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I kinda get why people like this piece: "We Are Living in a Failed State: The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken" https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/underlying-conditions/610261/ But IMO its core is what all political writing dripping in Americanism gets wrong
this is the closest he gets to talking about the structural racism and inequality in America
But all of this wrapped around so unity of politics and unity in being American when historically this have NEVER been true. It's more of writing American history as white history; from the perspective of dominant class of Americans
The massive inequality and governmental neglect that makes COVID-19 deadly isn't just some problem of State failure its deliberate racial project of theft in favor of white people nominally, if not in actuality
All these laments about partisan politics and lack of unity is simply an attempt to reframe actual history into a color-blind white-centered history that completely ignores slavery and continuing process of black & indigenous genocides
If USA had MORE partisan politics we might be in better position. Partisan politics is GOOD when there are ACTUAL IDEOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES
But I'm getting away from the point. I mean he's talking about national unity in response to 9/11. During that time the nationalism was ugly and stifling to healthy discourse that wasn't soaked in war and imperialism.
And in retrospect the response to 9/11 just got hundreds of thousands if not millions of people world wide killed and made Americans more fearful of world and themselves
A politics of fear is not a politics of unity and there is not politics of unity within in unequal society.
