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The Covid crisis showed perfectly just how broken the US is. The country in its current state is hopelessly divided, terribly corrupt and it doesn’t have a fun

The Covid crisis showed perfectly just how broken the US is. The country in its current state is hopelessly divided, terribly corrupt and it doesn’t have a functioning government or healthcare system. Politicians and civilians seem to pride themselves in making dumb and arrogant statements that show their lack of knowledge and experience. Democracy seems on the chopping block too. Trump is a major cause of this broken image, but for my generation it really started with the potential vice president Sarah Palin. As a European I can say that the only people who still look up to the USA as a great country are the people who base their views on Hollywood instead of the news.

dwater 6y ago
I don't know what generation you are, but for my generation it started with Newt Gingrich and the "Moral Majority"'s intentional stonewalling and dismantling of government.
- thewebcount 6y ago
  It definitely goes back to at least Reagan saying that government is the cause of all of our problems, but it's probably earlier than that. I have a vague recollection of Nixon saying something similar, but can't remember the details.
- toby 6y ago
  There's a great podcast about this: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/662/transcript https://www.thisamericanlife.org/662/transcript To me the most interesting part was about how Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan were pretty close friends: "Then one day, I picked up the paper and read where he had made a statement about me that was pretty harsh. And I called him, and I said, Tip, I thought we had a relationship here, where we could do business together. And, oh, now, I read in the paper that you said-- And he interrupted me and said, well, buddy, that's just politics. He said, after 6 o'clock, we're buddies. We're friends. I did take it that every once in a while, when we had a meeting, I would visibly set my watch at above 6 o'clock."
fermienrico 6y ago
> As a European I can say that the only people who still look up to the USA as a great country are the people who base their views on Hollywood instead of the news. Not sure what to say about this - I don't think anyone believes what America is on the basis of Hollywood. America is 50 states and depending on which state you're referring to - quality and standard of living, incoming, happiness, etc varies. It is like looking at the state of Romania and basing your views about Sweden, both EU nations.
- spiderfarmer 6y ago
  I went to visit LA 10 years ago. I somehow expected nice roads and well maintained infrastructure, because that is what you see in the movies. It was a shock for me to see how shoddy everything looked.
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    Definitely, American infrastructure is crumbling in big cities. It is really bad. Roads in SF have pot holes everywhere, the whole thing smells. It is awful. Did you visit Lake Tahoe and any of the National Parks? The country side infrastructure usually is excellent and well maintained. Certain states are better - Colorado and Utah have excellent roads even in the cities. Phoenix, Arizona is same.
war1025 6y ago
> As a European I can say that the only people who still look up to the USA as a great country are the people who base their views on Hollywood instead of the news. For many in the US, the opinions of Hollywood and the major news outlets are equally inaccurate and irrelevant. Consider that the US is more comparable to the EU as a whole than any individual country in the EU, and a lot of things regarding US politics start to make more sense.
- User23 6y ago
  The United States is best viewed as 50 little countries. Culturally Louisiana is as different from North Dakota as France is from Sweden. Our federal government is increasingly powerful, but State sovereignty isn't just a paper promise. The States retain significant real authority and can effectively rebuff the federal government if the political will exists. For better or for worse though, the power of the States has been on a downward trajectory for over a century. Nevertheless the strong fiscal, monetary, and military union between the States has been hugely beneficial in most respects. The EU on the other hand is broken by design[1]. It appears to be largely forgotten now, but the framers of the EU were well aware that monetary union without fiscal union was unsustainable in the long term. They, perhaps unwisely, assumed that reasonable compromises would be reached in relatively short order. [1] https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v14/n19/wynne-godley/maastricht-and-all-that https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v14/n19/wynne-godley/maastri...
dfsegoat 6y ago
I Love America. I don’t think the problems you describe are unique to the US. > ‘and it doesn’t have a functioning government or healthcare system’ Can you elaborate here? I can have no job or health insurance, and I can obtain treatment at the hospital. Likewise, I participate in city council and roundtables with city and state officials. They listen to the community and policy changes are affected based on that. Govt seems to work pretty well locally. Federal govt is not relevant at that level. Could it all be better? Sure. But your hyperbole is a bit much.
- newacct583 6y ago
  > I can have no job or health insurance, and I can obtain treatment at the hospital. For emergency care, yes. Not for an MRI or a hip replacement or dialysis or physical therapy or cancer treatments or prostheses or cataract surgery or... This is this weird myth that won't die. It's absolutely true that emergency rooms are universally required to treat anyone who walks in the door. It's also true that ER care makes up something like 3% of US health care delivered.
  - alcatrash 6y ago
    "I can have no job..." 50 million people in the US are on Medicare or Medicaid, and can and do absolutely receive those services, based on age or income level. The ones who cannot are those whose income is too high for those service and choose to forgo or cannot afford health insurance.
    - katbyte 6y ago
      And then pay deductibles and co pays and god forbid your out of network.. your making excuses for a broken system which most of the 1st world surpasses in almost every way
      - spiderfarmer 6y ago
        My family of 5 pays just 240 euro’s per month. That covers everything.
taeric 6y ago
I wouldn't be too quick to point to Covid as evidence of anything, yet. Unless you are just wanting to say that we have a very divided landscape. Even then, used to be there were lynching and other horrid acts. I wouldn't claim we are past all horrors, but nor do I see any reason to think they are actually getting worse. Just more light on them. (And I am hopeful that that is a good thing, for the arc of progress.)
- newacct583 6y ago
  > I wouldn't be too quick to point to Covid as evidence of anything, yet. It's evidence of something. The US covid response is a distinct, notable, and quite frankly disastrous outlier in the industrial world. No one handled this as badly as we did, objectively. Shouldn't we be looking for an explanation for that? And maybe taking lessons that might hold for other things we're doing badly?
  - taeric 6y ago
    Without a counterfactual, it is hard to know what could have made it better. I'm personally very sceptical that we know what could have made things better. This is while still being dismayed at how crappy leadership has been. So, I think we'll know more in a few years. Hopefully we learn enough that we make better choices next time. As things are standing though, my money is on prior exposure to corona and sars being the largest contributors to places that have "done better." And we aren't out of the woods, yet, as it were. If that is the case, most of what we are seeing is just more evidence that the majority vote lost out last time. Such that now we are seeing the majority is still upset about that.
    - newacct583 6y ago
      > Without a counterfactual, it is hard to know what could have made it better. You realize there are dozens of other nations that saw the same virus, right? That seems like a nonsensical response to me, as if you're asking "Well, who could have known?". Well, Germany. Germany seems to have known. Also Japan, Korea, Canada, Australia, New Zealand (especially those guys)... Even nations like Spain and Belgium, which had disastrous early outbreaks got it under control at a time when we had a huge second wave. You really don't think we have anything to learn from that data? > my money is on prior exposure to corona and sars being the largest contributors to places that have "done better." Uh... what? Let's ignore the pseudoscience argument and just talk demographics: you're saying that the United States, alone among all nations in the industrialized world, was unique in that it had no prior exposure to pre-existing coronavirii. Everywhere else in the industrialized world, every nation, had large pre-existing immunity? That's what you're going with? And you think that makes sense?
AviationAtom 6y ago
Might I temporarily diverge from the immediate topic at hand and ask you views on the Romani people?
onepointsixC 6y ago
Considering that the US is so corrupt, with non functioning government and/or health care systems, why are EU per capita death rates close to the American ones? In the presumably more competent, wealthier, and more generous Western European nations, a majority of them have death rates which exceed the US. Why? Furthermore given the significantly greater number of cases shouldn't US death rates be significantly greater if it's healthcare system is non functional?
- katbyte 6y ago
  America is still in the top 10? And I think the big difference is all the other countries are well past the peak while America is accelerating into a second just as bad as the first?
  - onepointsixC 6y ago
    Europe appears to be also accelerating into a second wave as well[1]. [1]: https://time.com/5876132/europe-coronavirus-second-wave/ https://time.com/5876132/europe-coronavirus-second-wave/
- spiderfarmer 6y ago
  Why compare EU countries to the US? Why not countries with states?
  - onepointsixC 6y ago
    Okay, fine let's compare country to country: The UK, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, and Spain all have worse if not significantly worse mortality rates per capita [1]. Why have they performed worse than the "terribly corrupt" and nonfunctioning government and or healthcare system of the US? Furthermore France, while having a lower mortality rate, is still within 10% of America's. That a whole lot of Western Europe right there which doesn't anything to show for your implied superiority. That's not to say there aren't European countries which have done better, there are: Germany, Denmark, Ireland, Netherlands, have thus far have significantly lower death rates per capita. How can you off handily suggest that the US is non functioning and broke while still beating countries which make up half of the EU, by population? [1]: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
gwright 6y ago
> As a European I can say that the only people who still look up to the USA as a great country are the people who base their views on Hollywood instead of the news. Basing your view on the "news" is a huge mistake. Mass media portrayal of the US (or really of any country) is much closer to a constructed narrative than a transparent view of "reality". Do you think US "news" portrays Europe accurately? (honest question)
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Stronger: For the last several years, the US has been the target of a disinformation and agitprop campaign. (Or more than one. And it doesn't really matter if the origin of the campaign is domestic, so you have to count the Republican and Democratic machines, which both paint a picture that things are terrible, and our side is the only one that can fix it.) That doesn't make it easy to form a realistic assessment of how good or bad things are...
cactus2093 6y ago
As an American, I have to say I agree and it is sad and frightening to see. It has been a long-time coming that the US has been getting more and more stagnant and unable to do certain things. It's like we've been on a freighter headed for an iceberg, and the rudder is broken so we're all just watching it in slow motion. Look at infrastructure projects, healthcare, college costs, housing, global warming, etc. They've been obvious, impending issues for decades and we've just sat by and done nothing while they become bigger and bigger problems for more and more people. Still, at least in my opinion, America has continued to have a "superpower" of innovation in other, less constrained areas. Many of the brightest, most ambitious people in the world have continued to come here and do amazing things, as they have for the past century. And when things have been truly dire even fairly recently, like the '08 financial crisis or even 9/11, we've managed to take action and address it. In hindsight there were obviously major flaws to our responses to those things, but they were over-reactions rather than inaction, and were arguably still better than doing nothing (with the notable exception of the war in Iraq, but that had a lot of more complex causes and wasn't necessarily America's direct response to 9/11). For me personally, this is what makes the current moment so devastating to watch, and why I have started feeling like this time is different. We've had one of the top 5 biggest threats of American lives in all of history with Covid-19, and the federal response has been just ignoring it. On top of that, we're now going full steam ahead on shutting down or severely limiting immigration. That strikes me as just about the most idiotic, and profoundly un-American thing I can think of. These things take time to cause major shifts so I am hopeful we still have a couple of years to correct the course before the effects start to compound too much, but it feels like a particularly fragile time and the future could go either way at this point.

dwater 6y ago

I don't know what generation you are, but for my generation it started with Newt Gingrich and the "Moral Majority"'s intentional stonewalling and dismantling of government.

thewebcount 6y ago
It definitely goes back to at least Reagan saying that government is the cause of all of our problems, but it's probably earlier than that. I have a vague recollection of Nixon saying something similar, but can't remember the details.
toby 6y ago
There's a great podcast about this: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/662/transcript https://www.thisamericanlife.org/662/transcript To me the most interesting part was about how Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan were pretty close friends: "Then one day, I picked up the paper and read where he had made a statement about me that was pretty harsh. And I called him, and I said, Tip, I thought we had a relationship here, where we could do business together. And, oh, now, I read in the paper that you said-- And he interrupted me and said, well, buddy, that's just politics. He said, after 6 o'clock, we're buddies. We're friends. I did take it that every once in a while, when we had a meeting, I would visibly set my watch at above 6 o'clock."

fermienrico 6y ago

> As a European I can say that the only people who still look up to the USA as a great country are the people who base their views on Hollywood instead of the news. Not sure what to say about this - I don't think anyone believes what America is on the basis of Hollywood. America is 50 states and depending on which state you're referring to - quality and standard of living, incoming, happiness, etc varies. It is like looking at the state of Romania and basing your views about Sweden, both EU nations.

spiderfarmer 6y ago
I went to visit LA 10 years ago. I somehow expected nice roads and well maintained infrastructure, because that is what you see in the movies. It was a shock for me to see how shoddy everything looked.
- fermienrico 6y ago
  Definitely, American infrastructure is crumbling in big cities. It is really bad. Roads in SF have pot holes everywhere, the whole thing smells. It is awful. Did you visit Lake Tahoe and any of the National Parks? The country side infrastructure usually is excellent and well maintained. Certain states are better - Colorado and Utah have excellent roads even in the cities. Phoenix, Arizona is same.

war1025 6y ago

> As a European I can say that the only people who still look up to the USA as a great country are the people who base their views on Hollywood instead of the news. For many in the US, the opinions of Hollywood and the major news outlets are equally inaccurate and irrelevant. Consider that the US is more comparable to the EU as a whole than any individual country in the EU, and a lot of things regarding US politics start to make more sense.

User23 6y ago
The United States is best viewed as 50 little countries. Culturally Louisiana is as different from North Dakota as France is from Sweden. Our federal government is increasingly powerful, but State sovereignty isn't just a paper promise. The States retain significant real authority and can effectively rebuff the federal government if the political will exists. For better or for worse though, the power of the States has been on a downward trajectory for over a century. Nevertheless the strong fiscal, monetary, and military union between the States has been hugely beneficial in most respects. The EU on the other hand is broken by design[1]. It appears to be largely forgotten now, but the framers of the EU were well aware that monetary union without fiscal union was unsustainable in the long term. They, perhaps unwisely, assumed that reasonable compromises would be reached in relatively short order. [1] https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v14/n19/wynne-godley/maastricht-and-all-that https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v14/n19/wynne-godley/maastri...

dfsegoat 6y ago

I Love America. I don’t think the problems you describe are unique to the US. > ‘and it doesn’t have a functioning government or healthcare system’ Can you elaborate here? I can have no job or health insurance, and I can obtain treatment at the hospital. Likewise, I participate in city council and roundtables with city and state officials. They listen to the community and policy changes are affected based on that. Govt seems to work pretty well locally. Federal govt is not relevant at that level. Could it all be better? Sure. But your hyperbole is a bit much.

newacct583 6y ago
> I can have no job or health insurance, and I can obtain treatment at the hospital. For emergency care, yes. Not for an MRI or a hip replacement or dialysis or physical therapy or cancer treatments or prostheses or cataract surgery or... This is this weird myth that won't die. It's absolutely true that emergency rooms are universally required to treat anyone who walks in the door. It's also true that ER care makes up something like 3% of US health care delivered.
- alcatrash 6y ago
  "I can have no job..." 50 million people in the US are on Medicare or Medicaid, and can and do absolutely receive those services, based on age or income level. The ones who cannot are those whose income is too high for those service and choose to forgo or cannot afford health insurance.
  - katbyte 6y ago
    And then pay deductibles and co pays and god forbid your out of network.. your making excuses for a broken system which most of the 1st world surpasses in almost every way
    - spiderfarmer 6y ago
      My family of 5 pays just 240 euro’s per month. That covers everything.

taeric 6y ago

I wouldn't be too quick to point to Covid as evidence of anything, yet. Unless you are just wanting to say that we have a very divided landscape. Even then, used to be there were lynching and other horrid acts. I wouldn't claim we are past all horrors, but nor do I see any reason to think they are actually getting worse. Just more light on them. (And I am hopeful that that is a good thing, for the arc of progress.)

newacct583 6y ago
> I wouldn't be too quick to point to Covid as evidence of anything, yet. It's evidence of something. The US covid response is a distinct, notable, and quite frankly disastrous outlier in the industrial world. No one handled this as badly as we did, objectively. Shouldn't we be looking for an explanation for that? And maybe taking lessons that might hold for other things we're doing badly?
- taeric 6y ago
  Without a counterfactual, it is hard to know what could have made it better. I'm personally very sceptical that we know what could have made things better. This is while still being dismayed at how crappy leadership has been. So, I think we'll know more in a few years. Hopefully we learn enough that we make better choices next time. As things are standing though, my money is on prior exposure to corona and sars being the largest contributors to places that have "done better." And we aren't out of the woods, yet, as it were. If that is the case, most of what we are seeing is just more evidence that the majority vote lost out last time. Such that now we are seeing the majority is still upset about that.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    > Without a counterfactual, it is hard to know what could have made it better. You realize there are dozens of other nations that saw the same virus, right? That seems like a nonsensical response to me, as if you're asking "Well, who could have known?". Well, Germany. Germany seems to have known. Also Japan, Korea, Canada, Australia, New Zealand (especially those guys)... Even nations like Spain and Belgium, which had disastrous early outbreaks got it under control at a time when we had a huge second wave. You really don't think we have anything to learn from that data? > my money is on prior exposure to corona and sars being the largest contributors to places that have "done better." Uh... what? Let's ignore the pseudoscience argument and just talk demographics: you're saying that the United States, alone among all nations in the industrialized world, was unique in that it had no prior exposure to pre-existing coronavirii. Everywhere else in the industrialized world, every nation, had large pre-existing immunity? That's what you're going with? And you think that makes sense?

AviationAtom 6y ago

Might I temporarily diverge from the immediate topic at hand and ask you views on the Romani people?

onepointsixC 6y ago

Considering that the US is so corrupt, with non functioning government and/or health care systems, why are EU per capita death rates close to the American ones? In the presumably more competent, wealthier, and more generous Western European nations, a majority of them have death rates which exceed the US. Why? Furthermore given the significantly greater number of cases shouldn't US death rates be significantly greater if it's healthcare system is non functional?

katbyte 6y ago
America is still in the top 10? And I think the big difference is all the other countries are well past the peak while America is accelerating into a second just as bad as the first?
- onepointsixC 6y ago
  Europe appears to be also accelerating into a second wave as well[1]. [1]: https://time.com/5876132/europe-coronavirus-second-wave/ https://time.com/5876132/europe-coronavirus-second-wave/
spiderfarmer 6y ago
Why compare EU countries to the US? Why not countries with states?
- onepointsixC 6y ago
  Okay, fine let's compare country to country: The UK, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, and Spain all have worse if not significantly worse mortality rates per capita [1]. Why have they performed worse than the "terribly corrupt" and nonfunctioning government and or healthcare system of the US? Furthermore France, while having a lower mortality rate, is still within 10% of America's. That a whole lot of Western Europe right there which doesn't anything to show for your implied superiority. That's not to say there aren't European countries which have done better, there are: Germany, Denmark, Ireland, Netherlands, have thus far have significantly lower death rates per capita. How can you off handily suggest that the US is non functioning and broke while still beating countries which make up half of the EU, by population? [1]: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

gwright 6y ago

> As a European I can say that the only people who still look up to the USA as a great country are the people who base their views on Hollywood instead of the news. Basing your view on the "news" is a huge mistake. Mass media portrayal of the US (or really of any country) is much closer to a constructed narrative than a transparent view of "reality". Do you think US "news" portrays Europe accurately? (honest question)

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Stronger: For the last several years, the US has been the target of a disinformation and agitprop campaign. (Or more than one. And it doesn't really matter if the origin of the campaign is domestic, so you have to count the Republican and Democratic machines, which both paint a picture that things are terrible, and our side is the only one that can fix it.) That doesn't make it easy to form a realistic assessment of how good or bad things are...

cactus2093 6y ago

As an American, I have to say I agree and it is sad and frightening to see. It has been a long-time coming that the US has been getting more and more stagnant and unable to do certain things. It's like we've been on a freighter headed for an iceberg, and the rudder is broken so we're all just watching it in slow motion. Look at infrastructure projects, healthcare, college costs, housing, global warming, etc. They've been obvious, impending issues for decades and we've just sat by and done nothing while they become bigger and bigger problems for more and more people. Still, at least in my opinion, America has continued to have a "superpower" of innovation in other, less constrained areas. Many of the brightest, most ambitious people in the world have continued to come here and do amazing things, as they have for the past century. And when things have been truly dire even fairly recently, like the '08 financial crisis or even 9/11, we've managed to take action and address it. In hindsight there were obviously major flaws to our responses to those things, but they were over-reactions rather than inaction, and were arguably still better than doing nothing (with the notable exception of the war in Iraq, but that had a lot of more complex causes and wasn't necessarily America's direct response to 9/11). For me personally, this is what makes the current moment so devastating to watch, and why I have started feeling like this time is different. We've had one of the top 5 biggest threats of American lives in all of history with Covid-19, and the federal response has been just ignoring it. On top of that, we're now going full steam ahead on shutting down or severely limiting immigration. That strikes me as just about the most idiotic, and profoundly un-American thing I can think of. These things take time to cause major shifts so I am hopeful we still have a couple of years to correct the course before the effects start to compound too much, but it feels like a particularly fragile time and the future could go either way at this point.