Oh for god’s sake. “Failed state”? Seriously?
Rolling stone has done great reporting on serious problems, but this is just insane. If the US is a ‘failed state’ then so is every other state.
Rolling stone has done great reporting on serious problems, but this is just insane. If the US is a ‘failed state’ then so is every other state.
Source?
Previously mail-in ballots were generally limited to specific conditions in order to limit the effectiveness and opportunity of this type of fraud (e.g. coercion and voting for others).
That said and in my opinion it should be left up to the states to decide, but I also think there are better alternatives to limit the spread of covid (e.g. early voting by letter of last name; increased number in general and availability of outdoor polling locations; drive-thru polling locations; ticketing system where they message you when you are next or near next in line). I would also agree with federal grants to states to help fund such initiatives that actually provide a way to limit these types voting fraud that mail-in ballots do not.
It seems like you're implying that there is some negligence or conspiracy. No one could have predicted that United State's Covid response would be so poor. That realization only came about in May when we tried to reopen too early.
Mail was delivering fine 6 months ago. Can you cite any sources that study the infrastructure problems of the USPS?
I for example could easily vote for my invalid parent.
Would you trust someone signing into your server where the only verification was a password you mailed to their house unencrypted?
If the proposed solution is to mail ballots to each registered voter at their last known home address, people who have moved without updating their voter registration may also be an issue.
Given the above, I don't think it is unreasonable to have concerns about this process. That said, perhaps there is an alternative method to proceed if voting in-person is deemed unacceptable.
We definitely have a much higher standard when working with our servers than voting. I mean that from a security standpoint and ease of use.
I feel like you are cherry picking when you call out those two words and dispense with the other 4000+
The author makes numerous excellent points.
Most of the criticisms of the US have merit, and are serious.
The part I think is problematic is this piece of hyperbole.
I honestly believe that when people say things like this, they are contributing the problems we have as a world, even if they make a bunch of other good points.
The value of an argument is not judged by then number of good points that are made.
It is judged on the conclusions.
Our Federal government might be doing a piss-poor job but it has not stopped being able to assert sovereignty in meaningful ways, domestically and internationally, or to continue to deliver government services to a significant extent. If those things had happened we'd know it. "Governing very poorly"—even somewhat maliciously—is not what it means for a state to have failed. Maybe it's being used... I dunno, poetically? But that doesn't seem to be the case, in context.
Some of the stuff in the article's interesting but a lot of the rest is similarly overblown. Declaring China's ascendance (it sometimes explicitly says China but then other times seems to use Asia to mean "Asia, but mostly China") is fashionable and might end up being true but is far from settled history, to pick on another part, and I'm guessing the "D-Day versus gun deaths in 2019" stat is mostly suicides, which seems disingenuous to me, in this context—while of course it is interesting and meaningful in others, I think they're trying to mislead with it here.
I'm left-wing as hell and probably agree with most policy positions and general opinions the writer holds, so this should be right up my alley, but the piece isn't great. A better-written version of this with exactly the thesis and overall journey might even be something I'd really like!
It's a mix of a pretty good cataloguing of disparate bad-sounding stats and figures about the US, many bad/misleading instances of same (any time there's a bad-sounding—or good-sounding, for that matter—stat missing any frame of reference, I get twitchy, and this has plenty), some dull and overstated predictions about the future, and some lazy narrative-building. I hate these kinds of articles when the right does them, but I almost hate them more when "my" side does them. I know that's bad politics because people respond to this sort of thing, but I just can't stand writing this transparently manipulative, at great cost to honesty and accuracy.
The best parts are when the writer's focusing directly on the COVID response. Those are alright. A few other bits are OK for a few sentences in a row and could form the seed of good, if thoroughly unoriginal, articles on their own.
Not exactly a train wreck then.
I see what you're saying. To me, this article is not about building a case for America's failed state. It's an argument for the perceived loss of American leadership around the world. Given that conclusion, the stats he chooses are exactly the ones on people's minds around the world.
Talking to my friends in China and Singapore, the George Floyd protests often come up as the US descending into chaos. There are comparisons to Hong Kong. Regardless of the faulty perception outside of the US, that perception shapes our leadership abilities. This article perfectly reflects what I've been hearing from overseas.
My experience has been that people’s perceptions are mostly reflective of what they read in the press.
They were grossly inaccurate and misleading when the US was perceived as a magnificent success - most of the problems we have now were already apparent then.
But they are also grossly misleading when representing the US relative to other states now.
There are ‘failed states’ inside the European Union for example, and pretty much every one of the problems the US has are reflected elsewhere too.
It is obvious that things are a lot worse, and that serious problems have gone unresolved, etc.
I live in the East Bay and stores were looted only a few blocks from here. Similar things happened during the riots over Oscar grant at when I lived in another part of the East Bay.
There is no descent into chaos. It’s not surprising that it seems like that if you live in China or Singapore, where the penalties for rioting are draconian. You can make argument either way as to whether the riots represent something healthy or unhealthy.
But it is simply not true that US is descending into chaos. It’s not even true that this is some new thing.
But of course if the media present it that way, then people will think that.
I personally think ‘defunding the police’ is a mistake - I think we need more training and less stress for our police and I think that means more funds and not less.
However I’m also a strong believer in violence intervention, restorative justice and other community methods.
But guess what - it seems like we’re actually going to try some of these experiments in response to the protests.
That’s about as far from a failed state as I can imagine living in.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/07/covid-19-the-great-re...
In political science, "failed state" has some commonly accepted definitions (eg- unable to project power and defend borders), none of which apply to the US even when accounting for the terrible mismanagement of COVID-19.
But like with some other terms, there's a group of theorists (usually not political scientists) who are diluting the word and throwing it around politically.
In terms of the underlying reality, the US very much a functioning state.