Why Germany succeeded where the US failed

The German soccer leagues are the first in the world to re-open, albeit without fans. I was listening to an interview with a German soccer announcer. He said that part of what helped is that Germany "got lucky." 

He explained that they watched on TV what was happening in Italy and were quick to take action to mitigate the spread of the virus. 

Rather than choosing a national leader who rejects science and surrounds himself with the same, they chose as their national leader a trained scientist. Even in a decentralized federal republic, this was critical in setting the tone.

Little about this is "lucky."

It is the result of conscious choices made by Germans and their leaders to act decisively and proactively to prevent a crisis from becoming much worse. They saw what happening elsewhere and didn't sit on their hands and/or scream MSM sheeple Nazi Hitler hoax plandemic. They took action.

Over the decades, they've also consciously chose to develop a decent social safety net to reduce inequality and to establish a rational health care system designed to serve citizens.

The results of serious leadership: they had one of the lowest per capita death rates in the western world. And now the country is slowly re-opening.  

The fundamental divide in America is not between left and right

I'm coming to believe that the fundamental divide in this country is not between left and right. It's between those who accept the need for credible public institutions and those who don't. 

"Accepting the need for" does not mean "automatically and mindlessly trust." Those who accept this need try to repair failing (or sabotaged) institutions. Those who don't accept this need add to the breakdown in social cohesion.

It has nothing to do with education or intelligence. I see many smart, educated people parroting the nihilistic rage. They know what public institutions are saying very well. They just knee-jerk disbelieve the institutions unthinkingly. My recent essay on the difference between skepticism vs cynicism is instructive here. Because many of them are smart, they are good at making their disbelief sound just pseudo-intellectual enough.

It's not just the fascists and Trump cultists. Many on the harder left are no different and it's causing a real breach between those who want to re-fortify sabotaged institutions and those who want to burn everything down and replace it with who knows what and who knows how..

I'm not sure how to resolve this breach. Once you reject the notion of anything public or common, even a set of facts (upon which opinions and strategies can be based), I'm not sure where you can go from there. 

The Death of the Liberal Class foreshadowed our current collapse in social cohesion

Some years ago, I started reading but did not finish Chris Hedges' book The Death of the Liberal Class. (liberal of course meaning classical liberalism, not left-of-center politics)

Published in 2010, it described the collapse in credibility of the public institutions that long served as the foundation of western liberal democracy. This collapse has led to the comprehensive pan-ideological breakdown in social cohesion that we've experienced the last several years, which has been laid even more bare by the pandemic. 

This breakdown was accelerated by the Trump presidency, who exploited it mercilessly to get (s)elected in the first place. But the unraveling did not start with Trump's inauguration and will not end with his long overdue eviction from the White House. I think it's time I picked the book back up.

Cuomo's scheme to "re-imagine" education

One of the dumbest catchphrases you often hear is, "Those who can't, teach." It'd be more accurate to say that, "Those who can't teach develop education policy."
The last two press conferences, Governor Cuomo has mentioned about working with Bill Gates to "re-imagine" education. Today, he introduced a Google executive who would aid the effort.
He was very vague and nebulous. No hint as to what direction it might take, other than the inclusion of Microsoft and Google honchos. This is something people needs to watch carefully. 
With everyone distracted by the pandemic and dazzled by his coherent complete sentences and his ability to sound like a vaguely functioning adult (in contrast to you know who), this is a very opportune time to pull one over the public.
Major education "reforms" are almost always developed without meaningful consultation of the folks who actually have to implement those changes on the ground. The typical result of such "reforms" is the state buying more stuff from for-profit companies. 
As much as the education system does need to re-imagined, the idea of oligarchs heading the effort in a time whether those who might ring the alarm bells are distracted does not really inspire confidence that it will be done in a way that will benefit children.

The risks of not voting your conscience

Remember the countless Democrats who said they were going to vote for Joe Biden in the primary without much enthusiasm, even though they liked another Democratic contender better, because Biden "clearly" had the best chance of beating Trump and "no one" with a clue could dispute that self-evident fact.

Although it's not surprising that the fascist party would nominate an admitted sexual predator, it would've a lot easier if the party that patted itself on the back for supporting #MeToo and who went after both Brett Kavanagh and Al Franken had chosen to avoid nominating someone credibly accused of sexual assault. Cue predictable double standard rationalizations.

People often talk about the risk of voting your conscience. Well, not doing so can have consequences too.  This one's not on the DNC. It's on rank and file Democrats. They made this bed.

Only millenials can save us

In the middle of the #MeToo era, our two major party choices for president are an old man credibly accused of sexual assault and possessing a history of bad conduct toward women and another old man credibly accused of sexual assault and possessing a history of bad conduct toward women.

I really can't imagine why young people have so little faith in the current lesser of two evils political system that their elders - which includes my Generation X - continue to prop up.

Young people are the only generation that seems to have a clue about the transformations that need to happen and the backbone to see it through. To my eyes, this is pretty much beyond debate.

They know that needed changes have been obstructed for so long that sclerotic incrementalism - itself deemed too radical and intemperate for most of the last quarter century - is no longer a credible option for the major challenges we face. They actually realize what has been clear to me for decades: the longer we kick the can down the road, the more disruptive and less effective the changes will be. If the country and the world are going to be saved, it's going to be by them. Just hope it's not too late.

Even Republican governors are targeted by Trump

It's bad enough the Trump regime has been failing miserably to help governors desperately trying to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. 

As many governors have rightly pointed out, given the knowledge of how the pandemic was spreading in Asia and Europe, FEMA should've prepared a national stockpile before the outbreak started him rather than having states bid on the open market against each other and FEMA and other countries.

 But even when responsible governors do manage to obtain supplies that the federal government should be doing, there's the fear that the Trump regime will steal them. 

The Republican governor of Massachusetts complained that the feds seized a plane load of masks that his state had bought and paid for. No word on if the Trump regime reimbursed the taxpayers of the Bay State they swindled. 

The Republican governor of Maryland has ordered the National Guard and state police to protect his state's supply of COVID19 tests. His assertion of states rights in the face of an intentionally sabotaged federal government will no doubt enrage the PO(TU)S.

Trivializing COVID19

I see a lot of people relentlessly trying to trivialize the danger of COVID-19. They're clearly doing so for ideological reasons, which is fine, except that they spout pseudo-scientific b.s. to obscure their ideological reasons.
 

What's noteworthy is that you don't really hear doctors and nurses in hospitals or nursing home staff trivializing the virus.

What you do hear is medical professionals and care staff talking about how bad it is in the hospitals and nursing homes, not only in metro NYC but also here in upstate. They use words like overwhelming, exhausting and unprecedented, even those who've worked during previous pandemics. They're not saying "it's just like regular flu season." They're saying it's worse than during AIDS. 

Maybe this is a terribly mainstream belief, MSM sheeple that I must be. But the people who are on the front lines of this and have actual scientific training from real schools might, just might, actually know what the fuck they're talking about better than someone whose "expertise" changes (impeachment last month, epidemiology this month, chem trails next month) based on whatever is trending on Youtube at the moment. Or maybe not. Maybe those LPNs risking their lives for $16/hr are just part of the Grand Conspiracy too.

Historically, Americans have always lurched through extremes where we go back and forth between fetishizing science uncritically to rejecting it entirely. We're obviously in the latter period right now. Take a swig of Clorox if you disagree.

When I lived in West Africa, a Guinean friend of mine who was a chemistry teacher told me something I never forgot: "Science without conscience will be the ruin of Mankind." This is not about rejecting science. It means assessing it with a critical eye based on the intersection of ethics and actual scientific principles. But we Americans never seem to be mature enough as a people to master this nuance.