Sunday, May 31, 2020
COVID-19 Response
Roger Cohen: Germany’s Lessons for China and America
"“The nation-state alone does not have a future,” Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said this week. It was a direct challenge to President Trump’s “America First,” the slogan whose poison keeps on giving. His United States has become the most unserious of nations...
For an American, suffering the daily drivel of the Blather-Mouth in Chief, Steinmeier’s statement is powerful — in its honesty, its humility, its seriousness, its decency, its morality, its courage. The Trump administration consigned all those words to the American past.
I don’t think it’s easy, even for a German, to speak of brokenhearted love of country, nor to pronounce, as Merkel did, the demise of the “nation-state alone.” Nationalism is the most facile and effective of political tools, as well as the most dangerous. It was important, in the midst of a pandemic that has revealed a world incapable of a coordinated response and devoid of American leadership, that Europe’s most powerful nation step forward with honor.
The European Union, that entity with a stubborn heartbeat, has emerged better from the pandemic than China or the United States. The fear-driven Chinese cover-up of the coronavirus and the chaotic denialism of the Trump administration have been the two main contributors to the disaster. President Xi Jinping’s tightening despotism and the dilapidation of American democracy were evident...
The German chancellor — who will not seek re-election next year, and who will be missed — signaled that innovation is needed. The world cannot return to where it was before the virus. The status quo ante is untenable. The nationalism of Trump’s America, Xi’s China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia is not the answer.
The virus and accompanying economic collapse have only redoubled the urgency of these reflections. This is the Age of Undoing — of world order, of international law, of truth, of America’s word. It is a dangerous time, as Germany knows better than any nation. Autocracy feeds on fear, misery, resentment and lies. It did in the 1930s; it does now. Better to love your country with a broken heart than to love it blind."
Roger Cohen: Germany’s Lessons for China and America
"“The nation-state alone does not have a future,” Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said this week. It was a direct challenge to President Trump’s “America First,” the slogan whose poison keeps on giving. His United States has become the most unserious of nations...
For an American, suffering the daily drivel of the Blather-Mouth in Chief, Steinmeier’s statement is powerful — in its honesty, its humility, its seriousness, its decency, its morality, its courage. The Trump administration consigned all those words to the American past.
I don’t think it’s easy, even for a German, to speak of brokenhearted love of country, nor to pronounce, as Merkel did, the demise of the “nation-state alone.” Nationalism is the most facile and effective of political tools, as well as the most dangerous. It was important, in the midst of a pandemic that has revealed a world incapable of a coordinated response and devoid of American leadership, that Europe’s most powerful nation step forward with honor.
The European Union, that entity with a stubborn heartbeat, has emerged better from the pandemic than China or the United States. The fear-driven Chinese cover-up of the coronavirus and the chaotic denialism of the Trump administration have been the two main contributors to the disaster. President Xi Jinping’s tightening despotism and the dilapidation of American democracy were evident...
The German chancellor — who will not seek re-election next year, and who will be missed — signaled that innovation is needed. The world cannot return to where it was before the virus. The status quo ante is untenable. The nationalism of Trump’s America, Xi’s China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia is not the answer.
Stephen Heintz, the president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, has written of a crisis “that stems from the growing obsolescence of three core operating systems that have shaped civilization for the past 350 years: capitalism, fueled by carbon since the dawn of the Industrial Age and increasingly driven by global financialization; the nation-state system, formalized by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648; and representative democracy, a system of self-rule based on Enlightenment ideals of freedom, fairness, justice and equality.” The problem is that “our practice of capitalism is both putting the planetary ecosystem at risk and generating vast economic inequality.” The nation-state is “inadequate for managing transnational challenges like global warming.” And “representative democracy is neither truly representative nor very democratic as citizens feel that self-rule has given way to rule by corporations, special interests and the wealthy.”
The virus and accompanying economic collapse have only redoubled the urgency of these reflections. This is the Age of Undoing — of world order, of international law, of truth, of America’s word. It is a dangerous time, as Germany knows better than any nation. Autocracy feeds on fear, misery, resentment and lies. It did in the 1930s; it does now. Better to love your country with a broken heart than to love it blind."
Wednesday, May 13, 2020
COVID-19 Exposes Social Divisions
NY Times Editorial: The Cities We Need
"...Well before the coronavirus pandemic posed its own threats to the life of American cities, they were struggling. Over the last half century, their infrastructure of opportunity has badly decayed. Their public schools no longer prepare students to succeed. Their subways are reliably unreliable. Their water runs with lead.
Our urban areas are laced by invisible but increasingly impermeable boundaries separating enclaves of wealth and privilege from the gaptoothed blocks of aging buildings and vacant lots where jobs are scarce and where life is hard and, all too often, short. Cities continue to create vast amounts of wealth, but the distribution of those gains resembles the New York skyline: A handful of super-tall buildings, and everyone else in the shade.
The pandemic has prompted some affluent Americans to wonder whether cities are broken for them, too. It has suspended the charms of urban life while accentuating the risks, reviving an hoary American tradition of regarding cities with fear and loathing — as cesspools of disease, an image that all too easily aligns with prejudices about poverty and race and crime...
...In 1970, 65 percent of the residents of large metropolitan areas lived in neighborhoods with median incomes close to the median for the entire area, according to an analysis by the sociologists Kendra Bischoff and Sean F. Reardon. Most neighborhoods, in other words, approximated the economic diversity of the broader community. But by 2009, only 42 percent lived in such neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the share residing in either very affluent or very poor neighborhoods more than doubled from 15 percent to 33 percent.
This trend has reshaped central cities, filling downtowns with new buildings invariably described as “luxury” condominiums and apartments. In Chicago, for example, a recent analysis found the share of census tracts with concentrations of either wealth or poverty increased from 28 percent in 1980 to 47 percent in 2010.
Even in cities where the rich and poor continue to live under the same local government, economic segregation saps political support for common, egalitarian infrastructure. Rich New Yorkers donate generously to beautify Central Park while resisting the taxation necessary to maintain parks in neighborhoods they never visit. In Washington, D.C., parents in wealthier neighborhoods contribute lavishly to parent-teacher organizations that provide extra money to public schools in their neighborhoods, but they do not vote for a similar level of funding for all city schools. Two schools in northwest Washington each raised more than half a million dollars in 2017, while several schools in southeast Washington don’t even have parent-teacher organizations. Last year, for the third time since 1970, the residents of Gwinnett County, Ga., which sits on the edge of Atlanta, refused to fund an expansion of the regional transit system into their suburban county..."
Frank Bruni: Nobody Is Protected From President Trump
"The simple accessory of a mask tells the story of a presidency and a pandemic..."
NY Times Editorial: The Cities We Need
"...Well before the coronavirus pandemic posed its own threats to the life of American cities, they were struggling. Over the last half century, their infrastructure of opportunity has badly decayed. Their public schools no longer prepare students to succeed. Their subways are reliably unreliable. Their water runs with lead.
Our urban areas are laced by invisible but increasingly impermeable boundaries separating enclaves of wealth and privilege from the gaptoothed blocks of aging buildings and vacant lots where jobs are scarce and where life is hard and, all too often, short. Cities continue to create vast amounts of wealth, but the distribution of those gains resembles the New York skyline: A handful of super-tall buildings, and everyone else in the shade.
The pandemic has prompted some affluent Americans to wonder whether cities are broken for them, too. It has suspended the charms of urban life while accentuating the risks, reviving an hoary American tradition of regarding cities with fear and loathing — as cesspools of disease, an image that all too easily aligns with prejudices about poverty and race and crime...
...In 1970, 65 percent of the residents of large metropolitan areas lived in neighborhoods with median incomes close to the median for the entire area, according to an analysis by the sociologists Kendra Bischoff and Sean F. Reardon. Most neighborhoods, in other words, approximated the economic diversity of the broader community. But by 2009, only 42 percent lived in such neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the share residing in either very affluent or very poor neighborhoods more than doubled from 15 percent to 33 percent.
This trend has reshaped central cities, filling downtowns with new buildings invariably described as “luxury” condominiums and apartments. In Chicago, for example, a recent analysis found the share of census tracts with concentrations of either wealth or poverty increased from 28 percent in 1980 to 47 percent in 2010.
But most wealthy families continue to reside in the suburbs that provide the bulk of housing in every metropolitan area except New York. These suburbs, created to maintain economic exclusivity, have become increasingly exclusive. Residents live in what are effectively private clubs and send their children to what are effectively private schools. Cars have obviated the need for servants to live close by, or to be tolerated as participants in the same polity. The people who serve the affluent must find housing elsewhere.
Life in America resembles an airline passenger cabin: separate entrances, separate seating areas, separate bathrooms. The Village of Indian Hill, a wealthy suburb of Cincinnati, touts its rural atmosphere, its “firm administration of zoning ordinances” and its “proximity to the cultural life of a large city.” It is, in short, a parasite, taking what it values from Cincinnati while contributing as little to it as possible. In this, it is hardly unique. Hundreds of similar suburbs encrust cities across the United States.
Even in cities where the rich and poor continue to live under the same local government, economic segregation saps political support for common, egalitarian infrastructure. Rich New Yorkers donate generously to beautify Central Park while resisting the taxation necessary to maintain parks in neighborhoods they never visit. In Washington, D.C., parents in wealthier neighborhoods contribute lavishly to parent-teacher organizations that provide extra money to public schools in their neighborhoods, but they do not vote for a similar level of funding for all city schools. Two schools in northwest Washington each raised more than half a million dollars in 2017, while several schools in southeast Washington don’t even have parent-teacher organizations. Last year, for the third time since 1970, the residents of Gwinnett County, Ga., which sits on the edge of Atlanta, refused to fund an expansion of the regional transit system into their suburban county..."
Frank Bruni: Nobody Is Protected From President Trump
"The simple accessory of a mask tells the story of a presidency and a pandemic..."
