Новости за 13.07.2020

The 2008 financial crisis saw failures at every level of elite institutions. There was the failed promise of Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan that the markets would self-regulate. The failure of policymakers to listen to community advocates who repeatedly sounded the alarm about predatory, racist lending practices. And there was a failure to bail out homeowners with the same speed and consideration that our nation’s megabanks received.

In late September of 1950, just as U.S. armed forces were surging up the Korean peninsula, residents of the San Francisco Bay Area noticed an odd odor. The unidentifiable smell hung around for a week. People scratched their heads and pointed fingers—they thought the problem could be their neighbors cooking brussels sprouts, or maybe it was sewer gas. What they didn’t suspect is that they were being sprayed with microorganisms by their own government.

Future generations will be astounded to learn that in the face of a deadly and unprecedented global pandemic, it became controversial to adopt simple and longstanding public health protocols—and that, indeed, such measures were strenuously resisted by people who were predominantly members of the Republican Party. History will record that they risked their lives and those of their loved ones out of sheer partisan pig-headedness.