Carnage stalks America
In any given year, witnessing the U.S. President being impeached and then turned out of office, the global spread of the COVID Pandemic, the ensuing meltdown of the global economy or the rise of mass protests against racist police violence – any one of these stories would be banner headline news. Instead, we’ve had all four cataclysmic events in just the span of twelve months. I used to think that 1968 – with its assassinations, Vietnam war, urban riots and Nixon’s election – was the single worst year of my existence, but 2020 is the new undisputed champion of everything that is evil about the human condition.
Here in encapsulated form is my take on the year that we will never forget, no matter how hard we try.
At the dawn of his presidency four years ago, Donald Trump promised to put an end to an undefined American “carnage” that he claimed was devastating the country. Looking back after four years of Trumpism, it is clear that the President was gaslighting us, a habit we have now come to expect from Trumpsters. Rather than ending the carnage, Trump was actually promising to pile it on, to make the carnage worse than anyone had ever seen in living memory.
That’s one campaign promise he kept. Mexico never paid for the pitiful few miles of new border wall, but the carnage was real and lasting. 330,000 COVID deaths and counting, 1 million homeless, 20 million jobless, 50 million food insecure, 90 million without health care, urban America marching in the streets, American democracy for sale to the highest bidder – the carnage has just kept coming in tidal waves. The rest of the world either pities, laughs or schemes to take advantage of a weakened former global superpower who can’t even get its citizens to follow basic public health regulations.
Like other empires who have come and gone before it, the U.S. is crumbling from within, a victim of its own hubris and political stalemate. No foreign enemy has ever wreaked as much havoc as we have inflicted upon ourselves. We are on course to lose more lives to COVID than in all the world wars and armed conflicts that we have waged in the past century. Yet incredibly, we still have Americans denying that this deadly killer is even real. Does anyone doubt that we lost nearly 300,000 lives in World War II? Of course not. But much of the Republican Party refuses to acknowledge that COVID has killed that many in just nine months, despite bodies piling up in refrigerated trucks serving as makeshift morgues. Like fearful ostriches, Republicans have stuck their heads in the sand and refused to see the carnage all around them. Maybe if I don’t look, it doesn’t exist?
COVID-19 Pandemic Plague
I was teaching an instructional design seminar in San Diego in early March when I learned that several NBA players had tested positive for COVID-19, causing the league to cancel all games, including one about to start with fans in attendance. Though I didn’t fully realize it at that moment, all the dominoes were about to fall, changing life for everyone on this planet. It turns out I had delivered my last in-person seminar in 2020. I still don’t know when I’ll ever deliver another.
Soon after, Governor Newsom declared a state-wide shutdown and from then on, we began sheltering at home, only venturing out for essentials like groceries and needed supplies. The economy ground to a sudden halt, like someone had pulled the emergency brake on the free enterprise system. Retail and travel businesses have been devastated, financial markets have plunged only to regain the losses with massive input from the Federal Reserve, with most businesses still operating at minimal levels. GDP plunged an eye-popping 34% in the second quarter, worst since the Great Depression. Official unemployment reached 14% with the real number of people out of work closer to 25%. In tourist-heavy locales like Las Vegas and Orlando, unemployment shot up to over 50%.
America’s Disastrous Response
This devastating calamity was a direct consequence of America’s inability to respond quickly to a growing contagion that spread faster than our public health system could track and isolate. When you cannot test, isolate and trace sources of a contagious infection, the only alternative is to shut down everything and have people isolate at home, a brute force instrument of public policy that has left people shuttered for the past nine months and led to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
While versions of this crisis have played out across the globe, from China to Europe to America and now to the Southern Hemisphere, the U.S. response has been uniquely incompetent. No other country has as many cases and deaths as the U.S. Indeed, we lead the world with nearly half of all confirmed cases and deaths. How did it get so bad in the richest nation on earth?
Of all the mistakes that the Trump Administration made, its failure to provide quick, widespread testing is the most unforgiveable. In nations that have gotten control of the virus, testing and isolation were the keys to their success. In China, they use a phone app to track the COVID status of everyone. You must be negative before you can leave your home. It alerts people when they come near anyone who has the virus. These are the kind of public health measures that stop an infectious disease in its tracks.
Crisis exposes the weaknesses lurking in our social system. For America, those weaknesses include: a health system geared to private profiteering, not public service, an economy that works best for the wealthy and a Federal government led by a President with no public service experience and a Republican party that no longer believes in government. When the pandemic hit our shores, brought by people returning from China and Italy, our President’s initial response was to downplay the threat and claim it would go away by summer, like the flu. When that didn’t happen, he then turned to a series of wild crackpot theories he picked up on the Internet, including the bizarre suggestion that ingesting poisonous disinfectants could cure the sick. He also pushed unproven remedies like hydroxychloroquine, wasting millions of dollars and weeks of valuable time on a quack remedy. Then, he lost interest in fighting the epidemic until he became infected himself, only recovering after he received $150,00 worth of experimental treatments. Now, Trump golfs while America dies. This has forced the 50 states to figure out their own strategy to fight the epidemic, leading to 50 different sets of rules. No wonder the public is disgusted with such confusing ineptitude.
A second mistake was the Trump Administration’s failure to take care of the American people, especially those without jobs because of the pandemic. In nearly every other industrial country, governments either paid workers directly or ordered businesses to do so. This prevented widespread poverty and kept economies from collapsing. In the US, Congress doled out $1200/worker back in April, barely six days’ pay for the average American, and kicked in an extra $600 per week for unemployment benefits until Republicans decided that $600 a week was turning the American working class into a bunch of lazy couch potatoes refusing to work. So they took that money away and let people literally starve and risk eviction, until they finally coughed up another $600 as a belated Christmas present.
One of the basic tenets of civilized societies is that they provide for the survival of their people – food, clothing and shelter, at a bare minimum. After American carnage, we aren’t even doing that much for the poorest Americans. Before COVID, 10% of our population, some 33 million, lived in poverty, surviving on less than $20,000 per year, barely able to pay rent and put food on the table. Now, by some estimates, that number has surged to 15%, throwing another 16 million souls to fickle fate without a social safety net to cushion them. Food lines snake for blocks as desperate people await their next meal, hoping the private charities who are doing all the heavy lifting don’t run out.
Because we gave frontline essential workers the choice of risking COVID or starvation, we have forced essential workers to show up at their jobs with no testing, and in many cases, no access to basic personal protection like masks and protective clothing. The Trump Administration even ordered meatpacking workers back on the job inside slaughterhouses where the virus was rampant, thus condemning them to the Hobbesian choice of slow starvation if they refused to work or a quicker death if they showed up to work right next to someone with COVID. As the death toll mounts in essential industries, we don’t even bother to count the dead. OSHA and the CDA under Trump no longer care who lives or dies in the workplace. Instead, Republicans are fixated on giving businesses blanket immunity from any legal responsibility for the health and safety of their workers. That’s an incentive to condemn people to death.
COVID got upfront and personal for me when I learned that my own mother had contracted it at her nursing home in upstate New York. Nursing homes were ground zero for the pandemic. She was most likely infected by an employee who brought the virus into the facility from outside. An elderly gentleman was the first to come down with it and staff quickly spread it from him to dozens of other residents, including my Mom. We learned of this only days later when a nurse at the home finally called my sister and informed her that our mother had tested positive. Afterwards, we tried to learn more about the outbreak, but management refused to share any information, even basics like the number of people infected. They chose to stonewall families, hiding the truth from them and the public in a despicable act of self-preservation. My sister was shocked to learn that local county health officials had no control whatsoever over the private nursing home market in New York state. She had to go to the local media to shame the owners of the nursing home into informing the public about the extent of the outbreak. Fortunately, my mother is one of those who showed no symptoms and recovered without harm, but seven other residents were not so lucky, losing their lives. The pathetic state of senior care in this country was exposed bare for all to see. One can only hope that authorities will never again take such a hands-off, anything-goes attitude towards the care of our senior citizens.
The COVIDiots
As the pandemic grinds on, ever more deadly, it has exposed the soul of America. It’s not always a pretty picture. Yes, we can proudly say that our health care workers and others on the front line bravely served the rest of us with distinction and honor. Yet, a growing number of Americans, led by Trump and right wing media, clamored loudly to ignore the science and return to life before COVID. In the City of Torrance where I live, 87 people have lost their battle with COVID and yet some people continue to clamor for a total reopening and flout health rules designed to keep everyone safe. I see them out and about town, flagrantly refusing to mask up or practice social distancing. At a recent city council meeting, held virtually due to the pandemic, angry speakers called in to denounce stay at home orders, masks, social distancing and any other health advice offered by experts. Instead, they claim the whole COVID thing is a hoax and that shutting down the country was really just a liberal attempt to defeat Trump in November, which they still refuse to accept.
These calls to ignore science and the law are presented as exercises in liberty, but they are rooted in acts of selfishness. Those protesting are only thinking about themselves and their own privileged sense of personal freedom. They never think about how their ‘free’ behavior impacts the lives and freedom of others. While COVIDiots are certainly free to play Russian Roulette with their own lives, their freedom stops at my lungs. They don’t have the right to infect others and cause them to potentially develop symptoms and die. Deliberately exposing yourself to a deadly virus is suicide; deliberately exposing others to a deadly virus is murder.
America has always been a country built on individualism, the triumph of the self-made man who even dares to exercise control over nature itself. COVID has twisted individualism into pathological narcissism, led by our Narcissist-in-Chief. Too many of us think of no one but ourselves and place our own pleasure above all other principles. But COVID has brought out something even worse – a death cult. People talk about having the right to die if they want to. Lt. Governor Dan Patrick of Texas even suggested that the elderly and frail should all do us a favor and just die of COVID and then we’d have herd immunity so everyone else could get back to work.
Back when I was a kid, they sang about “I’ll cry if I want to,” but “I’ll die if I want to”? When societies turn to suicide to escape their misery, they are entering a death spiral. Just a few days ago, a desperate senior citizen decided not only to end it all, but to take a whole city block in downtown Nashville with him. Is this our dystopian future in America? Suffer or die?
Black Lives Matter
The other major news event of 2020 was the massive protests in reaction to the police killing of George Floyd, among others. Though the Black Lives Matter movement has been active for years, drawing attention to police mistreatment of African-Americans, something in the American psyche snapped at the video of a white police officer with his knee on the neck of Floyd for over 8 minutes, until he lost consciousness and then died on the pavement where he had been pinned by three white Minneapolis police officers. The smug nonchalance of the officers, as if they were stopping for coffee and donuts, and the total helplessness of Mr. Floyd, already in handcuffs, pleading for his life, set off a chain reaction that shocked the world. For once, the police decision to execute a black man in front of witnesses, including a teenage girl who had the presence of mind to record the event on her phone, elicited a strong reaction from the public.
Many pundits have speculated why this killing in particular was the proverbial final straw. Other police killings have been captured on video, yet did not prompt such widespread outrage. As experts report, every one of these killings is unique, despite the depressing pattern of racial profiling and escalated violence. In this case, the total lack of resistance by Mr. Floyd and his helplessness as he lay dying, pleading for his life with his hands handcuffed behind his back and three police officers on top of him, left no room for doubt about the police’s intentions. It was so blatantly obvious that the four officers have been charged, something that rarely happens to police. Of course, the real test of our justice system will be the trial and whether 12 citizens will find the officers guilty. Too many times, the police walk free, always given the benefit of the doubt.
Another reason this time was different is the growing racial animus fueled by Trump’s open courting of white supremacists, whose campaign to turn the clock back to a segregated America is the beating heart of his MAGA crusade. For three and half years, progressives have watched overt racism make a comeback, threatening to dismantle 50 years of civil rights progress, hard fought gains that previous generations gave their lives for. Young people who have grown up in the so-called post-racial America of the 21st century have led the effort to protect the gains we have made and to push for even greater equality in our justice system. They have taken to the streets by the tens of thousands, using people power to make their point to a political system that increasingly ignores the will of the people, serving only the interests of the rich.
The Roots of BLM and Institutional Racism
We find ourselves at a critical moment of reckoning, but its roots run deep. From the beginning of our history, America has had to deal with the original sin of slavery, the stain upon our democratic ideals, the hypocrisy that undergirded our existence for over 300 years. It’s enshrined in our constitution, where slaves were declared 3/5ths of a person and their votes given to their white masters to cast for them. When Jefferson said in our Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal and endowed by the creator with inalienable rights,” he was literally just talking about white men. Women had no such rights, considered at the time the property of their husbands. Blacks had no such rights either. Slaves were not considered human, but mere chattel. Even those living free in the North did not receive the right to vote until after the Civil War. Women waited another 60 years before they were allowed to vote and to this day, still do not have equal protection under the law. Other ethnic groups, including Mexicans and Asians, suffered discrimination as well. Our treatment of Native Americans is another terrible stain on our history, one of the worst genocides in human history. Over 9 million Native Americans were wiped out in North America from 1600 to 1900. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to say that the American South was built with slave labor on stolen land. Until we honestly confront our past, we will not be able to reconcile our differences and work together for a better future.
Another major factor fueling racist policing is the way America has chosen to deal with poverty. Since the 1980s, we have relied on criminalizing poverty as our main public policy. The poor are subject to predatory lenders, crooked employers, dishonest landlords, loan sharks and aggressive “broken windows” policing that sweeps them up into the criminal justice system at a rate far higher than for middle class Americans. A simple parking ticket, if unpaid, turns into a warrant, which turns into a fine, which if unpaid, lands the poor person in jail. It’s really Charles Dickens’ debtor prison on steroids. Private companies are cashing in on warehousing the poor behind bars.
When you are not only poor, but also Black or Latinx, it’s a double whammy. Layer a racial caste system on top of a capitalist class system, and those at the bottom have virtually no chance. Black communities, in particular, have been overpoliced since the days of Southern slave patrols hunting down those running for freedom. Too many police departments remain stubbornly White with racist attitudes towards people of color. Some Police departments are actually financing operations by busting poor Blacks and Latinos and bleeding them of any money or possessions they might have left.
The American dilemma of poverty is that according to our mythology, no one should be poor. After all, we are the land of opportunity, where generations of our forebearers came to this country and worked hard to achieve the American dream. Those who fail to make it to the middle class are an anomaly. To explain this away, many Americans have declared that poverty is the fault of the poor, not a capitalist society that exploits their labor and leaves them penniless. People are poor because they’re lazy or stupid or inferior or psychotic or addicted or any other excuse that pins the blame on the poor themselves. This explanation has an added benefit – when we drive by the homeless encampments and the street beggars, we can assuage ourselves that these are self-ruined human beings unworthy of our concern.
The Way Forward – Equality
I believe that a single root cause underlies all the problems that haunted us in 2020. That root cause is inequality. We live in a society where inequality has broken us apart into 330 million little pieces, where we compete against each other in a Darwinian survival of the fittest. Our social fabric is being torn asunder, our institutions are failing us and we are beginning to turn on each other in a real-life hunger games.
I think the greatest social challenge of the 21st century is equality. As we become a global village, irretrievably connected, we must confront the fact that we still live as if we are separate species, each on our own continent, country and city oblivious to the fate of those not in our immediate neighborhood. Equality has been an elusive goal of civilization at least since the French Revolution made it one of its founding principles. But unlike personal freedom, which has blossomed over the centuries, equality has proven to be more challenging. It may well be the hardest social change that humans will ever make. If we don’t, however, our species is likely doomed to a short-lived existence at the top of the food chain. The dinosaurs reigned the earth for hundreds of millions of years; we’ve barely passed our second million.
Since equality means different things, let me clarify what I’m talking about. We can define many forms of equality, but let’s confine this to three: social, political and economic. If we could possibly achieve equity in these three areas, the rest would be gravy. Socially, America has made great strides in my lifetime. From the segregated, Jim Crow, uptight conformist world of my youth, we have let a hundred flowers bloom. Americans enjoy greater acceptance and equality than ever before in public places we all inhabit. We dress and look however we like and, in most cases, no one cares. However, true social equality is not about self-expression, but about access. We are very socially divided when it comes to access to entertainment, education, recreation and culture. So much depends on having the means that the poor are largely excluded or, at best, looking in from the outside.
Political equality is another area where great progress has occurred in my lifetime, yet there’s still so terribly far to go. Before the civil rights act of 1964, widespread discrimination on the basis of race and gender was commonplace, and not just in the Deep South. Gates, N.Y., where I grew up, was redlined by city officials in collusion with real estate interests to exclude black residents. This was Jim Crow at work on the Canadian border. Today, such blatant discrimination is illegal, leading to the diverse neighborhood I live in today, a mix of White, Asian, Latinx and Black families. Voting rights have also been expanded to include Black and other previously excluded minorities and women have gained representation at the highest levels, including our first female Vice-President, Kamala Harris, and undoubtedly a future candidate for President.
On the other hand, we have seen backsliding in voting rights, including Republican efforts to suppress minority voters through onerous photo ID laws and voter registration purges and this year, objecting to mail-in voting in the midst of a pandemic. Trump, ever the sore loser, is using mail-in voting as his excuse to claim the election was stolen. His supporters are echoing his baseless claims, eroding trust in our democratic institutions. Already, millions of Trump voters will never accept the fact that Biden won a decisive victory by over 8 million votes and more than 50 electoral votes. Biden won by more than either Obama or Bush in their re-elections.
The other political equality problem is obvious – those in power in government positions do not represent the true interests of their constituents. Instead, they now serve their campaign donors and the cash that fuels their political careers. Our politics is so awash in money these days, it has become as smelly as a downtown sewer. The average American actually wield virtually no clout compared with the moneyed interests who provide the fuel for the business of politics. Until we get money out of politics, it will always corruptly serve the highest bidder, not the highest good.
Finally, we come to economic equality. It’s quite obvious that this is our Achille’s Heel. We have among the most economically unequal societies in the industrialized world and it has been getting dramatically worse over the past few decades. While working Americans haven’t had a raise in their real wages since 1979, the wealthiest Americans have seen their incomes rise 800%. Today, the vast majority of the trillions of profits generated by American business wind up in the hands of less than 1% of our population. Just one extreme example among many: Jeff Bezos of Amazon is worth more than the GDP of half the countries in the world. Meanwhile, he pays his employees $15 bucks an hour. And they are the lucky ones. At least they get benefits. Many Americans are still working at the Federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour, minus benefits, stuck in a level of poverty that they will never escape.
The economic solution is a conundrum wrapped in an enigma. Past attempts to create economic equality, most notably communism, succeeded only in lowering everyone’s standard of living to that of the poorest peasant. Obviously, the goal of economic equity should be to lift people up to middle class status, not drive them down the economic ladder. The U.S. once had a thriving middle class, so we actually know how to do this. It requires sharing the collective burden of providing for the common good that we all use – infrastructure, courts, schools, libraries, parks, hospitals, fire, police, etc. It requires that those with the most should pay the most, while those with the least should pay least. While we have made attempts to shield the poor from the worst outcomes, through government assistance and wage and labor laws, those safety nets have been eroded.
I believe it’s time to think about limits on the upper end of income as well. What in hell is Jeff Bezos going to do with $200 billion? He couldn’t spend half of that if he shopped non-stop on Amazon for the rest of his life. Why should any human being have that much excess when millions are starving and dying in a pandemic? I believe we need a maximum wage too. After a certain obscene amount to be determined, you get taxed at 100% or you can give it away to charity. Put that money to work to help others thrive and succeed rather than hoarding it in a tax-free bank account in the Cayman Islands.
Of course, I don’t hope to see true equality in my lifetime. This is going to be a long slog. But I’m convinced that history is on my side. Since our days living in small family tribes, an unequal hierarchy of social, political and economic power has subjected the many to the whims of the few. Much of human history, especially in the modern period, has been about reversing that unequal balance of power and giving more power to the people. Eventually, that will mean we will all be accepted as equals, regardless of where we live or what we look like. It also means we will share democratic decision-making and share equally in the fruits of our collective labor. I tell my granddaughter Jade that she will live in a better world than I did. I can only hope that I’m right about that, for her sake as well as humanity’s.
Priceless Moments
Here are a few of the moments and people of 2020 that we will not soon forget, even if we tried.
To Donald J. Trump, former President of the USA:
You have set a new standard for mendacity, corruption and incompetence and will go down as the worst President in modern American history. Nixon appears saintly in comparison. Mainly, I’ll never forgive you for ruining my good name. I’ve been enduring lame jokes about my name for four years now and I’ve about had it. Just as the name Donald was fading away, I’m sure in the rural South and Midwest there’s a surge in baby boys named Donald. Heaven help them!
To Joe Biden, incoming President of the USA:
I’ll readily admit you weren’t my first pick among the Democratic field of 17 (in fact, you didn’t make my top 5), but in the end, you are exactly what the country needs right now. A grandfatherly approach to things – quiet, strong, assured and respectful. In fact, we’ll happily take boringly normal for four years. The country could use a little boring right now.
To the Republican Party:
I don’t pretend to know whither the Republicans in a post-Trump world, but they are on the brink of becoming a minority White supremacist party in a handful of rural states if they stay on their current course with Trump. Republicans used to believe in fiscal conservatism, strong defense and individual freedom. Wonder whatever happened to that party?
To the Management of the LA Lakers (that’s you, Jeannie Buss):
Congratulations on the Laker’s 17th NBA championship, tying the Celtics for the most all time. But shame on you for jumping the line and getting PPP money from the Federal government to the tune of $75 million while millions of struggling restaurants and retail shops got shut out. What was your hardship? Having to win the championship in Orlando in a bubble instead of inside Staples Center? At least you returned it after the public shamed you into doing the right thing. Lots of other fat cats made off with the PPP money that was supposed to keep small businesses afloat. They ought to return every last penny.
To the memory of Kobe Bryant, greatest LA Laker of all:
You brought LA so much joy along with five championships and represented our can-do free spirit better than anyone. Your premature death in a freak accident was the harbinger of a disastrous year ahead, but you will always live on as an example to every one of the virtues of dedication and hard work. Mamba Mentality forever!
To George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and the thousands of other victims of unjustified police killings:
Your deaths at the hands of the police sparked an awakening and a social reckoning that touched every American. I know your families will forever grieve their loss, but they should know that you did not die in vain. Your names will echo through history, as have so many martyrs before you.
To U.S. Confederates:
In making your last stand to defend confederate statues in public squares and confederate general’s names on Southern military bases, have you stopped to consider you are staking your reputation on an unsuccessful seditious rebellion that was crushed in four years with the highest death toll in our history? Is that really what you want to be remembered for?
To Ruth Bader Ginsburg, former Supreme Court Justice:
As the Notorious RBG, you were an inspiration to millions of young girls and women who saw your rise through the legal ranks as proof that the glass ceiling could be cracked, if not broken entirely. Unfortunately, you could not choose the timing of your passing, leaving us the unsettling prospect of a right-wing Supreme Court for the next half-century that is dramatically out of step with the majority of Americans and set to roll back civil and human rights by a century.
To Mother Nature and Father Time:
On behalf of all 8 billion of us, I want to express my sincere apologies for any offense we might have caused by poisoning your air and water, destroying your forests and wildlife and hastening the end of life as we have known it. I can only explain that humans were terribly distracted this year by more urgent things, like a deadly pandemic. We promise to be better next year. Please don’t quit on us just yet.
