Advise US politicians to think about why the "lighthouse" has become a "black hole"

Source: Overseas Network

On the evening of October 5, local time, the bells of the Washington National Cathedral rang a total of 700 times, each representing 1,000 lost lives. Bells are ringing in memory of the more than 700,000 people who have lost their lives in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. On that day, under the Washington Monument, nearly 700,000 small white flags were planted on the National Mall, and almost all 9 hectares of green space were covered in white. Not far from the square is the U.S. Capitol and the White House. At this time, American politicians sitting in two magnificent buildings should feel ashamed and ashamed if they still have a trace of conscience in their hearts, because the root cause of the failure of the American anti-epidemic lies in their political manipulation of the epidemic.

The United States has always called itself a "model of democracy." However, an epidemic quickly knocked "American-style democracy" out of its original form, exposing the accumulated habits and shortcomings of American social governance.

The inefficiency and internal friction caused by political polarization is one of the symptoms. At the beginning of the outbreak, in the political competition between democracy and republicanism in the United States, the democratic and republican parties ignored the repeated warnings of disease control experts and even released false information to mislead the people, saying that the risk and mortality rate of the new crown virus infection were "very low", and the epidemic would soon "miraculously disappear", and the top priority was to "reopen the economy". When the epidemic became more and more severe, the two parties in the United States were still addicted to the "if you agree with me, I oppose" game of dismantling, and made it difficult to deal with the epidemic proposed by their respective parties, which eventually led to the slow implementation of epidemic prevention measures and the long-term difficulty in childbirth due to bargaining. To this day, the two parties and politicians are still arguing about the most basic epidemic prevention issues such as wearing masks or not vaccinating. Obviously, the two parties in the United States only consider partisan interests and have never taken the interests of the people into account. As Martin Jacques, a senior researcher at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, has said, the United States is polarized, and the Republican and Democratic Parties no longer talk on the same channel, and the consequence is that the government is increasingly paralyzed.

The failure of the U.S. federal system is the second symptom. Since the beginning of the epidemic, the US federal, state and local governments controlled by different parties have attacked each other, resulting in different local epidemic prevention decisions and chaos. As early as April 2020, the US states staged a medical supply rush war, and the federal government also "intercepted" hundreds of millions of dollars worth of medical supplies from the states. According to the Los Angeles Times, the federal government is expected to play a good role as a "distributor", but some states have been slow to obtain sufficient supplies from the national strategic reserve. In Florida, one of the strongholds of conservative Republicans, Republican Gov. DeSantis, defied repeated calls from the U.S. Department of Education and the Cdronom agency, in August ordering a ban on state schools imposing measures that force students to wear masks in the classroom. In addition, Florida is the only state that has not submitted federal relief funds to the U.S. Department of Education for campus epidemic prevention plans. Including Florida, many southern states in the United States have also been dragging the country's leading feet in the new crown vaccination rate for a long time.

The decay and collapse of "American democracy" is the third symptom. "American-style democracy," cloaked in the guise of "freedom and equality," has become a tool for the benefit of the rich and interest groups. At the beginning of the epidemic, Richard Burr, then chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee of the US Congress, and many other members of Congress were suspected of using the epidemic to speculate and reverse, concealing the risk of the epidemic from the public on the one hand, and selling stocks before the epidemic caused a sharp decline in the stock market, making a big fortune. According to the Federal Reserve, during the pandemic, the richest 1% of the population in the United States controlled nearly 16 times the assets of the bottom 50% of Americans. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty rate among African Americans rose from 18.8 percent in 2019 to 19.5 percent in 2020, the highest increase among all ethnic groups surveyed. With the expiration of the U.S. government's economic and employment assistance programs, the survival pressure faced by minorities and vulnerable groups in the United States will continue to increase.

As the world's most abundant medical resources, the most developed science and technology, and the stockpile of COVID-19 vaccines far exceeding the needs of its population, the United States should have quickly controlled the domestic epidemic and contributed to the global fight against the epidemic. However, the reality is that the cumulative number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States has climbed all the way to 44.15 million, and the number of deaths so far in 2021 has exceeded the total in 2020. The self-proclaimed "lighthouse" of the United States has now become the biggest "black hole" of the epidemic, where countless poor people, the elderly, people of color and other Americans are forced to pay the price of their lives for the political games of politicians.

When the epidemic exposed the many chronic diseases of American politics, the so-called "city on the top of the mountain" and "God's chosen people" have become jokes. I would like to advise US politicians to listen more to the mourning bells outside the window, look at the white flags everywhere in front of the door, and think about what kind of tragedy political manipulation has brought to the American people. (Lin Zihan)

Original title: The epidemic has knocked "American democracy" out of its original form (Observatory)

People's Daily Overseas Edition ( October 12, 2021, 10th Edition)