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06 Jul, 2020
Trump đặt dấu chấm hết cho american empire...
by steven durlauf, hat tip to quoc-anh do,
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This is the most depressing (buồn nản) Independence Day of my life. I have never felt less confidence in the United States.
The inability of this country to generate a competent (thạo, rành, khá) response (phản ứng) to COVID-19 is the obvious reason. Trump's catastrophic (thảm họa) mishandling (quản lý tồi, giải quyết hỏng) is the main failure, but be it NY and NYC on nursing homes, or the idiocy (hành động ngu si, lời nói ngu ngốc) of governors and state legislatures from Florida to Texas to Wisconsin, government failure has occurred at all levels.
Blaming this society-wide disaster (thảm họa toàn xã hộ) on leaders is too easy. When a large fraction of the population regards mandatory use of masks as a civil liberties issue, the failures are those of the people. Refusal to wear a mask is an act of selfishness and should be stigmatized. I am stunned by the number of Facebook postings where people claim those who do not wear masks should be respected as a matter of choice and personal freedom. That is the freedom of child, not a citizen. The transformation of this society from one that fought World War II and achieved the moon landing to one that is incapable of collective action on a *pandemic* is shocking. Trump is an incompetent, a demagogue, and a fool, but the fact that public opinion has not overwhelmingly repudiated (khước từ, từ bỏ, từ chối, thoái thác) his leadership over COVID-19 is a mark of an unvirtuous (không có đức, không đạo đức; không tiết hạnh, không đoan chính) nation. The Western Europe versus US comparison in the Figures speaks volumes. And of course, the successes of Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and New Zealand put the US to shame.
The aftermath of the George Floyd murder and aftermath is a source of some limited optimism. Most important, public opinion has dramatically shifted in favor of Black Lives Matter and in terms of recognition of the extent of discrimination (phân biệt đối xử) and racism (phân biệt chủng tộc) in 2020. It speaks well of the public that the great majority of the public has not conflated demonstrators and looters. There have been valuable symbolic changes, the removal of confederate statues, renaming of buildings, respect given to athletes who have stood up to oppose injustice.
But I am pessimistic about deeper structural change. The police riots that have occurred during the unrest could not have done a better job of demonstrating the need for a root and branch transformation of law enforcement, starting with a wholesale turnover of much of the current police force, the end to police unions in their current form, end of the militarization of police, and fundamental changes in the rules for the use of force. Hard to envision a path where this occurs.
I think that history will look back and see the Trump administration as the turning point in the long run decline of the American Empire. Trump himself is a latter-day combination of Commodus and Septimus Severus. We are becoming worthy of some future Edward Gibbon. Gibbon attributed the decline and fall of the Roman Empire to the decline of civic virtue, an old fashioned idea. I think it has the ring of truth today.
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