The State Will Not Save Us from COVID
For the last seven decades, the worst news a private citizen could receive is that the US government has declared war on their behalf. The war on drugs became primarily a war on black people, and has had the opposite of its intended effect on drug abuse. The war on poverty had no effect on poverty, but has coincided with skyrocketing income inequality. The Global War on Terror liberated broad swaths of the Middle East, mostly by killing its citizens and blowing their cities to tiny bits. Our war against gun violence, in combination with those other wars, has turned many of our cities into battlegrounds.
The benevolent intent of all these efforts cannot be denied, but neither can their results be disputed. For at least the last 70 years, in every case where the use of government force was harnessed for the protection of its citizens, the results have been wanton death and destruction, largely among the very people that force was meant to protect.
The United States is very good at fighting actual wars. When there is a defined enemy that can be beaten with bullets and bombs, we are unequaled in the history of humanity. We have become specialists in that regard; the world’s biggest hammer searching for nails, and inventing them where none exist. Thus, when we find ourselves confronted with a more ethereal threat — drug abuse, racism, poverty, terrorism — we…
