A friend and I were having a conversation similar to this a few days ago. I was going on about how the coronavirus was the first time in our memory that everyone on the globe was forced to react to the same exact thing — governments, businesses, societies, cultures, individuals — and it revealed the core essence of all those communities. It revealed their values and priorities.
And it revealed every weakness in the US; really got into those cracks and just pried them open. It revealed the US to the world as a place filled with truly stupid and ignorant people, and a nihilistic society willingly feeding itself to corporations and the wealthy in exchange for...something. A chance at more crumbs, maybe. And it revealed the government to unambiguously be a polite fiction — a mere slip covering the naked ambition of the financial class. They threw trillions instantly at Wall Street and bankers without a second thought. They threw billions at corporations without oversight. But they "debate" providing money directly to the citizenry. They seek "compromise" in extending financial breaks to the people. It's a farce put on for their own amusement.
And my friend said that this is basically where the worm turns and our decline accelerates. He thinks the current collapse of our Federal institutions will leave us with a Russian-style oligarchy sooner rather than later, since we're 8/10s of the way there anyway. And also that this is the crossover point between the US and China — China on the ascendent and the US in its unrecoverable decline.
Who in the international community will take the US seriously going forward? An unstable, unreliable nation that may or may not consider itself beholden to agreements its made isn't really an entity that people will trust or have any confidence in. It'll still have a military that it'll fund even if its infrastructure is crumbling to the ground, but all it will be able to do is push around smaller countries — countries who will naturally gravitate to China as it assumes preeminent status, and uses its economic, military, and political power to influence events to its benefit. And the lesson it will share to the world is that you don't need a liberal democracy to have a strong market economy.
I think in the end, the coronavirus has revealed that if you're a smart person seeking a stable society to build a prosperous life, or an older person looking at living the latter part of your life with some measure of dignity, it's not going to happen in the US. This country is built by and for the benefit of the elite at the top, with the masses battling each other like crabs in a bucket.
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