Just chill > "In other words, think of us as experiencing something like a news pandemic when it comes to the nightmare of the global disease now sweeping the world and my own city, New York. At present, it's considered the “epicenter” of the staggeringly badly dealt withexplosion of coronavirus cases in this country. Still, in such circumstances, and with the media itself in pandemic mode, it’s hard to get the slightest perspective on what we’re going through or what in the world (and that’s not just a figure of speech anymore) to make of it all. Fortunately, TomDispatch regularAndrew Bacevich, author of the just-published book The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory, takes a few steps back today -- think of it as a kind of online social distancing -- to consider what in this world of ours may be ending: possibly the always-misplaced belief in the ability of the national security state to protect us from the real dangers of this planet.
. . . And that, in truth, represents genuine news. Tom
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. . . And that, in truth, represents genuine news. Tom
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Judgment Day for the National Security State
Americans are facing “A Spring Unlike Any Before.” So warned a front-page headline in the March 13th New York Times.
That headline, however hyperbolic, was all too apt. The coming of spring has always promised relief from the discomforts of winter. Yet, far too often, it also brings its own calamities and afflictions.
According to the poet T.S. Eliot, “April is the cruelest month.” Yet while April has certainly delivered its share of cataclysms,March and May haven’t lagged far behind. In fact, cruelty has seldom been a respecter of seasons. The infamous influenza epidemic of 1918, frequently cited as a possible analogue to our current crisis, began in the spring of that year, but lasted well into 1919.
