Is The US A Failed State?

[ZiprHead]

We Are Living in a Failed State
The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken.

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

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Yes. It is. This pandemic just shone a giant flashlight on all the problems in your society.

However, the good news is that you're going to ignore any possible lessons you could have learned from it, you're not going to spend any time or effort making changes and you're going to forget all about it in a couple of months. So, there's no need for any sort of existential angst over it.

 

[Jokodo]

Well, you can always blame China. If you do that, your failed statehood disappears like magic, one day it's there and the next it isn't, and with a any luck, by the time you actually go to war in a couple years, you'll have a much younger average population than no. It'll all be great, tremendous, much better than now, and you get to shoot chinos in top of it.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Yes. It is. This pandemic just shone a giant flashlight on all the problems in your society.

Stop it! The invisible hand of the free market is just coming up with something at the moment... it'll be good!

However, the good news is that you're going to ignore any possible lessons you could have learned from it, you're not going to spend any time or effort making changes and you're going to forget all about it in a couple of months. So, there's no need for any sort of existential angst over it.

We learned that too many children need school to be able to eat breakfast and lunch! If there is nothing else that this crisis points a light at, jebus fuck!

It also indicates that people have been so poisoned by the right-wing media and as of lately Donald Trump, they are long gone in the head and can not be dealt with easily. Luckily that only represents 20% of the nation. Unfortunately, 20% is still a pretty large number.

 

[ElysianFields]

Yes. It is. This pandemic just shone a giant flashlight on all the problems in your society.

However, the good news is that you're going to ignore any possible lessons you could have learned from it, you're not going to spend any time or effort making changes and you're going to forget all about it in a couple of months. So, there's no need for any sort of existential angst over it.

As usual, America will eventually do the right thing, once all the other options have been exhausted.

I blame British colonialism. It gave the US a political system with built-in gridlock, where, to prevent undesirable things from happening, the system was designed to keep anything from happening.

In fact, anywhere we see conflict on the planet, we can almost always point to British colonialism as the root cause: Northern Ireland / Ireland (800 YEARS of British colonialism), India / Pakistan, Israel / Palestine, Iran / Iraq... I mean, look at Canada, it's almost a complete waste-product of British colonialism!

 

[bilby]

The US never succeeded as a state, at least not since the mid-20th Century, and this is by design.

A failed state is one which doesn't provide for its least fortunate citizens, despite being capable of doing so. The US has been such a state for at least the last seventy years, and arguably since its inception.

A failed state provides for a select group, who prosper while the rest suffer. The US has always had a vocal group of beneficiaries who deny that they benefit in any way, as a means to prevent any attempt to provide benefits to those citizens who are outside the select group. They have been so successful in this that their evil machinations have become accepted, even by many of their victims, as virtuous and a defining trait of the nation - to question their narrative has become tantamount to treason, making it almost impossible to escape.

 

[James Brown]

A failed state is one which doesn't provide for its least fortunate citizens, despite being capable of doing so.

Would any state qualify as a successful state then, by this standard? That sounds like a problem with human nature, not political states.

 

[bilby]

A failed state is one which doesn't provide for its least fortunate citizens, despite being capable of doing so.

Would any state qualify as a successful state then, by this standard? That sounds like a problem with human nature, not political states.

No state achieves perfection in this regard, but many do FAR better than the USA.

 

[rousseau]

A failed state has an unambiguous definition, which is this:

a state whose political or economic system has become so weak that the government is no longer in control.

IOW, a failed state is a country with no effective government, a territory that has descended into what amounts to anarchy. So the U.S. isn't a failed state by any normal definition of the term. I think what the Atlantic is trying to say is that the U.S. has serious problems, and they'd like to use a provocative title that it's readers don't have the awareness to understand, to get clicks.

If we're going to have a serious discussion about the composition of the U.S. as a functional state, we need a concrete definition of the term. And by the normal definition of the term the U.S. isn't a failed state.

 

[Elixir]

Yes. It is. This pandemic just shone a giant flashlight on all the problems in your society.

I don't think the society is fundamentally more "broken" than most other countries. Having a malevolent, stupid, corrupt president is definitely showing up the weaknesses in the government's structure, though. Why, for instance, are people who indulge in corrupt practices allowed to investigate themselves? A corrupt President can install a corrupt AG or put a sexual predator on the Supreme Court with the consent of a bare majority in just one house of Congress? A president can use taxpayer resources to conduct a re-election campaign? Can ignore Congressional subpoenas and withhold evidence without penalty?
Yeah, there is much that needs fixing. But it's mostly the structure of the government; I still believe that no matter how ignorant or easily manipulated by a dishonest leader, most Americans want to be good people.

I agree with rousseau that it is not a failed State, but only because there are functional State governments. The head of the Federal government is only interested in looting the treasury. Anything other than that is something that can be ignored, or if it impedes the looting process, can be done away with or disabled.

 

[TSwizzle]

I don’t know about the rest of the country but the state of California is certainly failing. And that started before the virus.

 

[SimpleDon]

A failed state has an unambiguous definition, which is this:

a state whose political or economic system has become so weak that the government is no longer in control.

IOW, a failed state is a country with no effective government, a territory that has descended into what amounts to anarchy. So the U.S. isn't a failed state by any normal definition of the term. I think what the Atlantic is trying to say is that the U.S. has serious problems, and they'd like to use a provocative title that it's readers don't have the awareness to understand, to get clicks.

If we're going to have a serious discussion about the composition of the U.S. as a functional state, we need a concrete definition of the term. And by the normal definition of the term the U.S. isn't a failed state.

So by your definition the US isn't a failed state. I would agree with that.

But you have to agree that the pandemic has exposed a weakness in our government, the same weakness that we saw in the World Trade Center terrorist attack, two wars started by mistake Katrina and in the Great Financial Crisis and Depression. We have a party that is very good at manipulating people and the system to get elected but once in office it becomes obvious that they can't govern the country worth a shit.

Who knew that the party whose core belief was the government is the problem, that we don't need the government because everything can done by the markets wouldn't be able to run the government worth a shit? At least 48% of the Americans who routinely support the party didn't realize this.

 

[Politesse]

Corruption and delay are the price of democracy. What makes us in danger of true failure, in my opinion, is not disaster response but the fact that our governing body seldom governs anymore, all power is being collected in one person's office, and the American people treat politics as an offshoot of the entertainment industry when they pay any attention to it at all.

 

[Jarhyn]

Wow, so, being the most tax-profitable state in the union with strong social support for it's citizens and having a functional democratic government is a sign of being failed. Got it.

 

[Trausti]

But you have to agree that the pandemic has exposed a weakness in our government,

That weakness has nothing to do with partisan politics. The US is a federal republic where the states retained tangible sovereignty which they jealously guard. It seems generally misunderstood that the US federal government, domestically, is rather weak. Public health has traditionally been a state and local affair. Still is. The state shutdowns have come from the governors. Unlike elsewhere, the US federal government is not all powerful and cannot dictate to the governors how to run their states.

 

[TSwizzle]

Wow, so, being the most tax-profitable state in the union with strong social support for it's citizens and having a functional democratic government is a sign of being failed. Got it.

No, tens of thousands of people sleeping on the sidewalk and parks, mounds of feces in the gutter, syringes littering public spaces, the highest tax rates in the nation, a multi billion dollar high speed rail project that delivered fuck all was more what I was thinking.

 

[Trausti]

Wow, so, being the most tax-profitable state in the union with strong social support for it's citizens and having a functional democratic government is a sign of being failed. Got it.

No, tens of thousands of people sleeping on the sidewalk and parks, mounds of feces in the gutter, syringes littering public spaces, the highest tax rates in the nation, a multi billion dollar high speed rail project that delivered fuck all was more what I was thinking.

Don't forget the highest poverty rate in the US!

 

[ZiprHead]

Wow, so, being the most tax-profitable state in the union with strong social support for it's citizens and having a functional democratic government is a sign of being failed. Got it.

No, tens of thousands of people sleeping on the sidewalk and parks, mounds of feces in the gutter, syringes littering public spaces, the highest tax rates in the nation, a multi billion dollar high speed rail project that delivered fuck all was more what I was thinking.

Don't forget the highest poverty rate in the US!

Huh? Not even in the top ten, dude.

 

[rousseau]

A failed state has an unambiguous definition, which is this:

a state whose political or economic system has become so weak that the government is no longer in control.

IOW, a failed state is a country with no effective government, a territory that has descended into what amounts to anarchy. So the U.S. isn't a failed state by any normal definition of the term. I think what the Atlantic is trying to say is that the U.S. has serious problems, and they'd like to use a provocative title that it's readers don't have the awareness to understand, to get clicks.

If we're going to have a serious discussion about the composition of the U.S. as a functional state, we need a concrete definition of the term. And by the normal definition of the term the U.S. isn't a failed state.

So by your definition the US isn't a failed state. I would agree with that.

But you have to agree that the pandemic has exposed a weakness in our government, the same weakness that we saw in the World Trade Center terrorist attack, two wars started by mistake Katrina and in the Great Financial Crisis and Depression. We have a party that is very good at manipulating people and the system to get elected but once in office it becomes obvious that they can't govern the country worth a shit.

Who knew that the party whose core belief was the government is the problem, that we don't need the government because everything can done by the markets wouldn't be able to run the government worth a shit? At least 48% of the Americans who routinely support the party didn't realize this.

You could argue for a state definition that implies the U.S. has some problems, something like 'flawed democracy', rather than 'healthy democracy'. Definitely not failed.

 

[rousseau]

Fragile States Index

The U.S. sits at 153 and is listed as 'very stable', but interestingly not 'sustainable'. It's also 12th on the list of the most worsened countries in 2019, and between 2009 - 2019.