Our current situation in the U.S. – an uncontrolled pandemic, an economy in collapse, overwhelmed medical and governmental systems, a frightened public rapidly losing what little faith in political leadership it has left, miles-long lines of people desperate for the most basic material relief, food – this is the stuff of apocalyptic fiction.
Of course it is neither fiction nor a bad dream, but the grim reality facing us all at once, unfolding daily in the graphic detail of disease and death, with no end in sight. Which prompts the question: How could such monumental failure – failure to prepare, failure to accept the warnings of health scientists, failure to recognize the reality of the advancing epidemic even as it stared officials full in the face, failure of multiple systems on multiple levels to respond in a way that provides for our collective security – how could all this happen in the U.S., the “greatest country in the world,” indeed “the greatest country that has ever existed in the history of the world”?
Time to wake up, citizens. Time to realize that the narrative of U.S. greatness and exceptionalism is in serious and severe error, if it is not an outright lie propagated by oligarchs and plutocrats who succeeded in looting our treasury for forty-plus years by letting our systems of collective security fall into decay and disrepair. “Make America Great Again,” indeed.
The general definition of a “failed state” is one in which the systems of public order and provision are so dysfunctional that the government loses control. If we’re not there yet, we’re damned close. The emperor’s nakedness has been exposed by a submicroscopic infectious agent.
The Southern Miss School of Social Work 