I think it's possible. But sadly it will only be made possible if there is a total catastrophe in the US, with thousands, or more probably tens of thousands, shown to have died unnecessarily.
It’s possible but unlikely. Trump will be given a pass by his fans at the election because he’s working so hard to preserve the economy/their personal wealth and the pandemic is foreign/not his fault/couldn’t be predicted. Added to this the bonkers end-times hard core Xians who see him as an agent of their god: this “plague” will confirm their belief that it’s all panning out as they predict, so strengthen their support of Trump.
But also, it’s hard for anyone who’s not witnessed it first hand to understand how thoroughly and intractably the right hate the disenfranchised. I don’t just mean they’re politically averse, I mean they have a deeply emotional sense of fear and disgust for anyone who hasn’t successfully climbed aboard the American Dream bandwagon. Even those who are themselves poor and disenfranchised are utterly opposed to anyone who doesn’t demonstrate their adherence to the story. These adherants are going to become very much more entrenched and defensive of their myth in the coming months. They will defend their own creation story identify (pioneering, independent, self-sufficient, loyal to family and nationhood (define “nation” as applicable) ) ahead of any other factor.
They will see this catastrophe as inevitable, a reckoning, a test of the fittest, an opportunity for cleansing society. They will shrug at the horror, tuck in and circle their wagons around their own and arm themselves against anyone else.
The sane and kind are in the minority in America. And it is a kind of madness, this stubborn blind inability to connect with the suffering of anyone outsider heir own experience. It’s what’s made them so successful around the world, but it’s the secret hollow in the heart of their culture.
Nothing will make them more caring, because that necessitates the dismantling of their self identity.
Well, it might happen if their self identify is destroyed by this pandemic, but then we’d be witnessing some kind of social apocalypse.
Wait... Isn’t that where I started ....? And round we go.
The US does seem poised for nothing short of a catastrophe. A toxic mix of nasty shit going on there which could easily see the death rate hit the millions. Obviously I hope I'm wrong but it looks really grim.
I'm deeply concerned about this.
I have friends and family all over America, including New York City and NY state. Fortunately a lot of them have been ignoring Trump's hubris and voluntarily locking down for weeks.
This is going to be such a shit show. Millions of invisible disenfranchised unsupported destitute people, many of them with opiate addictions and serious comorbities, no kind of supple widespread public health care system. People will be using brute force and guns to try to access help and to defend their own homes and properties.
In relative terms the UK may get off lightly (at least in the first wave). For developing countries, places under the cosh of war, poverty, abuse of power, it's inevitable that this is going to be harrowing. It seems peculiar and ironically fitting that the most powerful most developed most equipped most advanced yaddah yaddah nation, who has repeatedly and ignorantly stomped all over everything for so long could find themselves in the same kind of deep danger as those nations they've been stomping on.
As an aside, with regards public health care:
Back in 1986 I was travelling around America in my early 20s. I got sick in New Orleans and went to the public hospital. I hold an American passport so I was eligible for basic health care. It was a normal February day, no pandemic or other disaster (although at that time NO had a very high murder rate, there had already been more than 30 murders in the city, so one every day that year). The waiting room was overcrowded, queues down the corridors. I waited for 2 hours to be triaged and another 5 hours to be seen by a doctor, who assessed me, prescribed antibiotics and discharged me in less than 10 minutes. In that 7 hours I saw 2 gunshot wounds coming in, people in respiratory distress struggling and gasping, people in wheelchairs, and someone died in the waiting room. They didn’t even put a curtain around him while he died, they laid him on the floor and held him and then they put a blanket over him and called for a porter with a gurney.
This was the mid eighties and pre-Katrina so hopefully there are much better hospital facilities there now. But small more isolated towns will still have limited facilities. This pandemic is going to be utterly overwhelming for poor America while Amerikka does a better job of taking taking care of itself.
www.portugalresident.com
