Almost a week after the Superbowl, I learned that there had been a shooting at the victory parade for the Kansas City Chiefs. What struck me about the story, however, wasn’t that it happened; what struck me was that it took me three days to learn about it.
Read MoreI was at the doctor’s office the other day and was struck by a paradox of modern medicine: on the one hand, we have truly miraculous cures that testify to the collective genius of the human species, while on the other hand, this genius is often wielded by people who exhibit all of the shortcomings of our species, like callousness and ignorance. It was a good lesson in the promises and perils of technology.
Read MoreThe Covid pandemic has me thinking about how we could rank social, political, and economic institutions on a mortality index.
Read MoreThe story about Governor Andrew Cuomo has been getting a little more press lately, but for those of us who followed it, this was all evident back at the beginning of the pandemic. In short, Cuomo ordered thousands of COVID-19 positive patients back into nursing homes, where as you would expect, the virus spread rampantly and killed many thousands of people. Beyond this, he also allowed the nursing home industry to cut many corners, virtually ensuring viral spread. Subsequently, to protect the nursing home industry from the legal liability that would ensue when thousands of people realized that their loved ones died because of their negligence, he passed a “liability shield” protecting nursing homes from liability (and which was written by the nursing home industry itself). In other words, if your family member died of COVID-19 in a nursing home, despite any negligence that might have occurred, you aren’t allowed to sue. To date, 26 other states have similarly turned Cuomo’s liability shield into law.
Read MoreOn inauguration day, I wrote the following Facebook post:
“It's interesting, but aside from my leftist friends, my foreign friends seem equally put off by today. The experience of living in another country, one in which politics isn't all just superficial pageantry atop grotesque policies, really opens your eyes to how insane this country is. When celebratory liberals discuss inauguration day in terms of the fashion choices of our political officials and the celebrities brought out to regale them, how could any of us be surprised that a former reality TV star became president? Call him a fascist if you will, but he's as American as apple pie and cruise missiles. I wonder how much this country would change if every American was forced to live elsewhere (not just tourist elsewhere) if only for a short while. Heck, I'd be happy if we could get them to only imagine living elsewhere.”
Read MoreThe system of COVID vaccine distribution is giving Americans a taste of what universal healthcare is all about. For obvious reasons, advocates of M4A usually draw attention to the way that universal healthcare solves the problem of the uninsured and the underinsured, not to mention problems of medical bankruptcy and so forth. However, vaccine distribution is also demonstrating that a universal healthcare system is a fundamentally rational system of healthcare while a privatized system is a fundamentally irrational one.
Read MoreI was born in Canada but I’ve lived in the United States for most of my adult life, and I became an American citizen a few years back. Over the years, it’s been interesting to note the changing role that Canada has played in my imagination. For instance, during the Trump years, Canada served as an imaginative escape. If things here ever got really bad, I knew that my Canadian citizenship would provide my wife and I a means of escape. However, over the past few days, as the reality of the Biden administration becomes clearer, I find myself imagining Canada in a new way: Canada is where I’ll go when I finally give up on America.
Read MoreWith everything that's been going on these days, you wouldn't think that the National Parks’ Facebook page would be among the most depressing, but it is. I usually love seeing posts of peoples’ National Park vacation pictures and hearing about their trip plans - they're gorgeous pictures and the trip plans give me inspiration for future trips. But these days, it's served as an almost constant reminder of how this country is failing to take this pandemic seriously.
Trips to National Parks are hardly the idyllic vacations you might imagine, as many of our National Parks are extremely crowded, as are the bordering towns. And this is to say nothing of the human contact people have at busy park locations, ranger stations, gift shops, restaurants, grocery stores, hotels, campgrounds, and so forth. Moreover, people travel from far and wide to visit the parks, either via long road trips or by airplane, so that seeing these Facebook posts is like watching the virus spread in real time.
Read MoreIn New York City, one of the comparisons being made is between the response to COVID-19 and the response to the BLM protests. In the case of COVID-19, the city (and the state) proved themselves largely inept, and despite months of advance warning, they acted much too late. However, when it came to the BLM protests, the entire city was shut down in anticipation of protests that were still largely prospective, imposing an 8 pm curfew and transforming the city into a police state. In other words, when it came to a public health threat that's been known for months, the city was only capable of acting ineffectively and after the fact, but when it came to stifling potential, future rallies for racial justice, the city was capable of acting swiftly and in anticipation of a forthcoming “threat.”
This comparison speaks to the way that the American state—at both the city, state, and national level—has increasingly abdicated any role in providing for the public good while instead seeing its role as primarily that of providing “law and order.”
Read MoreThe United States is often seen (and often sees itself) as a highly litigious society, ready to launch frivolous lawsuits for any and every reason. And there is some truth to this. However, having lived most of my life in another country, I've come to a different conclusion. The United States is not litigious by its nature, but its litigiousness is the consequence of the complete and long-standing failure of its government.
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