I wrote this approximately 40 years ago.
It really does need to be stressed that our pandemic response team was dismantled not as a targeted sabotage of pandemic readiness, but by a concerted Republican strategy of dismantling our readiness for literally everything, an urge which found its perfect avatar in Trump.
They’ve dismantled environmental protections, and consumer protections, and water protections, and disaster response, and medical capabilities, and literally anything you can think of, as if America were in an abandoned house and they were scavengers stripping out the wires.
For my whole life Republicans have wistfully dreamed of, to quote Grover Norquist’s famous not-at-all-creepy analogy, “a government small enough to drown in a bathtub.”
Well, they did it. This is what it looks like. Congrats, guys. You built this unlivable libertarian paradise.
Well, they did it. This is what it looks like. Congrats, guys. You built this unlivable libertarian paradise.
Unless we start believing again the basic truth that we actually exist in an interconnected society, nature is going to keep delivering these stark reminders.
