{"id":45516,"date":"2020-05-01T12:21:18","date_gmt":"2020-05-01T12:21:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/?p=45516"},"modified":"2020-05-01T12:21:18","modified_gmt":"2020-05-01T12:21:18","slug":"the-world-has-loved-hated-and-envied-the-u-s-now-for-the-first-time-we-pity-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/01\/the-world-has-loved-hated-and-envied-the-u-s-now-for-the-first-time-we-pity-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The world has loved, hated and envied the U.S. Now, for the first time, we pity it."},"content":{"rendered":"

Writing in the Irish Times, Fintan O’toole says:<\/p>\n

\u201cOver more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is hard not to feel sorry for Americans,\u201d he states. \u201cMost of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time \u2014 willfully, malevolently, vindictively,\u201d he added. \u201cIt is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party and Rupert Murdoch\u2019s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Writing in the Irish Times, Fintan O’toole says: \u201cOver more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US…<\/p>\n

Read More “The world has loved, hated and envied the U.S. Now, for the first time, we pity it.”<\/span> »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[574,109,136],"class_list":["post-45516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-covid-19","tag-dealing-with-idiots","tag-god-bless-the-land-of-the-free"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3u9vK-bQ8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45516"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45531,"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45516\/revisions\/45531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}