Now What?

Even the signs at my local hiking park contradict each other.

By almost any measure 2020 has been the worst in our lifetimes, and the year is only just past the halfway point. Measured in lives, 2,930 people died in the U.S. from Coronavirus in the last two days — equaling all the lives lost on 9/11. In the last week, the 7,404 lives lost to Coronavirus in the U.S. exceeds the total American casualties in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In total, 155,285 Americans have been lost in this pandemic — more than three times the American combat deaths in the Vietnam War.

Measured in economic impact, the virus has been equally devastating. U.S. GDP fell 9.5% in Q2, the largest quarterly drop ever — a decline of $1.8 trillion. Though unemployment has eased slightly since the height of the crisis, it’s still at 11.1% , its highest level since the Great Depression. The Federal Government has pumped $6 trillion dollars in stimulus into the economy (dwarfing the estimated $500 billion bailout in the 2008 financial crisis, for which Obama was eviscerated). But rather than spending that money on infrastructure projects that could set us up for long-term economic growth, or education that could help up-skill our workforce, or loans that may theoretically be paid back, the funds have largely been channeled into short-term band aids and outright fraud, creating federal debt we may never recover from.

As bad as the first half of 2020 has been, the second half of the year promises to only get worse. New COVID cases and deaths have steadily risen through July. In the absence of a coherent and rational Federal response (“Masks are a deep state plot.” “No, masks are patriotic!”), we are left as citizens to navigate often contradictory guidelines by state and local governments and individual businesses. The result of months of ineptitude is that the U.S. leads the rest of the world in the severity of the Coronavirus outbreak. Despite being only 4.2% of the world’s population, the U.S. currently has 26.5% of the world’s cases and 22.9% of the world’s deaths.

Against this backdrop of incompetence, it is understandable that civil unrest is spiking. Incidents of racial injustice that have been tragically all-too-common in our society now serve as lightening rods for a broader societal awakening. The last two months could be the tip of the iceberg. As COVID cases continue to surge, unemployment reaches unprecedented levels and more Americans are pushed to the brink, more and more people will be taking to the streets demanding change. The Administration’s response of deploying armed troops that tear gas peaceful protesters has only exacerbated an already combustible situation.

All this second-half-of-the-year pessimism ignores the elephant in the room: the impending November presidential election. Today’s chilling suggestion by President Trump that the elections should be delayed , is just his latest authoritarian impulse. I try hard not to write about politics in this blog. But I’m not opposed to Trump because he’s a Republican. I’m opposed to him because he’s an autocrat. Contorting the law for your personal gain, demanding sycophantic allegiance, attacking political adversaries, firing federal prosecutors, pardoning cronies, accepting bribes, colluding with foreign governments, manipulating the populace with propaganda, deploying armed troops against your own citizens — these are the acts of the most despotic leaders in the world, not of the President of the United States.

If Trump wins in November, it is hard to imagine the level of social unrest that will ensue. If Biden wins, it is equally hard to imagine Trump and his most ardent followers accepting a peaceful transition of power — or, for that matter, his opponents demanding appropriate punishment for his crimes. Regardless of the outcome of the election, the political fissure in our society seems like it will only deepen. As stable as our democracy has seemed during our lifetimes, it has been only been 150 years since the Civil War. If we cannot find a way to reconcile our divisions, 2020 may be the beginning of a downward trajectory from which we cannot recover.