Lincoln Mitchell

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This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell

Tagged with: pandemic

Covid Has Divided America Even More

We will never know how many people Americans died because other Americans couldn’t, or wouldn’t, be bothered to care even a little bit about other people, but the number is probably quite substantial. In addition, it is apparent that the people who refused to wear masks and ignored social distancing protocols not only directly contributed to the deaths of Americans but were free riders who took advantage of an America that was safer because of the sacrifices of others.

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What Covid Did and Did Not Change

As the Covid-19 pandemic now enters its second year, it is useful to assess its global impact. As of New Year’s Day, roughly 1.8 million people around the world had died of Covid-19. However, the death toll from Covid-19 only tells a small part of the story because had people around the world not radically changed their behavior, that number would have been much, perhaps exponentially, higher. Thus, theimpact of the Covid-19 on things like economic activity, mental health, years of education lost and the like are major parts of the toll of this pandemic.

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Hacks, Pandemics and Climate Change

Over the last few years, it has become increasingly apparent that the three biggest threats to American security, and that of most countries, are climate change, cyberattacks and disease.

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One Way the US Can Reassert Global Leadership

The political, medical, financial and logistical difficulties may be overwhelming, but global leadership is only meaningful if it helps achieve the most difficult goals. For the US, leading a massive international vaccination is a rare confluence of the national interest and the ethically right thing to do. If the Biden administration can take this on and succeed, it will repair the damage of the Trump administration and make it clear to the rest of the world that American leadership is more than just a platitude.

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Pandemic Hypocrisy Is Damaging but Deeply American

he American ethos of rules not applying to us has not only helped define our terrible response to the Coronavirus pandemic, but also is key to understanding American foreign policy. America’s relationship to the rest of the world frequently can be summed up by the idea do as I say, not as I do. The US urges countries to conduct democratic elections while we conduct our own elections using antiquated structures that do not value each vote equally. We seek to promote human rights around the world, while asking the world to ignore the bombs we drop, the children we put in cages and the long and horrific history of American racism. We invade foreign countries with chilling regularity while demanding that the rest of the world honor international borders. The ubiquity of this dynamic of America’s relationship to the rest of the world is hard to miss and suggests that while the hypocrisy of Governor Newsom, Mayor Breed and others is stark, it may just be the American way.

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Covid-19 Is Joe Biden’s Problem Now

Although it was Donald Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic, a mishandling that amounts to a crime against humanity, that has put America in such a terrible place regarding the pandemic, on January 20th, Coronavirus will become Biden’s problem.

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What the Debate Told Us About Governance

Thursday night’s debate, mercifully the last in this presidential election, revealed two very different understandings of and approaches to governance. Moreover, it highlighted how Donald Trump’s failure regarding the Coronavirus pandemic was, among other things, an extraordinary failure of governance.

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Donald Trump's Covid Cult

It is probably impossible to tally all of the Covid deaths in the US stemming from Trump rallies, superspreader events at the White House and the millions of cult members who spread the disease by following Trump rather than the health guidelines, but that number is undoubtedly far greater that the 900 who perished on Guyana in November of 1978. For four decades now, Jim Jones has been considered the gold standard for murderous cult leaders who by strength of personality, perverse psychological ploys, violence and threats, was able to lure people into his cult, to Guyana and ultimately into his murderous plans. Tragically, it is now apparent that compared to the current occupant of the White House, Jim Jones was a piker.

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Trump’s Positive Test Does Not Create a Governance Crisis

Trump failed utterly to craft and implement a strategy for addressing the biggest crisis the US has faced in many years. Instead, he lied, distracted, undermined the scientists and doctors, embraced quackery, set Americans against each other and stood by as more than 200,000 Americans succumbed to the pandemic.

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Joe Biden’s Foreign Policy Paradox

The paradox facing Biden is that if he wins, he will preside over a country whose ability to lead internationally, and whose role in the world, has changed dramatically over the last four years. The combination of Trump’s foreign policy, the terrible damage Covid19 has done to the US, the weakening of American democracy over the last four years and the real possibility of instability here, even if Biden becomes president, means that the US will be in no position to simply reassume the mantle of global leadership. Additionally, the American people, worn out by all these problems, have become reluctant to become too involved with the rest of the world.

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America’s Preexisting Conditions

The impact of the virus has been so devastating in the US in large part because of our own preexisting conditions, not as individuals, but as a society. The deep racism in America which means that so many aspects of life, from public security to housing to work is experienced differently depending on race, a healthcare system that leaves many with inadequate coverage, income inequality that forces many to work in unsafe jobs and in unsafe conditions and the lack of a social safety net all made the Covid-19 hit the US particularly hard.

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If We Are All Warriors Now, Maybe We Should be Treated That Way

In Trump’s increasingly diseased mind, the American people should risk death not to defeat fascism, bring down totalitarian Communism, protect our country from Jihadist terrorism or to build a stronger, freer more democratic America. Rather, Trump is asking the American people to do this so he can get a few more shots of the political adrenaline, in the form of temporarily improved poll numbers or a few more retweets, that he so intensely craves.

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Ignoring Covid-19 Won’t Make It Go Away

This toxic stew of white supremacist protestors calling, often while heavenly armed, for the various states to lift social distancing related restrictions, presidential leadership that is essentially in denial about the pandemic, projections for total deaths that have doubled in the last week or so, and indications that the Coronavirus is now spreading to smaller towns and rural America will be devastating for America. Leaving aside the human co

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We Need to Rebuild Not Reopen the American Economy

The discussion about when to reopen the American economy is, pardon the direct language, prima facie stupid. The notion that the American economy can be reopened with things quickly returning to normal, whatever that is, reflects a uniquely American brand of magical thinking. The American economy cannot return to normal so long as a thousand or more Americans are dying from Covid19 every day, while millions of Americans are wisely fearful of leaving their homes any more than absolutely necessary, thousands of small businesses have closed their doors and millions of Americans are out of work. Pronouncements by deluded governors, rallies by loyal members of the Trump deathcult and incoherent press conferences by the President are not going to change that.

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American Democracy's Last Stand

The recent months of the Covid-19 pandemic have made Donald Trump’s authoritarian impulses and mental instability, as well as the cult-like loyalty of his of his followers, even more apparent. In the last few weeks, even in the last few days, as Donald Trump has asserted his “total” authority while continuing to suggest that, in so many words, universal suffrage is prima facie election fraud, the acceleration of democratic rollback has increased substantially. Queries and earnest commentary about whether the US is in the beginning of a Constitutional crisis seem positively quaint now. We are not at the beginning of that crisis, nor, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, are we at the end of the beginning. We are in the middle, or perhaps more alarmingly, approaching the end of that crisis-and democracy is losing.

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The Other Big Story in America

The most important thing happening in American politics today is not partisan fighting, the latest polling on Donald Trump or the election, Trump’s daily disinformation show or the minutia of how one state is trying to disenfranchise voters. Rather, it is the bigger picture-that the ruling party is trying desperately trying to consolidate a nondemocratic regime before they lose the election-and they are doing this under the cover of the darkness and fear cast by a genuinely dangerous and frightening pandemic.

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