Living in a Broken America

Though not a religious person myself, I respect those who use their faith as a springboard to lead more meaningful and virtuous lives.  For Christians, at least the kind I associate myself with, that means emulating the life of Christ and the adoption of His values–and this is unequivocally a good thing.  Such a life calls for taking care of those less fortunate, mercy, forgiveness, compassion, and trying to find the best in one another, while protecting our environment and the life forms that share our planet.

Of course, this is the precise opposite of what has become of this country over the past decades, where a small percentage of Americans control the vast majority of wealth, and use that power to gain even more, at the expense of plunging large swaths of the U.S. population into suffering and despair.  It’s caused even greater levels of bigotry, exclusion, extreme classism, and racial violence that defines so much of our history.  It is “us versus them” in every sense, whether we’re talking about our race, our views on law enforcement,  social class, or political party.

Staff writer for The Atlantic George Packard brilliantly explains how this set us up in his article:

We Are Living in a Failed State

The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken.

He lays out how the strains brought about by the 9-11 attack in 2001 and the 2008 financial disaster that permanently crippled so many in what used to be the middle class, set us up for the mayhem associated with the response to COVID-19.  We’re an ignorant, hateful, divided nation, led by a man who couldn’t care less about the health outcome of 330 million Americans, and makes decisions solely on the way they affect his prospects for re-election.

Anyone wonder how it’s possible that the disease curves are under control for 99% of the countries around the world outside our borders, and how things are going so wrong here,  you need look no further,

It’s terrifying, but it’s real.