Our picksWhat “Natural” Disaster? | Sweden’s New Epidemic: Clan-Based Crime | Climate Migration, and more
· The American Government Gave Up on Reality
· How Climate Migration Will Reshape America
· ‘Nothing to Do with Climate Change’: Conservative Media and Trump Align on Fires
· The Idea of a “Natural” Disaster Is Going Up in Flames
· Climate Change and Forest Management Have Both Fueled Today’s Epic Western Wildfires
· U.S. Image Plummets Internationally as Most Say Country Has Handled Coronavirus Badly
· Trump Shares Fake Video of Biden Playing “F—- tha Police”
· Faked Videos Shore Up False Beliefs about Biden’s Mental Health
· U.S. Intel Repeatedly Warned About Rudy’s ‘Russian Agent’ Pal
· Right-Wing Conspiracists Falsely Linked Antifa to Wildfires. Then the Russian Media Gave Them a Boost.
· Antifa Rumors Leading Armed Citizens to Stop Drivers at Checkpoints Near Oregon Fires
· How the Government Is Keeping Hackers from Disrupting Coronavirus Vaccine Research
· Sweden’s New Epidemic: Clan-Based Crime
· The Ghost Towns Behind the Gates
The American Government Gave Up on Reality (Deborah Pearlstein, The Atlantic)
Over the past 50 years, the three branches have lost their capacity to analyze and act on independent, nonpartisan information.
Alexander Hamilton and his colleagues wrote 85 separate essays to make their case that Americans should take a risk and ratify the 1787 Constitution. Three sentences into the very first of those Federalist Papers, Hamilton wrotethat he knew full well the stakes of the gamble he and his co-authors were proposing – that he doubted that “We the People” would be able to set aside existing passions and prejudices long enough to debate the ratification of the Constitution itself solely on its merits.
How on earth could the Constitution’s Framers then have convinced themselves to expect the people to manage running an effective national government?
The Framers’ faith in that regard has been sorely tested by the American government’s catastrophic response to the COVID-19 pandemic. For as much blame as the president himself deserves for the country’s current dire condition—and his malign incompetence is breathtaking—the federal government’s failure here is not the president’s alone. Expert agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration have, from the start, stumbled and delayed, struggled to collect data, secure accurate tests, or convey a consistent message. Congress, too, has proven unable to compel swift action to address shortages or coordinate the distribution of essential supplies, and equally unable to constrain apparently rampant corruption in the allocation of the funds it has authorized. Even the courts have at times balked at accepting pandemic basics, such as the notion that states might have reasonable grounds for permitting large gatherings outdoors but not in. As the Atlantic journalist Ed Yong recently set out in painful detail, the response has “careened between inaction and ineptitude,” leaving the people in “illness and financial ruin.” In the face of such systemic failure, is it time to rethink the system itself?
How Climate Migration Will Reshape America (Abrahm Lustgarten, New York Times)
Millions will be displaced in the coming decades by fires, hurricanes, extreme heat and rising seas. Where will they go?
