America's leadership in decay

With the Covid-19 pandemic, what we have is an amalgam of two forces: one, the state of exception has become a permanent norm and two, the realm of zoe (bare life)

In a few years, or perhaps in a few decades, when we look back to this time, there will be only one question: why did America stumble so badly in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic? At the time of going to press, Dr Anthony Fauci, the face of the pandemic in the US, testified to the US Congress on June 30th that daily cases could exceed 100,000 per day. With over 120,000 people dead, 14-21 million unemployed, the near bankruptcy of industries like airlines and hotels, highly partisan and dysfunctional government branches in Washington DC, an exploding reliance on the government to prop up asset valuations and daily life-it is no stretch to say that America finds itself in a position it is often not used to: unsure of what to do next.
To make matters worse, there is also a great social fraying underway that manifests in the most trivial (and yet all too politically fraught) of discontents: a refusal to wear face masks in public. To many, this is a state of puerile resistance and paranoid foolishness that speaks to political partisanship gone mad. The reality is however more complex. Should a modern-day Alexis de Tocqueville visit America again, he'll find a people who are, as individuals, generous, thoughtful, free-spirited, egalitarian and enterprising. But as a collective, their politics has transmogrified them into a people who willingly condone a competitive race to the bottom where the miserable, paranoid, rent-seeking and violent xenophobes among them live freely. The mythologies of American politics, rightly, rely on the individual to construct the nation's self-image, but the reality of American politics has vividly relied on the debasement of rhetoric and casual cruelties that crowds always enjoy. This, of course, is true in most democracies. But America, or rather American politics, has historically found means to extricate itself from such downward spirals in the form of leaders who can speak a language of ennoblement which they borrow freely from their assorted church traditions that speak of brotherhood and neighbourly love. From JF Kennedy to Barack Obama, the cadences and lilt of that tradition has produced a feel-good nationalism that is more sentiment than substance. The cynic, or the realist, understandably, will point to innumerable instances of structural injustices within American society. But to belabour this point is to miss the forest of progressive victories in American society-from gender equality to gay rights-for the trees of American atavism that continues to seduce many to indulge in the original sin of America: violence against blacks and other minorities. But today, that language of amity, hope and promise is largely missing.
The slow-moving present catastrophe will inevitably be traced back to the atmosphere of vitriol, division and demoralisation that has entirely been of the Trump administration's making. This includes his near pathological need to appear powerful, unchallenged irrespective of the facts and the truth of the hour. The result of this abnormally delinquent leadership was not just an unprepared administration when the pandemic struck but also one that made things worse for technocrats who served in it by obfuscating reality itself, often solely to manage political messaging about the pandemic. 
With the Covid-19 pandemic, what we have is an amalgam of two forces: one, the state of exception has become a permanent norm and two, the realm of zoe (bare life). Thus, when we see ordinary Americans resist an imposition to wear masks, it is hardly surprising they are often 'traditionalists' and ones who rely on American history, invoke claims of freedom, to resist the normalisation of a state of exception where the state makes demands over their bodies. In small ways, it is their way to challenge the transformation of the state from an entity defined by constraints and laws imposed on the executive to one that has total dominion over human bodies in the name of an emergency. Like all fossils, they appear odd and laughable. But they also speak to an era of political consciousness that we have largely forgotten. Unfortunately for them, much like the dinosaurs in the face of an asteroid, the stubborn allegiance to the past makes them uniquely unsuited to face the totalitarian powers of an unforgiving enemy that is only 10 nm long but still demands collective action coordinated by a strong state.  - Open magazine