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| what happens when the leader is a charismatic charlatan? |
I have been watching the dawning, infuriatingly slow wake-up call Covid-19 has been for many Americans these past few weeks... as the Washington Post editorial goes, this pandemic will strip the United States of any pretence to normalcy or capability. Trump is one man, but he represents something the land of the free has indulged for decades now - a willingness to ignore science, fact, and reality, for pure partisan ideology and bias.
This emotive, irrational and blind behaviour, aided and abetted by the right-wing, often religious TV and radio media and latterly, the amoral nihilistic Silicon valley companies, literally recreated a biblical-level-event Babel. Since America is ludicrously rich and powerful, it has had much capital to spend, even waste.
But it has been too intellectually and morally profligate, and now has a gutted and aberrant leadership, unable to form coherent, rational plans, and project determined, sane orders outwards, to change and ameliorate the real world. Genuine power is defined by the ability to change facts on the ground to one's advantage. America now is a blinded, stupid giant, flailing, and the peasants at its feet are dying. This is rhetoric, but the reality is, the President is the worst possible person to be marshalling the forces required to save American lives.
Covid-19 kills 1-5% of citizens in a small European quasi-socialist nation like Italy. In a vast country unable to control quarantines and mandate universal treatment and care for all, that number could soar to 5-10%. It is not fanciful to predict that between 3 and 30 million Americans could die from this pandemic, before a vaccine is found.
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