Almost once a week, you publish an editorial or letters denouncing "lawlessness with rioting, looting, shootings, drugs and poverty" in urban areas and lay all the blame squarely at the feet of Democratic mayors, or socialism, or extremism, or left leaning politicians. It's such a simplistic ploy and in this age of hyper-partisanship fuels the political fires. As better off people have moved out of cities to the suburbs or gone to where the jobs are, so many urban areas of older cities have been in decline for years. Urban boundaries have been manipulated to ensure segregation resulting in housing blight and inner city decay. Lack of investment, poor housing conditions, lack of opportunities to earn a decent living lead to despair and deprivation, which in turn lead to anger. Flint is a good example.

That so many urban areas have been in revolt reflects the type of society we have created, a mad scramble for everything. Why don't Canada or Singapore or Japan or Spain or Australia or other successful democracies have the same problems and the same riots to the same degree? Quite simply these democracies all accept the fundamental right to universal health care, equal access to quality public education, a social safety net for the weak, elderly and infirm. In America such attitudes are all discounted as socialist weakness. So the rich go on getting richer, the poorer get poorer, the police get better armed, the prisons get fuller, and the pain greater. Selfishness wins the day and the cult of the individual denies any collective responsibility. No one owes anything to anybody.

It is this cult of the individual, which has laid us bare to the pandemic. We don't care about how many die as long as it isn't us. Money matters more than life. Politics has been reduced to a TV show where people wave and shout and smile and infection rates go up and deaths rates continue to rise and we do not care. That is sadly who we are now. Sacrifice our personal freedom to go to a bar go to a party to reduce the infection rate? Somebody else's problem. The corpses pile up. Somebody else's problem. Back at the editorial board of The Republic tiptoe quietly. Don't make too much noise. Things will change, someday. Feed the monster.