By Michael F. Duggan
We live in a time when 760,000 American deaths is considered to be an acceptable operating cost in dealing with a mostly preventable disease. That is almost 100,000 more than the total number of all United States combat deaths from all of our wars combined (look it up if you don’t believe me). It is now the deadliest episode of our history. Considering that there are three safe and highly effective free vaccines available on request, this number becomes especially baffling. And now with COVID-19 cases on the rise again in many states, we appear to be on the cusp of the fourth surge. Or is it the fifth? The question is whether the disease will go from pandemic to endemic and if it might have been eradicated.
Except for avoidable mistakes made during 2020, the problem does not appear to be at the Federal level; the vaccines were underwritten by the United States Government, and the current administration got 200 million vaccinations out in its first 100 days. The failure as it persists today is in the fabric of the nation, the uneven patchwork of jurisdictions that make up the United States. Anybody who believes in delegating power to the states ought to write a ground-up history on the COVID-19 crisis.
The United States is also a nation in which flirting with fascism and the use of violent imagery in political speech have become ubiquitous in parts of the electorate (history is watching their leaders and will remember their names). Some of these people embrace empirically disprovable delusions and some believe that they have a right to act violently on the basis of these fevered dreams and other irrational impulses.
Recently, hundreds of people attended an event at Dealey Plaza to welcome John F. Kennedy, Jr., back to the political fight (on top of the patent absurdity of such an expectation is the fact that John-John’s political view were nothing remotely like those of today’s conspiracy followers). It is unclear whether this kind of behavior is mass psychosis or, as others have suggested, something more like a propaganda-driven cult (as Justice Holmes reminds us, “[w]hen the ignorant are taught to doubt, they do not know what they might safely believe,” at which point they might fall for anything). Those on the extremity of the other side of the political spectrum are only marginally less extreme in some of their acts and prescriptions (e.g. the taking down of statutes of Grant and Lincoln). Taken together, the country is a pressurized bottle on a high gas flame. Throw in the five looming and mostly unaddressed crises of the environment—human overpopulation, carbon generation/climate change, deforestation/habitat destruction/loss of biodiversity, water issues, and the plastics crisis—and you get a fair idea of the lay of the land.
With many Americans hurting as the predictable result of the economic disruption of the pandemic, government spending is a necessity but also inflationary (the primary cause of inflation are the shortages caused by the back up in supply lines and networks around the world). The American Relief Plan Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the incredible, shrinking Build Back Better Act are all necessary for the general welfare. Even though the Infrastructure Act is a long term in scope, programs that flush the economy with ready cash can keep prices high, at least in the short term. There appears to be no immediate remedy for inflation, which is a global phenomenon.
The administration’s legislative agenda, the mass distribution of vaccines, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the creation of 500,000 new jobs are all notable accomplishments. And yet these achievements are not registering with many Americans. Some commentators have observed that inflation has hit the red states harder, which might explain the discontent among conservative independents. The administration has less than 12 months to get things moving again, to get the word out about its successes, and to tamp down the anger behind the divisions. If it doesn’t, then what? If Biden succeeds, he will be the president who turned things around. If not he will be a tragic figure of history, his agenda a noble effort to save a nation that did not meet him halfway.
I do not know what will be coming after the 2022 midterm elections and especially after 2024, but it might be unrecognizable relative to what we have come to know in this country. What happens if the losers in close political races do not concede defeat? What if voter suppression and other undemocratic measures allow political minorities to dominate? How will the U.S. military react if violence breaks out in parts of the country, or if extremest groups assert themselves with political violence? If you have a plausible claim to citizenship in a more rational, less volatile country, you might want to beat the rush and start the application process now.