Stupidity and failure

Despite a highly-developed health-care system and medical workers who have driven themselves to exhaustion at great personal risk, the response of the US as a nation to covid-19 has been a disaster.  We are now the global center of the pandemic, and the situation is rapidly getting even worse as state governments relax lockdown policies and infections take off again.  It's no wonder European countries are considering restrictions on visitors from the US.

This is not all Trump's fault, though he deserves a hefty share of the blame.

It is not "our" fault in the sense of Americans generally (and never forget that "we" did not elect Trump -- the majority voted for Hillary, and without vote suppression it would have been even more so).

No, the greater part of the blame goes to a large minority within the US population which is militantly stupid and, in many cases, consumed with hate and otherwise emotionally stunted.

You know the kind of people I'm talking about.

The macho-moron BFYTW snowflake subculture that refuses to wear masks or observe social distancing for the same reasons they drive drunk or use illegal fireworks or smoke around other people -- they can't tolerate rules which impose even the tiniest discomfort or compromise the immediate gratification of their childish desires, even when it's a matter of endangering other people, not just themselves.

The determinedly-oblivious idiots who disdain science and instead choose to believe wishful thinking and superstition and random nonsense, listening to pastors or gurus or celebrities or some nutcase with a podcast instead of to people who actually know things (and not all of these types are of the right wing, please note).

The solipsists who act as if their own feelings and wishes somehow shape reality -- "I'm just tired of all these rules and I'm tired of hearing about the virus and I want it to be over so I can move on to something else, therefore it is".  Objective reality doesn't give a shit about your toddler-like short attention span, and while we're on the subject, Santa Claus doesn't exist either, boo-hoo.

If Hillary were president as the majority of us wanted, the official response to the pandemic would have been far better and many lives would have been saved -- but there are enough of these arrested-development idiot types that things would still be far worse here than in other developed countries where such people are much fewer and the public has more respect for science and understanding of it.  There are enough of them to keep this pandemic raging more or less out of control even if better policies are put in place (which would help, but not get our curve on that graph anywhere near the others) until their betters, the scientists, develop a vaccine which will at least protect us of the non-stupid majority from the consequences of their behavior.

We are going to end up with a million dead and an economy wrecked beyond anything we've seen yet, and stand revealed as a pitiful embarrassment to the rest of the Western world, because at least a third of our population is stupid, infantile, and utterly lacking in self-discipline.  It's as simple as that.

Biden will have one hell of a gargantuan mess to clean up.  Be ready to give him all the support you can, for the country's sake.  Because he's going to be hated and opposed at every step by the vast herd of morons he's trying to save.