How Did Americans Become Such Wimps? Silence As 10s of 1000s Killed, Social Security, PO Destroyed..
- 'How Did Americans Become Such Wimps?' Silence as Trump kills tens of thousands, destroys Social Security and post office, and plots election fraud.' By Juan Cole, Common Dreams, Aug. 10, 2020. - Excerpts, Ed.:
Nicole Winfield and Lisa Marie Pane at the Associated Press (article below) write at the unbelief with which Europeans are staring at the United States, as we head for 300,000 dead from the coronavirus and our economy shrinks 33% on an annualized basis last quarter, and we just appear to be all right with that. Not only are we perfectly willing to toss grandma in an early grave on Trump’s say-so, but we are supine as he openly engineers the destruction of social security and medicare, & of the post office, on behalf of himself & the billionaire class he represents. That is after we sat by while he completely gutted all environmental regulations that got in the way of corporations making money off poisoning us.
I don’t think the neutering of the EPA has even been reported on daytime cable news, though the prime time magazine shows on MSNBC have at least brought it up.
Americans imagine themselves rugged individualists. A cartoonist did a satire on us showing brawny guys, shirts off, with the logo “Rugged individualism works best when we obey.” In fact, Americans are masochistic sheeple who let the rich and powerful walk all over them and thank them for the privilege. We have become wimps. Turns out we have been reduced to begging for our meals. The rich figured out in the 1980s that Americans are all form over substance, and if you put up for president a Hollywood actor like Ronald Reagan who used to play cowboys, they would swoon over him. In 1984 when Reagan ran against Walter Mondale, I saw a middle aged white Detroit auto worker interviewed who said he wouldn’t vote for Mondale because he was a “panty-waist.”
Reagan took away their right to strike and took away government services by running up the deficit and cutting taxes on the rich simultaneously, then claiming the government couldn’t provide the services the people had paid for because it is broke.
Reagan raised the retirement age from 65 to 67. Why? Most young people don’t realize that their health will decline in their late 60s and they often won’t actually get any golden years. What did Americans do in response? They just bent over and took it.
Actually, it is the French who are much more like Americans imagine themselves to be. President Emmanuel Macron last December tried to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. I can’t understand why. France has persistently high unemployment as it is. In response, all hell broke loose. Some 30 unions went on strike, and they supported each other. Trains were interrupted. Trucking was interrupted. Life was interrupted. A million people came out into the streets. But one poll had 61% of the French approving of the strikes. They went on for months, and were very inconvenient.
- France: A procession of demonstrators marched in front of the statue of the Republic with trade union flags and banners calling for struggle on Dec. 19, 2019, the fifteenth day of a national strike.
In the Old Port of Marseilles, France public and private workers demonstrate and shout slogans during a mass strike against pension reforms on December 5, 2019.
France has drawn up emergency plans for a major strike against pension reforms, which is one of the biggest challenges in President Macron’s far-reaching reform. Macron backed down on raising the retirement age. The French working and middle classes know how to throw a first class fit when the servants of the rich in government come after their lifestyles. They don’t always get their way (Macron used a parliamentary maneuver to make some changes in pensions, in late February), but they make damn sure the government knows it can’t get away with encroaching on them without a fight.
I actually think that one reason Europe has done much better in tamping down Covid than Trump’s U.S. is that govts. & corporations were afraid of a public backlash if the death toll went on rising. So they did their effing jobs...
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*Assoc. Press, "US Response To The Virus Is Met With Incredulity Abroad," Nicole Winfield, Lisa Marie Pane, Aug. 9, '20.
ROME (AP) — The United States’ failure to contain the spread of the coronavirus has been met with astonishment and alarm in Europe, as the world’s most powerful country edges closer to a global record of 5 million confirmed infections.
Perhaps nowhere outside the U.S. is America’s bungled virus response viewed with more consternation than in Italy, which was ground zero of Europe's epidemic. Italians were unprepared when the outbreak exploded in February, and the country still has one of the world’s highest official death tolls at 35,000.
But after a strict nationwide, 10-week lockdown, vigilant tracing of new clusters and general acceptance of mask mandates and social distancing, Italy has become a model of virus containment. "Don’t they care about their health?” a mask-clad Patrizia Antonini asked about people in the United States as she walked with friends along the banks of Lake Bracciano, north of Rome. “They need to take our precautions. ... They need a real lockdown."
Much of the incredulity in Europe stems from the fact that America had the benefit of time, European experience and medical know-how to treat the virus that the continent itself didn’t have when the first COVID-19 patients started filling intensive care units.
Yet, more than four months into a sustained outbreak, the U.S. closed in on an astonishing milestone of 5 million confirmed infections, easily the highest in the world, according to the running count kept by Johns Hopkins University. Health officials believe the actual number is perhaps 10 times higher, or closer to 50 million, given testing limitations and the fact that as many as 40% of all those who are infected have no symptoms...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-response-virus-met-incredulity-063316318.html
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