One million and counting: Alas, to have had a Zelenskyy in the White House

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the U.S. Congress this Wednesday and received a rousing reception. It was well deserved. Since the onset of the Russian onslaught three weeks ago, Zelensky has been tireless and brave in defending his country and its people against all odds. The Russians may prevail in the end, but it won’t be because the Ukrainian leadership and its people did not do everything in their power and more to resist the aggression. Nor will it be without a heavy cost to Russia in lives, money, and prestige. Zelenskyy can be thanked for ensuring that the next time a big power wants to go on a murderous rampage against a smaller nation, they will think twice or thrice about the consequences.

Alas, the United States once and again has had leaders who, however flawed, defended the nation with courage and verve. Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln were flawed men, but they knew their mission was not getting reelected or making the rich richer but defending the lives and the livelihoods of the people of the United States, especially in times of crisis.

Covid-19 has been the latest crisis the nation has faced—and the greatest judged by the number of casualties—but the leadership we got when facing this new, deadly virus was abysmal. Instead of advancing on the invisible enemy, Republican leaders at the national and state levels chose to dismiss, to minimize or to distort the nature of the threat, to do as little about it as possible, and finally to give up and retreat. They displayed the reverse of leadership, misleading people onto suicidal paths.

In writing sixty years after the fact about the bubonic plague that struck England in 1665, Jonathan Swift called it “a visitation.” Covid-19 paid us a visit at the worst possible time under the worst possible president, Donald J. Trump. It was the worst of times because it came at the culmination of decades of a largely successful Republican crusade to defund, delegitimize, and demoralize government, the key institution in fighting any war. It happened under the worst president ever, who combined cruelty, ignorance, prejudice, mendacity, and arrogance, among other deplorable traits.

The man and the moment came together: the high-water mark in the purest profit-over-all capitalist system and its management by a minor capitalist of the white-collar criminal variety who sought to parlay the presidency into an opportunity for enough profit to propel him from the minor league of capitalists all the way to the Hall of Fame. Instead, he shall forever reside in the Wall of Shame.

According to Worldometer, a site that follows the evolution of Covid-19 worldwide, more than 992,000 people in the United States have died of Covid-19 since the first case was positively diagnosed on January 20, 2020. And counting; despite a terrific set of vaccines and new effective treatments, about 1,000 people in this country are still dying every day of the disease, most of them unvaccinated.

Nobody knows when it will end or what the final obscene toll will be. What is clear is that it already amounts to a crime with more than 3,000 times the number of fatalities as 9/11. Like the culprits in the savagery of 9/11, those responsible for our Covid-19 catastrophe should be exposed and punished.

That is necessary but it won’t be easy. We are good at holding foreign foes accountable, but impunity is the order of the day for our own criminals and our friends in high places, including presidents, princes, members of the armed forces and police departments, corporate magnates, and the wheeler-dealers on Wall Street who almost brought down the economy one shady deal at a time but emerged unscathed or even richer.

From this disaster we should have learned that dealing with a big crisis under the rules of a savage type of capitalism spells disaster, but we are ignoring the lesson. Those who were rich beyond belief before the pandemic have become much richer. Any expansion of the safety net is fiercely resisted by Republicans and the right, even though the pandemic is not over.

The United States is the ultra-capitalist country par excellence, but things are significantly worse in some states than in the nation overall, and not just regarding the pandemic. Texas is probably the worst of the worst. It is the epicenter of free-for-all capitalism and a good example of how the wages of ultra-capitalism are death. When a brutal cold spell hit the state last year, much of the electrical grid, which is ultimately controlled by the corporations that profit from it, had to be shut down to avoid a total collapse. Two hundred people died, frozen to death or burned by fires ignited by desperate efforts to generate heat by any means. For the longest time, the state resisted efforts to force the electric industry to weatherize its operation and it is still resisting, despite the last weather disaster.

Smaller disasters happen all the time because of the “regulate nothing” mentality. Lack of zoning is pervasive, so industrial plants are located close to homes and houses are built on flood plains. What could possibly go wrong? Long before electrical grids suburban sprawl, and industrial disasters, Sheridan, the Union General who occupied Texas, which was on the losing side in the Civil War, said, “If I owned hell and Texas, I would rent out Texas and live in hell.” What could he have been complaining about? Maybe the Texans?

Texas might be at the top of right-wing dystopias, but it has strong competition, especially from Florida. Florida has resisted public health mandates to fight Covid-19 even more fiercely than Texas, and not surprisingly has a significantly higher death rate per capita than Texas. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the ineffable, the insufferable, the execrable has done everything he can to aid and abet Covid-19. Now he has turned to remaking the state as the leader of the so-called culture war, nurse Ratched (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 1975) in the state house.

“God save the United States,” those more religious and nationalist than I say. God, or somebody, should do it. We need it.