Donald Trump began his presidency by instituting travel bans on those who weren't Americans. He ends his presidency with the rest of the world banning Americans from entering their countries. Why? Because Americans have become super-spreaders. American columnist Francine Prose writes in The Guardian:
It’s a strange feeling: in just a few months, we’ve become a pariah nation. We’ve gone from being admired for our spirit, our culture, our stalwart devotion to freedom despite our government’s persistent attempts to curtail those freedoms – and are now being viewed as a nation of super-spreaders, a danger to our own health and that of the hotel reception clerk, the waiter at the café, the two innocent grandmas with the bad luck to sit at a table too near the Americans sipping their morning cappuccini.
Trump is one reason for this reversal:
It’s a clear rebuke to the way that Donald Trump has handled the Covid-19 crisis: refusing to take it seriously, promising that the virus will “fade away”, advocating unproven cures, and (perhaps most unbelievably of all) suggesting that wearing a mask is a political gesture: a sign that we don’t like him.
But he alone is not responsible for the situation Americans now face:
Blame must also be laid at the feet of the governors who ignored the CDC warnings and rushed to re-open their states, and on a system that lacks a safety net to help us through crises like this, so that people are forced to choose between going to work and possibly getting sick – or letting their families go hungry and lose their homes.
Ultimately, however, it's Americans themselves who are to blame. They have been brought up spouting Patrick Henry -- "Give me liberty or give me death!" Now, countries around the world are quite prepared to let them exercise that second option -- just as long as it isn't on their soil.
Image: DeviantArt
8 comments:
I wonder how much understanding the average American has of their fallen place in today's world, Owen. That they are seen as a diseased nation in all measures likely doesn't dawn on most of them, especially those who rabidly consume their deranged leader's tweets and watch his courtiers over at Fox 'News'.
It's been my experience, Lorne, that a large proportion of Americans don't know how the rest of the world sees them. What's worse, they don't care -- because they believe they are "exceptional."
I have been informed by Israeli tourists that they are only welcome in a hand full of countries...they are not the "exceptional" but hey, they are gods "chosen" people
And we have been told by the American president, lungta, that he himself is "the chosen one."
I just cancelled my yearly RV trip to Oregon.
My wife and i just cannot take the chance with the cavalier attitude of the US to the pandemic.
The sadder thing is that I cannot see an end to the stupidity of the masses that wish to return to 'business as usual'.
The only ray of hope is that younger people are now contracting Covid19.
Maybe those that treat the pandemic with such disrespect and complacency will now knuckle down to the realisation that we have left the ME generation for the WE generation.
After decades of promoting the individual, courtesy of the US, we need the collective to survive , not just in numbers but in the quality of humanity.
As we are now, Covid19 is going nowhere we must adjust to a new normal! that possibly includes an annual infection of that virus.
TB
Quite true, TB. Let's hope that the possibility of hanging concentrates the mind. At the moment, people seem to be cheerfully celebrating their own extinction. I'm sorry you had to cancel your trip. Seems that there are lots of cancellations these days.
In better times these extremists were labeled the "lunatic fringe." They're not a fringe any more.
Unfortunately, Mound, insanity has become mainstream.
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