funny to see foreigners ask why these Republican-led states aren’t listening to the advice of scientists. It’s like they didn’t read the early chapters about the Scopes Trial or keep up with how biblical literalism has been used to do everything from justifying slavery and homophobia to disputing the core findings of biology, geology, and climate science.
These people are in charge here. The rest of us are helpless until this conservative revolution burns itself out. Thousands and thousands of are currently paying the price with their lives. And many of us have been warning about this for years and years. I’ve been at this for fifteen, and things have generally gotten much worse, there are signs that things are coming to a head.
With any luck, this will be the last spasm of lethal stupidity we get from southern conservatives, and we can begin to join the rest of the developed world in modernity.
Trump is their last moment of national relevance. Its a reaction to Obama. But its amazing that our reaction to their reaction is the coagulation of a new silent majority.
In an increasingly diverse society like ours, there will always be political fissures. But I suspect that even out of office, trump and his citizen enablers will be self perpetuating boogeymen for at least 10 years. After that, who knows.
I’ll believe the stupid is behind us if we kick ass in 2020 and manage to hold serve in the 2022 midterms. Until we can do that, the stupid will continue.