Has something for everyone, especially people liking WW2 nazi analogies. :P
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/underlying-conditions/610261/
QuoteWe Are Living in a Failed State
The coronavirus didn't break America. It revealed what was already broken.
When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity—to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category.
The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational, and collective. The United States reacted instead like Pakistan or Belarus—like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering. The administration squandered two irretrievable months to prepare. From the president came willful blindness, scapegoating, boasts, and lies. From his mouthpieces, conspiracy theories and miracle cures. A few senators and corporate executives acted quickly—not to prevent the coming disaster, but to profit from it. When a government doctor tried to warn the public of the danger, the White House took the mic and politicized the message.
Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state. With no national plan—no coherent instructions at all—families, schools, and offices were left to decide on their own whether to shut down and take shelter. When test kits, masks, gowns, and ventilators were found to be in desperately short supply, governors pleaded for them from the White House, which stalled, then called on private enterprise, which couldn't deliver. States and cities were forced into bidding wars that left them prey to price gouging and corporate profiteering. Civilians took out their sewing machines to try to keep ill-equipped hospital workers healthy and their patients alive. Russia, Taiwan, and the United Nations sent humanitarian aid to the world's richest power—a beggar nation in utter chaos.
Donald Trump saw the crisis almost entirely in personal and political terms. Fearing for his reelection, he declared the coronavirus pandemic a war, and himself a wartime president. But the leader he brings to mind is Marshal Philippe Pétain, the French general who, in 1940, signed an armistice with Germany after its rout of French defenses, then formed the pro-Nazi Vichy regime. Like Pétain, Trump collaborated with the invader and abandoned his country to a prolonged disaster. And, like France in 1940, America in 2020 has stunned itself with a collapse that's larger and deeper than one miserable leader. Some future autopsy of the pandemic might be called Strange Defeat, after the historian and Resistance fighter Marc Bloch's contemporaneous study of the fall of France. Despite countless examples around the U.S. of individual courage and sacrifice, the failure is national. And it should force a question that most Americans have never had to ask: Do we trust our leaders and one another enough to summon a collective response to a mortal threat? Are we still capable of self-government?
This is the third major crisis of the short 21st century. The first, on September 11, 2001, came when Americans were still living mentally in the previous century, and the memory of depression, world war, and cold war remained strong. On that day, people in the rural heartland did not see New York as an alien stew of immigrants and liberals that deserved its fate, but as a great American city that had taken a hit for the whole country. Firefighters from Indiana drove 800 miles to help the rescue effort at Ground Zero. Our civic reflex was to mourn and mobilize together.
Partisan politics and terrible policies, especially the Iraq War, erased the sense of national unity and fed a bitterness toward the political class that never really faded. The second crisis, in 2008, intensified it. At the top, the financial crash could almost be considered a success. Congress passed a bipartisan bailout bill that saved the financial system. Outgoing Bush-administration officials cooperated with incoming Obama administration officials. The experts at the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department used monetary and fiscal policy to prevent a second Great Depression. Leading bankers were shamed but not prosecuted; most of them kept their fortunes and some their jobs. Before long they were back in business. A Wall Street trader told me that the financial crisis had been a "speed bump."
All of the lasting pain was felt in the middle and at the bottom, by Americans who had taken on debt and lost their jobs, homes, and retirement savings. Many of them never recovered, and young people who came of age in the Great Recession are doomed to be poorer than their parents. Inequality—the fundamental, relentless force in American life since the late 1970s—grew worse.
This second crisis drove a profound wedge between Americans: between the upper and lower classes, Republicans and Democrats, metropolitan and rural people, the native-born and immigrants, ordinary Americans and their leaders. Social bonds had been under growing strain for several decades, and now they began to tear. The reforms of the Obama years, important as they were—in health care, financial regulation, green energy—had only palliative effects. The long recovery over the past decade enriched corporations and investors, lulled professionals, and left the working class further behind. The lasting effect of the slump was to increase polarization and to discredit authority, especially government's.
Both parties were slow to grasp how much credibility they'd lost. The coming politics was populist. Its harbinger wasn't Barack Obama but Sarah Palin, the absurdly unready vice-presidential candidate who scorned expertise and reveled in celebrity. She was Donald Trump's John the Baptist.
Trump came to power as the repudiation of the Republican establishment. But the conservative political class and the new leader soon reached an understanding. Whatever their differences on issues like trade and immigration, they shared a basic goal: to strip-mine public assets for the benefit of private interests. Republican politicians and donors who wanted government to do as little as possible for the common good could live happily with a regime that barely knew how to govern at all, and they made themselves Trump's footmen.
Like a wanton boy throwing matches in a parched field, Trump began to immolate what was left of national civic life. He never even pretended to be president of the whole country, but pitted us against one another along lines of race, sex, religion, citizenship, education, region, and—every day of his presidency—political party. His main tool of governance was to lie. A third of the country locked itself in a hall of mirrors that it believed to be reality; a third drove itself mad with the effort to hold on to the idea of knowable truth; and a third gave up even trying.
Trump acquired a federal government crippled by years of right-wing ideological assault, politicization by both parties, and steady defunding. He set about finishing off the job and destroying the professional civil service. He drove out some of the most talented and experienced career officials, left essential positions unfilled, and installed loyalists as commissars over the cowed survivors, with one purpose: to serve his own interests. His major legislative accomplishment, one of the largest tax cuts in history, sent hundreds of billions of dollars to corporations and the rich. The beneficiaries flocked to patronize his resorts and line his reelection pockets. If lying was his means for using power, corruption was his end.
This was the American landscape that lay open to the virus: in prosperous cities, a class of globally connected desk workers dependent on a class of precarious and invisible service workers; in the countryside, decaying communities in revolt against the modern world; on social media, mutual hatred and endless vituperation among different camps; in the economy, even with full employment, a large and growing gap between triumphant capital and beleaguered labor; in Washington, an empty government led by a con man and his intellectually bankrupt party; around the country, a mood of cynical exhaustion, with no vision of a shared identity or future.
If the pandemic really is a kind of war, it's the first to be fought on this soil in a century and a half. Invasion and occupation expose a society's fault lines, exaggerating what goes unnoticed or accepted in peacetime, clarifying essential truths, raising the smell of buried rot.
The virus should have united Americans against a common threat. With different leadership, it might have. Instead, even as it spread from blue to red areas, attitudes broke down along familiar partisan lines. The virus also should have been a great leveler. You don't have to be in the military or in debt to be a target—you just have to be human. But from the start, its effects have been skewed by the inequality that we've tolerated for so long. When tests for the virus were almost impossible to find, the wealthy and connected—the model and reality-TV host Heidi Klum, the entire roster of the Brooklyn Nets, the president's conservative allies—were somehow able to get tested, despite many showing no symptoms. The smattering of individual results did nothing to protect public health. Meanwhile, ordinary people with fevers and chills had to wait in long and possibly infectious lines, only to be turned away because they weren't actually suffocating. An internet joke proposed that the only way to find out whether you had the virus was to sneeze in a rich person's face.
When Trump was asked about this blatant unfairness, he expressed disapproval but added, "Perhaps that's been the story of life." Most Americans hardly register this kind of special privilege in normal times. But in the first weeks of the pandemic it sparked outrage, as if, during a general mobilization, the rich had been allowed to buy their way out of military service and hoard gas masks. As the contagion has spread, its victims have been likely to be poor, black, and brown people. The gross inequality of our health-care system is evident in the sight of refrigerated trucks lined up outside public hospitals.
We now have two categories of work: essential and nonessential. Who have the essential workers turned out to be? Mostly people in low-paying jobs that require their physical presence and put their health directly at risk: warehouse workers, shelf-stockers, Instacart shoppers, delivery drivers, municipal employees, hospital staffers, home health aides, long-haul truckers. Doctors and nurses are the pandemic's combat heroes, but the supermarket cashier with her bottle of sanitizer and the UPS driver with his latex gloves are the supply and logistics troops who keep the frontline forces intact. In a smartphone economy that hides whole classes of human beings, we're learning where our food and goods come from, who keeps us alive. An order of organic baby arugula on AmazonFresh is cheap and arrives overnight in part because the people who grow it, sort it, pack it, and deliver it have to keep working while sick. For most service workers, sick leave turns out to be an impossible luxury. It's worth asking if we would accept a higher price and slower delivery so that they could stay home.
The pandemic has also clarified the meaning of nonessential workers. One example is Kelly Loeffler, the Republican junior senator from Georgia, whose sole qualification for the empty seat that she was given in January is her immense wealth. Less than three weeks into the job, after a dire private briefing about the virus, she got even richer from the selling-off of stocks, then she accused Democrats of exaggerating the danger and gave her constituents false assurances that may well have gotten them killed. Loeffler's impulses in public service are those of a dangerous parasite. A body politic that would place someone like this in high office is well advanced in decay.
The purest embodiment of political nihilism is not Trump himself but his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. In his short lifetime, Kushner has been fraudulently promoted as both a meritocrat and a populist. He was born into a moneyed real-estate family the month Ronald Reagan entered the Oval Office, in 1981—a princeling of the second Gilded Age. Despite Jared's mediocre academic record, he was admitted to Harvard after his father, Charles, pledged a $2.5 million donation to the university. Father helped son with $10 million in loans for a start in the family business, then Jared continued his elite education at the law and business schools of NYU, where his father had contributed $3 million. Jared repaid his father's support with fierce loyalty when Charles was sentenced to two years in federal prison in 2005 for trying to resolve a family legal quarrel by entrapping his sister's husband with a prostitute and videotaping the encounter.
Jared Kushner failed as a skyscraper owner and a newspaper publisher, but he always found someone to rescue him, and his self-confidence only grew. In American Oligarchs, Andrea Bernstein describes how he adopted the outlook of a risk-taking entrepreneur, a "disruptor" of the new economy. Under the influence of his mentor Rupert Murdoch, he found ways to fuse his financial, political, and journalistic pursuits. He made conflicts of interest his business model.
So when his father-in-law became president, Kushner quickly gained power in an administration that raised amateurism, nepotism, and corruption to governing principles. As long as he busied himself with Middle East peace, his feckless meddling didn't matter to most Americans. But since he became an influential adviser to Trump on the coronavirus pandemic, the result has been mass death.
In his first week on the job, in mid-March, Kushner co-authored the worst Oval Office speech in memory, interrupted the vital work of other officials, may have compromised security protocols, flirted with conflicts of interest and violations of federal law, and made fatuous promises that quickly turned to dust. "The federal government is not designed to solve all our problems," he said, explaining how he would tap his corporate connections to create drive-through testing sites. They never materialized. He was convinced by corporate leaders that Trump should not use presidential authority to compel industries to manufacture ventilators—then Kushner's own attempt to negotiate a deal with General Motors fell through. With no loss of faith in himself, he blamed shortages of necessary equipment and gear on incompetent state governors.
To watch this pale, slim-suited dilettante breeze into the middle of a deadly crisis, dispensing business-school jargon to cloud the massive failure of his father-in-law's administration, is to see the collapse of a whole approach to governing. It turns out that scientific experts and other civil servants are not traitorous members of a "deep state"—they're essential workers, and marginalizing them in favor of ideologues and sycophants is a threat to the nation's health. It turns out that "nimble" companies can't prepare for a catastrophe or distribute lifesaving goods—only a competent federal government can do that. It turns out that everything has a cost, and years of attacking government, squeezing it dry and draining its morale, inflict a heavy cost that the public has to pay in lives. All the programs defunded, stockpiles depleted, and plans scrapped meant that we had become a second-rate nation. Then came the virus and this strange defeat.
The fight to overcome the pandemic must also be a fight to recover the health of our country, and build it anew, or the hardship and grief we're now enduring will never be redeemed. Under our current leadership, nothing will change. If 9/11 and 2008 wore out trust in the old political establishment, 2020 should kill off the idea that anti-politics is our salvation. But putting an end to this regime, so necessary and deserved, is only the beginning.
We're faced with a choice that the crisis makes inescapably clear. We can stay hunkered down in self-isolation, fearing and shunning one another, letting our common bond wear away to nothing. Or we can use this pause in our normal lives to pay attention to the hospital workers holding up cellphones so their patients can say goodbye to loved ones; the planeload of medical workers flying from Atlanta to help in New York; the aerospace workers in Massachusetts demanding that their factory be converted to ventilator production; the Floridians standing in long lines because they couldn't get through by phone to the skeletal unemployment office; the residents of Milwaukee braving endless waits, hail, and contagion to vote in an election forced on them by partisan justices. We can learn from these dreadful days that stupidity and injustice are lethal; that, in a democracy, being a citizen is essential work; that the alternative to solidarity is death. After we've come out of hiding and taken off our masks, we should not forget what it was like to be alone.
Bombastic title from The Atlantic so as to draw in clicks?
The article also has that issue where a bunch of perfectly valid points are buried by OTT remarks to drive traffic/hate/people sharing it in forums. :P
Too much egg in pudding.
Quote from: celedhring on May 05, 2020, 03:16:50 AM
The article also has that issue where a bunch of perfectly valid points are buried by OTT remarks to drive traffic/hate/people sharing it in forums. :P
I'll admit I haven't read it because while I'm sure it has good points, if you start with a dishonest headline, your article will surely follow.
Quote from: garbon on May 05, 2020, 03:18:05 AM
Quote from: celedhring on May 05, 2020, 03:16:50 AM
The article also has that issue where a bunch of perfectly valid points are buried by OTT remarks to drive traffic/hate/people sharing it in forums. :P
I'll admit I haven't read it because while I'm sure it has good points, if you start with a dishonest headline, your article will surely follow.
Maybe "failed state" is too strong but having the most powerful and richest country of the developed world mount he worst and least effective response to the pandemic in the developed world IS pretty damning.
Quote from: Tamas on May 05, 2020, 03:41:27 AM
Quote from: garbon on May 05, 2020, 03:18:05 AM
Quote from: celedhring on May 05, 2020, 03:16:50 AM
The article also has that issue where a bunch of perfectly valid points are buried by OTT remarks to drive traffic/hate/people sharing it in forums. :P
I'll admit I haven't read it because while I'm sure it has good points, if you start with a dishonest headline, your article will surely follow.
Maybe "failed state" is too strong but having the most powerful and richest country of the developed world mount he worst and least effective response to the pandemic in the developed world IS pretty damning.
Yeah it is a horrible thing what's happening but 'failed state' doesn't really describe it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_state
QuoteThe Fund for Peace characterizes a failed state as having the following characteristics:
- Loss of control of its territory, or of the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force therein
- Erosion of legitimate authority to make collective decisions
- Inability to provide public services
- Inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community
Common characteristics of a failing state include a central government so weak or ineffective that it has an inability to raise taxes or other support, and has little practical control over much of its territory and hence there is a non-provision of public services. When this happens, widespread corruption and criminality, the intervention of state and non-state actors, the appearance of refugees and the involuntary movement of populations, sharp economic decline, and foreign military intervention can occur.
Somali is a failed state. The US isn't even close.
Americans are in a perfect state.
The title is hyperbolic, yeah, but the article raises some good points.
Quote from: celedhring on May 05, 2020, 03:16:50 AM
The article also has that issue where a bunch of perfectly valid points are buried by OTT remarks to drive traffic/hate/people sharing it in forums. :P
Yeah these poor souls always remind me of the South Park episode where Super Nanny was sent in to straighten Cartman out. Been that way since 2016. :hmm: Just the way the current ragebait business model works after Google and Facebook took away all their ad revenue and left them fighting for scraps.
*edit* Here's the scene I'm thinking of.
https://vimeo.com/268841699 (https://vimeo.com/268841699)
Been that way since 2016? I have been bombarded with this stuff for far longer than that.
I think "Failed State" is embellishing. I haven't read the article yet, but I think Americans should be horrified at what has happened. It's a debacle. a defeat and now apparently we've decided that we are just going to sort of carry on and accept large numbers of people dying as sort of not too big of a deal? I like to describe the US as slipping and sliding into sort of a Banana Republic, or to British people of my age slipping into a near future dystopia like a late 70's British TV drama. *
* 70's Quatermass maybe.
Quote from: garbon on May 05, 2020, 03:18:05 AM
Quote from: celedhring on May 05, 2020, 03:16:50 AM
The article also has that issue where a bunch of perfectly valid points are buried by OTT remarks to drive traffic/hate/people sharing it in forums. :P
I'll admit I haven't read it because while I'm sure it has good points, if you start with a dishonest headline, your article will surely follow.
I don't know if it works differently in the US but here most writers have little control over the headline, which is chosen after they've filed by a sub-editor.
https://thebulwark.com/newsletter-issue/a-pandemic-of-madness/ (https://thebulwark.com/newsletter-issue/a-pandemic-of-madness/)
Pandemic of madness!!!
Sarah Palin was Donald Trumps John the Baptist. That's rather good.
Quote from: Gups on May 05, 2020, 11:26:53 AM
Quote from: garbon on May 05, 2020, 03:18:05 AM
Quote from: celedhring on May 05, 2020, 03:16:50 AM
The article also has that issue where a bunch of perfectly valid points are buried by OTT remarks to drive traffic/hate/people sharing it in forums. :P
I'll admit I haven't read it because while I'm sure it has good points, if you start with a dishonest headline, your article will surely follow.
I don't know if it works differently in the US but here most writers have little control over the headline, which is chosen after they've filed by a sub-editor.
The author has at least a couple of books about the decline of America so...
The author is trying to combine erratic chief executive + culture wars + pandemic, which as many people have pointed out are valid points. They just don't sum up to failed state. Maybe the Flu Civil War?
Or a state that failed?
The rot is much more deep than "erratic leadership" or "culture wars".
Quote from: fromtia on May 05, 2020, 11:57:03 AM
Sarah Palin was Donald Trumps John the Baptist. That's rather good.
Have you accepted Trump as your personal saviour?
A "failing state" rather than a "failed state".
The damage that is being done now is that reasonable people are becoming convinced that the institutions that sustained American public life - not trust in any particular government, but rather, trust in the political system to be self-correcting, and that in a crisis individuals in society will bury their differences and pull together for the good of the nation as a whole - are no longer valid.
The state clearly hasn't disintegrated yet. But unless the rot is stopped somehow, it looks like it is on the road to doing so at some point I'm the future. How can a system of governance in which people no longer believe, or a society for which people are no longer willing to sacrifice, continue to sustain itself?
America has had terrible governments before, and survived just fine. What seems different now is a growing cynicism on all sides that the problems can be corrected by simply removing the terrible government. From this perspective, Trump appears more symptom than cause.
Of course all that talk about failure and disintegration seems absurd - America is economically and militarily more or less as powerful as it has ever been. Yet its political and social mechanisms appear ever less capable of mobilizing to face new challenges.
Quote from: Malthus on May 05, 2020, 03:05:03 PM
A "failing state" rather than a "failed state".
I was going to say this.
And also, Trump is absolutely the symptom and not the cause. Getting rid of him is necessary, but insufficient for recovery.
Quote from: The Brain on May 05, 2020, 02:22:53 PM
Have you accepted Trump as your personal saviour?
I think my former mother in law has, she used to be a devout catholic.
Quote from: Malthus on May 05, 2020, 03:05:03 PM
A "failing state" rather than a "failed state".
This. The metaphor I would use is the gated community. Americans are still willing to contribute to common goals and public goods but only if they see the benefit going to themselves and people they think of to be like themselves. Not the "wrong people". The problem of course is that nations can't really work that way and remain nations. The ugliest part of Trump's nationalism, like similar nationalism before it, is not just the xenophobia against the outside world (which is bad) but the redefinition of categories of Americans as Others or lesser Americans. The left and center is not entirely innocent in this, it's not like coastal liberals ever really mobilized to help Appalachian coal miners or the victims of the white collar opioid pushers. But like everything else bad and corrupt in America today, Trump and Trumpism has made it worse.
I don't think failing state works for the reasons Grab On mentioned. We're not on our way to becoming Somalia. Mail gets delivered. War lords don't shake you down when you drive through Nebraska. Failing society maybe.
The US became a failed state before...
Quote from: garbon on May 05, 2020, 03:18:05 AM
Quote from: celedhring on May 05, 2020, 03:16:50 AM
The article also has that issue where a bunch of perfectly valid points are buried by OTT remarks to drive traffic/hate/people sharing it in forums. :P
I'll admit I haven't read it because while I'm sure it has good points, if you start with a dishonest headline, your article will surely follow.
generally speaking, the article is written, then the title is added, then it is modified by the publisher.
I doubt the Atlantic is any different than most medias on this. ;)
A dishonest title often has no bearing on the quality (or not) of the article.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 05, 2020, 05:01:53 PM
I don't think failing state works for the reasons Grab On mentioned. We're not on our way to becoming Somalia. Mail gets delivered. War lords don't shake you down when you drive through Nebraska. Failing society maybe.
TBH, we all dismissed China's casualties as that of a 3rd world country. How would you compare the US casualties to China's?
Quote from: garbon on May 05, 2020, 03:43:37 AM
The Fund for Peace characterizes a failed state as having the following characteristics:
- Loss of control of its territory, or of the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force therein
- Erosion of legitimate authority to make collective decisions
- Inability to provide public services
- Inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community
Hard to argue against point 1, see the multiple armed protests and how people claim it their right to own any kind of rifle, no matter how many bullets it sprays per second as their God given right. And vigilantes at the border aren't sanctionned.
Hard to argue against point 2, the US has been unable to form any kind of collective decision in this pandemic.
Partial opposition to point 3, but it's clear that medical services aren't given to the full extent of possibilities during this pandemic. 9000$ to get tested is a bit exagerated.
Definately true for point 4, unless you live in another dimension. Or maybe the fact that you are living abroad has insulated you of all the "America first" rethoric by Republicans? :)
If we are to judge a failed State by these measures alone, than the US gets 3.5/4. Maybe not yet, but soon to be a failed State, if nothing changes.
Quote from: fromtia on May 05, 2020, 11:26:15 AM
I think "Failed State" is embellishing. I haven't read the article yet, but I think Americans should be horrified at what has happened. It's a debacle. a defeat and now apparently we've decided that we are just going to sort of carry on and accept large numbers of people dying as sort of not too big of a deal? I like to describe the US as slipping and sliding into sort of a Banana Republic, or to British people of my age slipping into a near future dystopia like a late 70's British TV drama. *
* 70's Quatermass maybe.
yeah, but it's Obama's fault. Poor President Trump, the medias are so hard on him... :(
Quote from: Maximus on May 05, 2020, 04:10:14 PM
Quote from: Malthus on May 05, 2020, 03:05:03 PM
A "failing state" rather than a "failed state".
I was going to say this.
And also, Trump is absolutely the symptom and not the cause. Getting rid of him is necessary, but insufficient for recovery.
Send some of the Senior Republicans and most of their apprentices on a piligrimage to west Africa, to spread the foundations of a new country.
Arrange for their ships to suffer a fatal accident en route.Instigate a separation crisis followed by a civil war that further decimate their ranks.Make sure to groom their most potential presidential prospect to switch over to your side at a convenient moment.When they realize it's too late, have their former friend slaughter all who survived.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on May 05, 2020, 04:58:41 PM
Quote from: Malthus on May 05, 2020, 03:05:03 PM
A "failing state" rather than a "failed state".
This. The metaphor I would use is the gated community. Americans are still willing to contribute to common goals and public goods but only if they see the benefit going to themselves and people they think of to be like themselves. Not the "wrong people". The problem of course is that nations can't really work that way and remain nations. The ugliest part of Trump's nationalism, like similar nationalism before it, is not just the xenophobia against the outside world (which is bad) but the redefinition of categories of Americans as Others or lesser Americans.
I don't see nationalism in the US. What I see is a rise in patriotism since the Iraq war of 2003. Freedom fries&all that... What you cal "the ugliest part of Trump's nationalism" isn't exactly new in the US, it's been there for a while, never really left the country. The only thing that changed is people holding these views are no longer publicly shamed in holding them.
Quote from: viper37 on May 05, 2020, 05:53:03 PM
TBH, we all dismissed China's casualties as that of a 3rd world country. How would you compare the US casualties to China's?
Pretty shitty. But that's not on the point of what a failed state. It has a fairly specific meaning.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 05, 2020, 05:01:53 PM
War lords don't shake you down when you drive through Nebraska.
You don't need War lords for that, you have toll roads ;)
No, the US isn't a failed state. It just seems that way due to the ongoing media hysteria about Donald Trump. A similar pandemic outcome under Hillary Clinton wouldn't be seen as that bad by most people here.
The US federal government is getting there fast enough.
Quote from: Ancient Demon on May 05, 2020, 06:12:08 PM
No, the US isn't a failed state. It just seems that way due to the ongoing media hysteria about Donald Trump. A similar pandemic outcome under Hillary Clinton wouldn't be seen as that bad by most people here.
That's kind of the point. A Clinton administration would not have had a similar pandemic outcome.
Quote from: Zoupa on May 05, 2020, 08:00:42 PM
That's kind of the point. A Clinton administration would not have had a similar pandemic outcome.
You don't know that at all, none of us do.
I think if you take out all the mad tweeting and name calling the response would have been more or less the same.
Jesus Fucking Christ Yi.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 05, 2020, 08:27:19 PM
I think if you take out all the mad tweeting and name calling the response would have been more or less the same.
you are ascribing a level of operational competence to trump and his team that makes it hard to take you seriously.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 05, 2020, 06:11:04 PM
Quote from: viper37 on May 05, 2020, 05:53:03 PM
TBH, we all dismissed China's casualties as that of a 3rd world country. How would you compare the US casualties to China's?
Pretty shitty. But that's not on the point of what a failed state. It has a fairly specific meaning.
How do you define it? I define it as a state that can't enforce its laws over the territory it claims to own. It's not a perfect definition as some states make absurd territorial claims, but it seems like a good minimalist definition.
Quote from: garbon on May 05, 2020, 03:43:37 AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_state
QuoteThe Fund for Peace characterizes a failed state as having the following characteristics:
- Loss of control of its territory, or of the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force therein
- Erosion of legitimate authority to make collective decisions
- Inability to provide public services
- Inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community
Common characteristics of a failing state include a central government so weak or ineffective that it has an inability to raise taxes or other support, and has little practical control over much of its territory and hence there is a non-provision of public services. When this happens, widespread corruption and criminality, the intervention of state and non-state actors, the appearance of refugees and the involuntary movement of populations, sharp economic decline, and foreign military intervention can occur.
This works for me.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 05, 2020, 08:27:19 PM
I think if you take out all the mad tweeting and name calling the response would have been more or less the same.
I can't believe your country is so profoundly inept.
Quote from: Ancient Demon on May 05, 2020, 06:12:08 PM
No, the US isn't a failed state. It just seems that way due to the ongoing media hysteria about Donald Trump.
I have not read a single article about Donald Trump in four years. I usually just listen to him and he is pretty hysterical. I guess it is best to hold a weird conglomerate of hundreds of people "the media" responsible for that and not the person at the top? I mean I am supposed to be holding him responsible being the President and all.
I am not even sure what you people want from me, you wanted me to stop listening to the media so I stopped. Donald Trump doesn't look much better when all you listen to is his words.
QuoteA similar pandemic outcome under Hillary Clinton wouldn't be seen as that bad by most people here.
We would? So now I have to accept the failures of this President because of some hypothetical situation you dreamed up about how I would respond to hypothetical massive failures by Clinton?
QuoteYou don't know that at all, none of us do.
Oh? You mean you cannot dream up hypothetical scenarios and then claim you know the exact outcome? Odd since you just did that.
Quote from: garbon on May 05, 2020, 03:43:37 AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_state
QuoteThe Fund for Peace characterizes a failed state as having the following characteristics:
- Loss of control of its territory, or of the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force therein
- Erosion of legitimate authority to make collective decisions
- Inability to provide public services
- Inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community
Common characteristics of a failing state include a central government so weak or ineffective that it has an inability to raise taxes or other support, and has little practical control over much of its territory and hence there is a non-provision of public services. When this happens, widespread corruption and criminality, the intervention of state and non-state actors, the appearance of refugees and the involuntary movement of populations, sharp economic decline, and foreign military intervention can occur.
The federal structure of the US makes it fruitful, I think, to look at both individual states and Da Feds. States seem OK to me, but the Feds look increasingly shaky according to these criteria. I don't know if the story about a state putting guards on supplies to keep the Feds from taking them is true, but if it is... Any legitimate authority of the Feds to make decisions is severely dented with an evil retarded clown in the White House (with a fawning Senate). My impression is that states look at solutions beyond the Feds in a way that, while maybe still very limited, is new compared to how things used to be just an administration ago. The last one is showing dramatic change over the past few years, now the US literally gets laughed at on the international stage and its judgment is seriously doubted by other countries; if I had the US over at a party I would seat it at the kids' table and only trust them with easily chewed foods and plastic utensils.
If I see the US failing it is not the entire structure that fails, but rather the present dysfunctional federal structure being replaced or discarded completely. This wouldn't
necessarily be extremely dramatic.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 05, 2020, 09:50:33 PM
Quote from: garbon on May 05, 2020, 03:43:37 AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_state (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_state)
QuoteThe Fund for Peace characterizes a failed state as having the following characteristics:
- Loss of control of its territory, or of the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force therein
- Erosion of legitimate authority to make collective decisions
- Inability to provide public services
- Inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community
Common characteristics of a failing state include a central government so weak or ineffective that it has an inability to raise taxes or other support, and has little practical control over much of its territory and hence there is a non-provision of public services. When this happens, widespread corruption and criminality, the intervention of state and non-state actors, the appearance of refugees and the involuntary movement of populations, sharp economic decline, and foreign military intervention can occur.
This works for me.
Cool.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 05, 2020, 08:27:19 PM
I think if you take out all the mad tweeting and name calling the response would have been more or less the same.
What support do you have for that claim?
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 05, 2020, 08:27:19 PM
I think if you take out all the mad tweeting and name calling the response would have been more or less the same.
I find that hard to believe. I would think any responsible US President would have mobilized a large effort to pool resources and efforts to most efficiently manage the shutdown and the economy and had a concise effort at testing and seeking treatments. I mean it is nothing we have not done in crises in the past. Yet the country is chaotic and there is little central leadership. Because the Feds have failed so completely it is a little bit every state for itself. It is kind of inspiring what a few motivated really smart individuals can do under these circumstances but I have a hard time believing this current chaos and power vacuum is normal. That flies in the face of the last century of US history.
I mean granted during the last pandemic our President left town to hang out in France negotiating a treaty we weren't going to ratify so I guess at least Trump is in the country.
Quote from: garbon on May 06, 2020, 01:19:58 AM
What support do you have for that claim?
The fact that the measures taken in the US were broadly in line with what other countries did (except our stimulus seems to have been much more generous). That Italian and Spanish style lock downs are the domain of state governments.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 06, 2020, 01:30:58 AM
Quote from: garbon on May 06, 2020, 01:19:58 AM
What support do you have for that claim?
The fact that the measures taken in the US were broadly in line with what other countries did (except our stimulus seems to have been much more generous). That Italian and Spanish style lock downs are the domain of state governments.
Can we get specific on the similarities? Feels like a lot can hide behind broad similarities.
Quote from: garbon on May 06, 2020, 01:39:54 AM
Can we get specific on the similarities? Feels like a lot can hide behind broad similarities.
Get as specific as you want. But do keep in mind we're comparing to a hypothetical Clinton response. Are there obvious things Clinton would have done that Trump didn't?
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 06, 2020, 01:53:26 AM
Quote from: garbon on May 06, 2020, 01:39:54 AM
Can we get specific on the similarities? Feels like a lot can hide behind broad similarities.
Get as specific as you want. But do keep in mind we're comparing to a hypothetical Clinton response. Are there obvious things Clinton would have done that Trump didn't?
Sorry but I asked first. If you want to say that the US government's response now has been broadly in line with other countries, please provide details for the class supporting your argument.
Quote from: garbon on May 06, 2020, 02:54:28 AM
Sorry but I asked first. If you want to say that the US government's response now has been broadly in line with other countries, please provide details for the class supporting your argument.
Travel restrictions, recommendations to limit contact and work from home, stimulus money, research on a vaccine, distribution of medical supplies.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 06, 2020, 01:53:26 AM
Quote from: garbon on May 06, 2020, 01:39:54 AM
Can we get specific on the similarities? Feels like a lot can hide behind broad similarities.
Get as specific as you want. But do keep in mind we're comparing to a hypothetical Clinton response. Are there obvious things Clinton would have done that Trump didn't?
I dunno, not cancel the pandemic simulation during the transition? Not throw out the pandemic playbook from the previous administration? Not disband the Global Health Security and Biodefense unit — responsible for pandemic preparedness? Not encourage retardedness by proclaiming "FREE TEXAS" or some bullshit? These protests, spurred by the Orange Man, will literally cost lives.
These are just off the top of my head.
Let's not forget the half-dozen idiots who drank bleach or overdosed on hydroxychloroquine, all thanks to your commander in chief.
So yeah. Clinton would have done things differently. Clinton would have saved lives.
Oh, and Clinton would have invoked the defense production act or whatever it's called months ago, because she's not a pussy.
Also I think not having the President throw a daily tantrum over the necessary restrictions might have helped with their efficiency.
I'm not sure thwarting Darwin should be in Clinton's plus column. :sleep:
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 06, 2020, 03:40:00 AM
Quote from: garbon on May 06, 2020, 02:54:28 AM
Sorry but I asked first. If you want to say that the US government's response now has been broadly in line with other countries, please provide details for the class supporting your argument.
Travel restrictions, recommendations to limit contact and work from home, stimulus money, research on a vaccine, distribution of medical supplies.
That last one would have a huge difference.
Trump has been denying medical supplies to blue states and giving it only to red and swing states. Federal agencies have literally hijacked state purchases and confiscated them. Hell, federal agencies have been confiscated from each other.
And all the while Kushner and his buddies flail around, incompetently grifting on the subject.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on May 06, 2020, 04:47:32 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 06, 2020, 03:40:00 AM
Quote from: garbon on May 06, 2020, 02:54:28 AM
Sorry but I asked first. If you want to say that the US government's response now has been broadly in line with other countries, please provide details for the class supporting your argument.
Travel restrictions, recommendations to limit contact and work from home, stimulus money, research on a vaccine, distribution of medical supplies.
That last one would have a huge difference.
Trump has been denying medical supplies to blue states and giving it only to red and swing states. Federal agencies have literally hijacked state purchases and confiscated them. Hell, federal agencies have been confiscated from each other.
And all the while Kushner and his buddies flail around, incompetently grifting on the subject.
Still you are going to see a second term, and will be lucky if you won't have Ivanka, or eve a 3rd term, after that.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on May 06, 2020, 04:47:32 AM
]That last one would have a huge difference.
Trump has been denying medical supplies to blue states and giving it only to red and swing states.
The Economist calls that fake news. Cuomo bitched about not getting enough and everyone ran with that narrative. Then Donald piled on and said they have to be nice to him to get stuff, but according to The Economist the reality is FEMA is handing out stuff based on formulas, not age of the state's population.
Quote from: Zoupa on May 06, 2020, 04:21:44 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 06, 2020, 01:53:26 AM
Quote from: garbon on May 06, 2020, 01:39:54 AM
Can we get specific on the similarities? Feels like a lot can hide behind broad similarities.
Get as specific as you want. But do keep in mind we're comparing to a hypothetical Clinton response. Are there obvious things Clinton would have done that Trump didn't?
I dunno, not cancel the pandemic simulation during the transition? Not throw out the pandemic playbook from the previous administration? Not disband the Global Health Security and Biodefense unit — responsible for pandemic preparedness? Not encourage retardedness by proclaiming "FREE TEXAS" or some bullshit? These protests, spurred by the Orange Man, will literally cost lives.
These are just off the top of my head.
Let's not forget the half-dozen idiots who drank bleach or overdosed on hydroxychloroquine, all thanks to your commander in chief.
So yeah. Clinton would have done things differently. Clinton would have saved lives.
Just having a functional federal government would do wonders already.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 05, 2020, 08:27:19 PM
I think if you take out all the mad tweeting and name calling the response would have been more or less the same.
Well sure, as long as you accept the basic premise that competency and integrity don't actually matter.
Quote from: Tamas on May 06, 2020, 04:56:25 AM
Still you are going to see a second term, and will be lucky if you won't have Ivanka, or eve a 3rd term, after that.
We'll see. We bloodied them at bit in 2018 and that was when things were going well.
I don't think the US is a failed state, or a "failing state", but I do think it is (has been) suffering from a massive (Yuge even) lack of leadership, both morally and practically, since Trump was elected, and the lack of leadership naturally means others will fill in the void, for better or worse. And Trump's personality naturally exacerbates all the worst things associated with "America".
Also fucking lmao that a Clinton administration would be doing as badly as the Trump administration currently is. Just fucking LMAO
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 06, 2020, 03:40:00 AM
Quote from: garbon on May 06, 2020, 02:54:28 AM
Sorry but I asked first. If you want to say that the US government's response now has been broadly in line with other countries, please provide details for the class supporting your argument.
Travel restrictions, recommendations to limit contact and work from home, stimulus money, research on a vaccine, distribution of medical supplies.
1) Travel restrictions - Well except that we did a bunch of bizarre waffling back and forth after we already had suspected community transmission. Recall when we were banning EU travel but not Ireland and UK?
2) Recommendations to limit contact and work from home - Well except that for a good chunk of time leadership appeared divided on importance of those measures and most recently we've been actively told to revolt against such measures and open up even though cases are surging.
3) Distribution of medical supplies - seems to have been rather problematic at best and we lost a lot of time with CDC waffling - which was only exacerbated by no clear leadership on the seriousness of the pandemic.
All those small business loans going to states that haven't been hard hit
https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2020/05/where-have-the-paycheck-protection-loans-gone-so-far.html
QuoteHave PPP Loans Gone to the Hardest Hit Areas?
Using the number of coronavirus cases as a proxy for the economic impact of COVID-19 in a specific state, we can look at whether the geographical distribution of PPP loans approved per number of small businesses matches that of COVID-19 cases. The number of PPP loans per state translates one-to-one to the number of small businesses receiving loans, since PPP loans are capped at one per business.
The figure below suggests that some of the hardest hit areas—such as New York, New Jersey, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—are getting fewer loans than some Mountain and Midwest states on a per-small-business basis. In New York, the epicenter of the coronavirus in the United States, less than 20 percent of small businesses have been approved to receive PPP loans. In contrast, more than 55 percent of small businesses in Nebraska are expecting PPP funding. The between-state variation of loans has generated heated political discussions.
Quote from: Valmy on May 05, 2020, 10:31:34 PM
I have not read a single article about Donald Trump in four years. I usually just listen to him and he is pretty hysterical. I guess it is best to hold a weird conglomerate of hundreds of people "the media" responsible for that and not the person at the top? I mean I am supposed to be holding him responsible being the President and all.
I am not even sure what you people want from me, you wanted me to stop listening to the media so I stopped. Donald Trump doesn't look much better when all you listen to is his words.
Maybe look at what's actually being done.
QuoteWe would? So now I have to accept the failures of this President because of some hypothetical situation you dreamed up about how I would respond to hypothetical massive failures by Clinton?
No, and I don't think there'd be massive failures by Clinton either.
Quote
Oh? You mean you cannot dream up hypothetical scenarios and then claim you know the exact outcome? Odd since you just did that.
Not really. Those were two different things.
The 'failing state' aspect is ameliorated by the fact that there are multiple levels of government in the US, so as the federal government becomes nonfunctional, other levels are available to pick up the slack. That's why we are seeing a much greater emphasis than ever before on state governors during the pandemic emergency.
The problem is, usually the relationships between the states are mediated by the federal government. With that level mired in corruption and incompetence, state governors are increasingly communicating directly among themselves, rather than through the federal level.
Problem is that this is very much a jury-rigged system. How well it will perform under pressure is unknown. Given that the political discourse in the US has become poisoned, it isn't clear whether there is enough goodwill for the states to give and take in a mutually cooperative way, particularly across the red / blue state divide.
It is normal in any state that there be regional tensions and disputes between levels of government. What is not normal, is for one level of government to be so distrusted and incapable of adequately performing basic coordination. There is a gaping absence at the centre.
What you would predict, if this goes on, is regional blocks of states to form and to start acting increasingly autonomously, just to get necessary stuff done.
This will not be a "failed state" as in Somalia, or even Civil War Mark ll. But if the current trajectory continues, it would be a fundamental diminution of the "United" States - much to the joy of its current great-power rivals.
Quote from: garbon on May 06, 2020, 08:12:42 AM
3) Distribution of medical supplies - seems to have been rather problematic at best and we lost a lot of time with CDC waffling - which was only exacerbated by no clear leadership on the seriousness of the pandemic.
Nonsense. Trump was so convinced of the seriousness of the situation that he put seven people separately in charge of overseeing the federal response - including the guy who ended the Israel-Palestinian dispute.
Quote from: grumbler on May 06, 2020, 09:32:13 AM
Nonsense. Trump was so convinced of the seriousness of the situation that he put seven people separately in charge of overseeing the federal response - including the guy who ended the Israel-Palestinian dispute.
Hillary Clinton has a daughter as well, therefore she will also have appointed her own well connected waxy automaton to oversee international conflicts and form co-pandemic response-response teams. Indistinguishable.
Most governments in the West seem to have been caught fairly flat footed by the Pandemic, but If you assume flat footed and panicked as a default then I suppose you would assume that the Trump administration has done okay so far, notwithstanding the exciting new phase we are entering. I think the United States is capable of a much better response, a world leading response, and I think it would have had that with really any of the candidates for President or actual Presidents from at least the last 20 years. McCain, Romney, Kerry, Hillary Dubya notorious Kenyan Communist Barack Obama etc etc. I think the US should have at least been a Germany, and it is by no means a foregone conclusion that it's inevitably an Italy. Probably about to be much more than an Italy.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 06, 2020, 01:30:58 AM
Quote from: garbon on May 06, 2020, 01:19:58 AM
What support do you have for that claim?
The fact that the measures taken in the US were broadly in line with what other countries did (except our stimulus seems to have been much more generous). That Italian and Spanish style lock downs are the domain of state governments.
Wow, I have heard of Americans being completely out of touch with what is happening in the rest of the word. But wow!
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 06, 2020, 11:47:13 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 06, 2020, 01:30:58 AM
Quote from: garbon on May 06, 2020, 01:19:58 AM
What support do you have for that claim?
The fact that the measures taken in the US were broadly in line with what other countries did (except our stimulus seems to have been much more generous). That Italian and Spanish style lock downs are the domain of state governments.
Wow, I have heard of Americans being completely out of touch with what is happening in the rest of the word. But wow!
What word?
Quote from: garbon on May 06, 2020, 12:03:43 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 06, 2020, 11:47:13 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 06, 2020, 01:30:58 AM
Quote from: garbon on May 06, 2020, 01:19:58 AM
What support do you have for that claim?
The fact that the measures taken in the US were broadly in line with what other countries did (except our stimulus seems to have been much more generous). That Italian and Spanish style lock downs are the domain of state governments.
Wow, I have heard of Americans being completely out of touch with what is happening in the rest of the word. But wow!
What word?
The Word was with God. The Word was God.
Quote from: Eddie Teach on May 06, 2020, 12:07:39 PM
Quote from: garbon on May 06, 2020, 12:03:43 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 06, 2020, 11:47:13 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 06, 2020, 01:30:58 AM
Quote from: garbon on May 06, 2020, 01:19:58 AM
What support do you have for that claim?
The fact that the measures taken in the US were broadly in line with what other countries did (except our stimulus seems to have been much more generous). That Italian and Spanish style lock downs are the domain of state governments.
Wow, I have heard of Americans being completely out of touch with what is happening in the rest of the word. But wow!
What word?
The Word was with God. The Word was God.
No matter where you say it you know that you'll be heard.
Quote from: garbon on May 05, 2020, 03:43:37 AM
QuoteThe Fund for Peace characterizes a failed state as having the following characteristics:
- Loss of control of its territory, or of the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force therein
- Erosion of legitimate authority to make collective decisions
- Inability to provide public services
- Inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community
From the outside, I get the impression that the intense partisanship of the federal government, not just the executive, but also legislative and also the Supreme Court do cause an erosion of "legitimate authority to make collective decisions" in the US at the federal level. There seems to be very little consensus and a lot of confrontation without even trying to embrace the political opponents or find solutions that are not directly benefitting the own political clientele.
I don't see an signs for the other three points.
If you cooperate with the opposition you can expect to pay a steep political price with little benefit.