Susan Rice writes in The New York Times that the United States can't go back to normal:
The coronavirus has laid bare our domestic divisions, unequal economy, and glaring racial and socio-economic disparities as well as the fragility of our democracy. To recover from this crisis, it will not suffice to contain the carnage, reopen our economy and “get back to normal.” “Normal” is too costly and deadly for all Americans.
Now is the time to rebuild better — our economy, our health care and education systems, our democratic institutions — so that we cure the root causes of our collective disease. While one can hope we soon will be blessed with new leadership committed to national unity, human dignity, and respect for democracy, we cannot afford to wish and wait.
Donald Trump isn't the man to lead this effort:
Unfortunately, we are today condemned to be led by a president who has no conception of the national interest apart from his personal interest. Donald Trump is obsessed with his image and poll numbers and the Dow Jones average, but sadly none of the ambitious questions that inspired his predecessors — chiefly, how can we exit this crucible of death and hardship as a more decent America?
Rice suggests that, in the absence of leadership from Mr. Trump, that Congress can do two things:
The first is to preserve and protect our democracy by ensuring free and fair elections in November. Long before Covid-19, partisan gerrymandering, voter exclusion, dark money and foreign interference combined to erode the integrity of our electoral system. Now, amid this pandemic, we risk many Americans being prevented from voting because they cannot safely get to a polling station, as evidenced by the callously run Wisconsin elections this month.
Second, the United States has a rare opportunity to accelerate our recovery from the coronavirus while starting to restore an ethos of service to American culture. To reopen our states and towns safely, we need to hugely scale up testing and our capacity to trace the contacts of those infected to enable them to be isolated and cared for.
Rice is hitting on an old idea. Instead of being drafted into the armed forces, Americans could spend time in national service. The country
will require trained contact tracers who can interview, assess and support those quarantined, and potentially administer vaccines. Experts estimate the United States will need 100,000 to 300,000 contact tracers (costing approximately $3.6 billion per 100,000 workers annually) with skills that match those of most high school graduates. We can recruit this work force from public health personnel as well as the newly unemployed, college students, recent graduates, idled Peace Corps and AmeriCorps volunteers, and retirees.
In Canada, we also need to be thinking about what comes next. We can't go back to the way things were. The coronavirus has changed everything.
Image: Reddit
4 comments:
Great ideas that will wind up on the mountain of great ideas that came to nothing. "We can't" - them's fighting words. The forces of status quo aren't giving up. They're not going anywhere without a fight. As far as they're concerned, "we can and we damned well will."
This article out of Stanford I posted yesterday put it succinctly: "Through their control of government, finance, business, and media, neoliberal adherents have succeeded in transforming the world into a globalized market-based system, loosening regulatory controls, weakening social safety nets, reducing taxes, and virtually demolishing the power of organized labor."
It's about control - 'of government, finance, business, and media.' The neoliberals have worked very hard to achieve the levels of domination that have facilitated the greatest transfer of unearned wealth out of the working classes - blue and white collar - into the (offshore) bank accounts of a steadily narrowing class of ultra-rich. Along the way they've pulled up the ladders of social mobility to the point that Europe offers far higher opportunities for advancement than the United States.
How do you dismantle a "captured" system that began with legislative capture, followed by regulatory capture, culminating in executive capture and, over the past two years, judicial capture? What does Ms. Rice propose? How do you reform a bought and paid for Congress that has no inclination to reform? Are rank and file Americans taking to the streets with pitchforks and torches to oust the scoundrel class?
The solution is plainly Jeffersonian, the periodic need to nurture the Tree of Liberty with the blood of patriots, - i.e. revolution. I'll not live long enough to see it.
We should not underestimate the strength of Reaction, Mound. The Trump Era has been a painful reminder to me that the forces of bigotry which I encountered in the American South fifty years ago have not gone away. Foolishly I thought that there had been an evolution in the South. The same people who populated White Citizens Councils are still there.
That said, I think Rice has a point. In the United States, step one is to take down Trump. Step two is to take down the Republican-controlled Senate. It's only a beginning, but it's a first step in nurturing the Tree of Liberty.
In Canada, we must defeat the retrograde ideas that find there way here from our southern neighbour. That's a tall order.
It's about control - 'of government, finance, business, and media.'
https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list
This list leaves me speechless.
If there ever was socialism for the rich , this is it.
Going beyond this will be difficult.
TB
Thanks for the link, TB. They've gone from "too big to fail" to "the biggest are the neediest."
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