Things are way worse in the US than I can imagine

(Except for the UK.

They're likely to have more deaths per capita than the US, for the same reasons, an inept government pretty much unfocused. "How did Britain get its coronavirus response so wrong," Guardian)

I've mentioned Simon Anholt's book Brand America: The Mother of All Brands, co-authored with Jeremy Hildreth. More recently, I was joking with him that the new Brand America is:

Can't do.  Won't do.  You do.  F*** you.

This article by Simon appeared even before he became president: "Is Trump tarnishing the American brand?," Guardian. It's much worse now.

First you have the June cover story by George Packer in The Atlantic, "We are living in a failed state."

From the article:

When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity—to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category.

The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational, and collective. The United States reacted instead like Pakistan or Belarus—like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering. The administration squandered two irretrievable months to prepare. From the president came willful blindness, scapegoating, boasts, and lies. From his mouthpieces, conspiracy theories and miracle cures. A few senators and corporate executives acted quickly—not to prevent the coming disaster, but to profit from it. When a government doctor tried to warn the public of the danger, the White House took the mic and politicized the message.

Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state. With no national plan—no coherent instructions at all—families, schools, and offices were left to decide on their own whether to shut down and take shelter. When test kits, masks, gowns, and ventilators were found to be in desperately short supply, governors pleaded for them from the White House, which stalled, then called on private enterprise, which couldn’t deliver. States and cities were forced into bidding wars that left them prey to price gouging and corporate profiteering. Civilians took out their sewing machines to try to keep ill-equipped hospital workers healthy and their patients alive. Russia, Taiwan, and the United Nations sent humanitarian aid to the world’s richest power—a beggar nation in utter chaos. ...

Despite countless examples around the U.S. of individual courage and sacrifice, the failure is national. And it should force a question that most Americans have never had to ask: Do we trust our leaders and one another enough to summon a collective response to a mortal threat? Are we still capable of self-government?

An anti-Trump protester at a rally in Sacramento on April 20. Josh Edelson, AFP.

Second, economist Jeffrey Sachs calling the Trump Administration's response to the pandemic "shambolic"  ("Jeffrey Sachs on the Catastrophic American Response to the Coronavirus," New Yorker). 

From the article:

There are many aspects of any major crisis that are similar in character, in that they require governments to assess the situation with sophistication, to identify options, to come up with strategies, and to implement them. Crisis management has a lot of common points. The nature of the crisis could be geopolitical. It could be a climate-related shock or a disease.

I would say the core issues are the capacity of political leaders and their inner team, and the capacity of the institutions of governance—agencies, departments, and ministries—to be able to process information in a timely way and to be able to harness expert advice and evidence in a timely way. We live in a complicated world. If you try to wing it, as Trump does, you end up with more than forty thousand deaths. If you want to solve a problem, you have to be systematic about it, and know whom to turn to and how to listen and amass evidence. For politicians, that doesn’t necessarily come naturally, and for our President it doesn’t come at all.

Third, economist Joseph Stiglitz avers that the catastrophic response by the Trump Administration is leading us to another Great Depression ("Top economist: US coronavirus response is like 'third world' country," Guardian).

Fourth, incredibly disturbing interview with psychiatrist Bandy Lee, about the potential for serious violence on the part of Trump and his supporters ("Yale psychiatrist Bandy Lee: Lockdown protesters resemble “child soldiers” and “urban gangs”," Salon).

---

Notes

1. Sweden's touted response of no stay at home orders has led to a much higher per capita death rate than neighboring countries ("The Grim Truth About the “Swedish Model”," Project Syndicate).

2. Fox News is starting to backtrack on hydroxycloroquine, which doesn't seem to be having the effect that was touted.

3. President Trump says Georgia Governor Brian Kemp is moving too fast on reversing restrictions ("Georgia’s reopening plan gets thrown a curve as Trump criticizes Kemp," Atlanta Journal-Constitution), after Trump spent the weekend promoting protests around the country against stay at home orders--conveniently in states run by Democratic Governors.

McConnell, WTF?: McConnell Says He Favors Allowing States to Declare Bankruptcy in response to coronavirus revenue drops...

Bruce Plante editorial cartoon, Tulsa World, 4/17/2020, Trump Stimulus Check as a campaign device.

Rather than provide financial assistance to state and local governments facing massive deficits because of coronavirus-related economic downturn, according to Politico ("McConnell pushes 'bankruptcy route' as local governments struggle"), Bloomberg ("McConnell Says He Favors Allowing States to Declare Bankruptcy", and other media, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recommends that states and local governments declare bankruptcy.

This is un-@#$%^&*-believable, astounding, and totally irresponsible, just like when wacko Congressman Ted Yoho stated that the US government defaulting on debt would be no problem in the face of Republican intransigence on either funding government or increasing the debt ceiling ("The Tea Party's Government Default Fantasy," Rolling Stone).

Although his comments are couched in "not wanting to bail out states and their pension problems."  Granted pension problems are a huge issue and overhang, but completely irrelevant to the extraordinary pressures on local and state government financing presented by the response to the coronavirus.

Others smarter and more observant than me have made the point that the reason the Republicans and the Trump Administration don't want to provide funding to states and localities is to coerce them to reopen the economy earlier than public health measures warrant (Trump Wants to Starve States Into Opening Before It's Safe," New York Magazine). From the article:

Trump’s plan to coerce the states into reopening has at least three discernible elements. The first is, or was, the formation of a task force to reopen the country. The purpose of the council was to give Trump cover. The council would prod governors to reopen businesses, and because it would be seen as coming from the business community, Trump himself would not bear the blame for future outbreaks that might result. ...

The second element is the mobilization of protests. The appearance of flag-waving and sometimes gun-toting demonstrators in a handful of state capitols this weekend seems to have come as a shock to the news media, but Trump’s allies signaled this was coming. ...

The protests apply pressure to state governments, mobilizing conservatives to oppose lockdowns and raising using the threat of either passive resistance (by flouting social-distancing rules) or open violence (which Trump teased by linking the cause with the Second Amendment). ...

The final element of the plan is using fiscal starvation to bring the states to heel. Republicans have refused to allow any additional funding for state and local governments in the latest economic relief package. “The thinking among some Trump administration officials is that many states should be reopening their governments soon and that additional funding could deter them from doing so,” ...

It's even been suggested that Georgia is reopening its economy as a stratagem to deny unemployment benefits claims, which are projected to be much higher than the state has funds to pay

These people have to be turned out of office decisively.  I call them anarcholibertarians, almost completely against sound government and governance, except as a way to benefit their financial benefactors.

It's no way to run a country.

Also see by Paul Waldman, Washington Post:

-- "Mitch McConnell to states: drop dead"
-- "The coming GOP plot to sabotage a Biden presidency"
-- "The war against the states."

More national politics...

It's relevant to local urbanism in that how the federal government is led, organized, and managed impacts state and local government.

WRT people touting Oprah as President after her speech at the Golden Globes, Toronto Star columnist Heather Mallick explains why this is a bad idea ("'President Oprah' proves the US hasn't learned its lesson").  From the article:

People I read and respect are actually saying of an Oprah candidacy, “Hmmm, it’s an idea.” That’s what a toddler thinks before she swallows a disc battery. I’m ashamed for them. Canadians don’t like ostentation, but Americans do grovel before the rich and gaudy.

Despite Winfrey’s on-air skills, her genuine acting talent, and her rags-to-riches life story, she is a huckster much like Trump, albeit one with emotional intelligence and great personal charm. Her show was lowbrow, daft, and often dangerous, displaying Jenny McCarthy and her antivaccination campaign and handing out free cars to a studio audience that was later stunned to discover the gift was taxable. ...

Winfrey’s speech was a blast of feeling. She would make a splendid preacher but that is not what the U.S. needs.

It needs an intelligent, highly educated, understated president who understands both the general and specific nature of governing and who will redesign tax rates to lessen inequality.

She or he must know how to cope with or even fight climate change, manage immigration chaos, restore and expand medical care, fund pharmacare, find $4.6 trillion to repair decayed infrastructure, mandate paid family leave, restore women’s health funding, apologize to the nations Trump insulted, appoint judges and hire government workers and make thousands of other repairs that chat-show hosts won’t have dreamed of because they’re boring and meticulous.

Trump is an idiot regarded by his base as a fountain of common sense. He sends out daily threats along with messages of fragility, incoherence and hate. His staff is now desperately figuring out how to please him by waging a teeny nuclear war on North Korea.

Winfrey, on the other hand, is a positive thinker mistaken for a sage. She would offer the U.S. a vast surge of emotion rather than thoughts, and a motley collection of crackpot theories. The main difference between her and Trump is that she is a nicer person.