Pandemic 2021: The Beginning of the End for America?

In 2021, as America recklessly stumbles through the second harrowing year of the pandemic caused by the rampant spread of Covid-19 in early 2020, one hard, sickening conclusion is painfully unavoidable: nothing is being learned, by either the corrupt American authorities who knew that the coronavirus represented a major threat to humanity and knowingly permitted it to advance and take hold in every state of the union, or by the foolish American public who casually accepted, and lazily enabled, such brazen, murderous madness. On all fronts in America, cheap falsehoods are being offered, useless policies are being upheld, dangerous fantasies are being purveyed, and wishful thinking is being encouraged, but nothing is being learned by anyone, or indeed, is ever likely to be learned.

In the face of untold suffering and even potential extinction, most Americans have responded to the pandemic by stubbornly resisting the overt truth and pretending that their small, narrow lives will soon return to what they blithely hold to be a condition of "normal." Rather than yielding to the urgent necessity of doing what clearly needs to be done (staying home, observing safety measures, closing schools and businesses), the American masses have been weak and witless, seeking an easy way out as usual, putting their ill-conceived faith in the quick, random distribution of hasty vaccines that have not been properly tested (and which, although undoubtedly lucrative for wealthy pharmaceutical corporations in the short term, may or may not, in the long term, prove to be as effective as claimed).

One might readily presume that, with more than 500,000 people having perished from Covid-19 in the United States during the first twelve months of the pandemic, and with millions of livelihoods having been wrecked, the American public would comprehend the utter, frightful seriousness of the situation, but such is not the case. Instead, Americans bemoan the loss of their "freedom" (by which they mean, of course, the liberty to do whatever they please at all times, without any regard for the results of their actions), and behave as if being requested to keep a reasonable distance from other people, and being required to wear cloth coverings over their noses and mouths, curtails their rights and constitutes an actual hardship, showing that they have been rendered soft and selfish by decades of capitalist comfort.

Americans, always impatient with any hint of adversity, are increasingly "tired" of the pandemic, and are demanding that it be ended soon. In an undisciplined nation of childish, irrational citizens, maturity and reason are in short supply. What most Americans fail to understand is that the way of life they blindly esteem, and to which they so desperately want to return, the mindless life of thoughtless choices and careless decisions, is the same way of life that inevitably gave rise to the pandemic. Only a complete dolt, a mentally defective person entirely lacking in native wisdom and fundamental judgment, could believe that the shameful leaders whose dishonesty and negligence created the pandemic can now be trusted to provide a reliable means of escaping its harmful clutches.

In March of 2021, amid a constant shower of transparent propaganda and much loose, unwarranted talk of lifting current restrictions, Covid-19 continues its relentless spread across America, with new variants appearing everywhere, while awkward questions spoil the illusion of hope. Why, after many years of being warned by scientists that a pandemic was certain to happen, did those in power take no action to prevent it, or, at the least, hamper it? Is the pandemic merely a troublesome bump in the supposedly endless road of American prosperity, an annoying but controllable problem that unfortunately will destroy hundreds of thousands of lives? Or does the pandemic, and the immoral manner in which it has been handled thus far, have a darker import, perhaps signifying the beginning of the end for America?