The crisis seemed to smother the United States and the world with sudden fury, but it wasn’t sudden at all except in its particulars. Over the previous forty years, fissures radiating from the deepening fault lines of inequality, racism, suspicion, paranoia, and the propaganda of financial self-interest carved their way through America’s landscape until the country and its people had become fragile. Covid-19 just exploited the weaknesses until the crust collapsed, revealing to Americans what had become of their nation. If it hadn’t been Covid-19, it would have been some other catastrophe.
