The Dis-United States of America

In 2004, in his keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama pronounced the words that put him on the fast track to becoming the first African American president.  “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America. There’s the United States of America,” he declared.

Inspirational words intended to smooth the edges of the sharp divisions that had been here for a long time and were becoming worse. The cleavages of class, party, ideology, race, gender, sexual identity, and region were evident. These lines had become dangerous fault lines creating many small tremors and threatening a devastating earthquake. By defining the nation as united, he wanted to increase unity through a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy effect.

Obama’s view of the United States was, as they say these days, aspirational. The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown into stark relief the depth and breadth of the disparities in the United States. African Americans especially but also Latinos are dying in numbers significantly higher than their share of the population.

Higher levels of diabetes, hypertension, and other preexisting conditions are part of the reason. But these medical risk factors themselves are to a considerable degree determined by social factors. Low income forces people to choose cheap low-quality diets loaded with fat and sugar raising risks of obesity, which lowers life expectancy. Many blacks live in highly segregated communities that lack supermarkets and other stores that carry fresh produce.

The low-paying jobs in supermarkets and other services in which minorities are overrepresented that are now considered “essential” bring with them a high level of exposure to the virus. But they seldom bring with them health insurance. People who lack health insurance delay seeking medical care until it’s too late. They also avoid calling in sick to avoid the loss of scant income and they thereby unwittingly spread the virus. This shows how the difference between the insured and the non-insured hurts everybody. Class divisions make a difference between life and death and inequality is only getting worse.

Class and race are the biggest and most explosive fault lines in this country but there are many other divisions on which the pandemic has shone a harsh light. Inside the Trump-Pence coronavirus task force itself there is a division between the America guided by science, logic and the primacy of human life and an America ruled by an antiscientific attitude which relies on gut instincts, resentments, and, especially, by economic and political considerations.

The last is why Trump wants to “open the country” by May 1, way prematurely from the standpoint of public health. He knows that his only argument outside his hard core base (not a big enough group to get him reelected) is that he brought about the best economy ever. That’s a lie that a booming stock market and a low unemployment rate made credible to people who don’t look behind the façade. But that is all gone far down the drain now, and Trump is desperate to be able to brag about economic recovery come November, even at the cost of American lives. By the time this goes online Thursday well over 30,000 Americans will have died.

Yes, we live in the dis-United States of America. There is a blue America that by dint of population density has borne the brunt of the pandemic. There is a red America huge parts of which, being thinly populated, practice social distancing by default rather than design and so have relative few cases of the virus—yet.

The political leaders of red states like Florida generally tried to ignore the problem as long and possible.  After the spread in their states became alarming, some Republican governors made grudging and partial concessions to reality. Others, like the GOP governor of South Dakota, continue to ignore the advice of public health experts and have continued business as usual.  In contrast, Blue America—New York, Washington state, and California for instance—has responded vigorously and thoroughly.

There are several Americas, sundered by region, culture and ideology. The South is still the most Republican, racist and reactionary region. The Left Coast—California, Oregon and Washington State—is a desert for Republicans. The citizens in some states like Florida, controlled politically by Republicans, are split down the middle on party.  In referenda, they often vote in overwhelming numbers contrary to the Republican ideology on issues like the minimum wage, voting rights for felons, and funding for environmental protection.

Obama’s heart was in the right place when he spoke of a single United States of America. Ironically, the election of Barack Obama as president four years later did more than any other single event to expose division and belie Obama’s optimistic vision.

As Obama progressed through the primaries to the presidency in 2008, the vitriol mounted.  Republicans, reactionaries, and racists of all stripes called Obama everything from a Muslim born in Kenya, to a Third World socialist revolutionary. That was only the beginning.

The election shocked the GOP, but it also created a fierce determination in the party to make Obama’s presidency a failure. Republican leaders met secretly and plotted a strategy of monolithic obstructionism on every front. Their strategy’s main aim was to make Obama a one-term president.

The Republicans carried out their plan. They cooperated with Obama the least possible, approved a stimulus package that was too small and too focused on rescuing only the culprits, the banks and Wall Street, and not the people losing their jobs and houses. Obama was not able or willing to push back for a fair and bigger stimulus for fear Republicans might torpedo it. By giving in to the Republicans, Obama was able to give the economy CPR but also lost his last best chance to become a transformative president.

Obama’s eight-year presidency was the loudest possible wake-up call for Republicans. The right’s fury and fire over Obama fueled the Trump phenomenon. So here we are now, faced with a triple disaster: COVID, the Trump presidency, and a response to a national emergency by a leader incapable of leading, unable to tell the truth, devoid of empathy or compassion, unwilling to assume responsibility instead resorting regularly to scapegoating everyone from immigrants to the Chinese to the World Health Organization. Most damnable of all, we have a president willing to trade people’s lives for a chance at four more years in the White House.