【译】(新冠如何证明)美国是一个失败国家
4月6日，乌玛尔·哈克（Umair Haque），伦敦Havas媒体实验室的负责人，在Media上发布了个人最新的博文：（新冠如何证明）美国是一个失败国家，副标题：我们（如何）看着美国在恐怖与不信任中自毁。
一个英国人对美国体制的诘问，使笔者陷入了深深的思考。
笔者作了翻译。
大约十年前，我曾暗示美国正在成为一个失败的国家。专家们，立刻就发疯了。我想我被《纽约时报》和《美国之音》攻击了，不是为了那个——或者也许是为了别的什么。没关系。我的观点很简单：美国社会进步的所有主要指标都开始崩溃，从抽象的指标，如信任到幸福，到刻板的指标，如储蓄到收入。美国正在成为一个无法为其公民提供甚至是最基本生活的社会。发生了什么事？
在接下来的十年里，我的论文被确凿地证明是正确的。美国人面临一个反乌托邦的新现实：由“医疗破产”和“午餐欠债”（lunch-debt）组成【译注：午餐债务指在校中小学生应向学校缴纳的午饭费，美国有许多学校向学生提供免费午餐，但仍有大量学校需要学生自付，而这是许多学生家庭难以承受的。供参考的新闻链接（见下方截图）：https://newsone.com/3884556/school-lunch-debt-free-meals-atlanta/ 】。中产阶级成为少数。80%的美国人开始过着无隔夜余粮仅能糊口的生活（living hand-to-mouth）。75%的人难以负担水电费、住房和教育等基本费用。整整一半的美国人从事“低工资”工作。这种崩溃的后果既可怕，也可以预见。在绝望和愤怒中，美国人——受够了——转而寻求一个强人。今天，这个强人是总统【注：特朗普】。
而现在，在疫病大流行之际，我认为没有什么可以怀疑的了：美国是一个失败的国家。这是历史上一个怪异（bizarre）、陌生（strange）和新鲜（new）的东西：富国中第一个贫国，现代性第一个失败的富国。我敢打赌你也有这种感觉。昨天，美国无法为人民提供的基本条件是：就业、医疗、教育、退休等等。今天，这份列表，在新冠大流行中变得更长-甚至更具灾难性：药品，测试，呼吸机，口罩，收入保障。
我看待失败国家的方式很简单。一个社会能不能为人们提供基本生活？如果没有，（这个社会）在哪些特定的制度和机构中失败了？通常，它可以归结为三个方面：政治、经济和知识。让我们一起考虑一下。
在一场大流行病中，美国经济正在灾难性地衰退。在过去的两周里，有一千万人申请失业。这是每周损失全国3%的劳动力。这意味着四分之一的美国经济将在两个月内失业，一半将在四个月内失业。这些都是可怕的数字，即使在战争时期也看不到：这是一场前所未有的灾难。
美国经济体系崩溃的原因是美国的政治体系允许他们这样做。国会和总统为人民和企业提供了一个刺激方案，在一场将持续数月的危机中，只够支持他们一周…… 因此，很自然地，人们和企业都在恐慌。大规模裁员开始了。一波又一波的企业关门了，当政府只给你一周的支持……而现在已经超过一周了，谁能负担得起开门的费用呢？砰（关门大吉）！
即使在大萧条时期（1929-1933），美国经济也在内爆，并已准备好迎接一场不可同日而语的大萧条。经济估计将萎缩30%。我认为这还是乐观的。不管最后的数字是多少，都无关紧要。两位数的降幅？真是闻所未闻。这会让人觉得是世界末日。人们已经失去了工作——接下来，他们将失去生计、储蓄、资产和住房。此外，由于美国破裂的社会契约（broken social contract）将任何真正形式的社会保护（social protection）与就业联系在一起，人们将在一场全球性的大流行病中失去医疗、药品和治疗。
世界上没有任何一个国家能让我想到——没有一个国家——能让它的人民处于这样的境地。是的，真的。即使在巴基斯坦和尼日利亚 也在为病人提供医疗服务。当然，这些国家没有美国所拥有的资源，但至少他们正在努力。美国的做法恰恰相反：抛弃和背叛人民。
成千上万的美国人开始不必要地生病，大量的人将死去，纽约市正考虑把死者埋葬在公园里。美国正在成为一个停尸房——由失败的意识形态、破碎的制度和专制的领导人组成。
让我谈一谈贾里德·库什纳【译注：特朗普女婿】，勇敢地步入战斗【译注：作者在自嘲谈论库什纳需要勇气】。他是应对这场流行病的负责人。作为总统的女婿，他的成就主要包括成为一个…贫民窟主【译注：库什纳本人及其家族通过对大量底层人民收租发迹】。等等，什么？一个疯狂的煽动者任命了他的女婿…不仅仅是因为他能…更可能是因为在危机中有很多钱可以赚。但请看这里更深层次的现实。这里的裙带关系是令人窒息般震惊的（utterly breathtaking）。一个恰如其分的比较是乌代或古赛·侯赛因【译注：萨达姆·侯赛因的两个儿子】。他们折磨人。库什只是让人们集体死去。当然有区别，但不是很大。
与此同时，各州竞相竞购呼吸机，使得价格暴涨。【译注：库什纳在美国联邦政府采购完呼吸机后公开表示，这是联邦财产，而非各州所有，各州需要竞价购买。】我们没有一个协调一致的国家应对——不再竞标，而是国家以一个固定的、公平的价格购买所有的呼吸机，这样人们就可以得到治疗……什么都没有。只是“市场竞争”。但正是在大灾难中，我们必须合作，否则就会灭亡，灾难越大，就越应同心协力。在危机时期争夺日益减少的资源只会使小灾变为大灾，提高价格，限制资源，扭曲分配，阻止分配，造成信心的广泛丧失。顺便说一句：就连印度也宣布了一项计划，计划出资创建低成本的呼吸机。你看到美国失败的程度了吗？
哪一个社会为了意识形态、权力和利益而让成千上万的人病倒——谁知道有多少人死去？完全是因为基本公民义务的缺失和不负责任？只是因为什么都不做更容易——这样就能赚更多的钱？真的没别的国家。
似乎这还不够，这位疯狂的美国总统正在利用国家储备作为政治筹码。所以，那些对他忠心耿耿的州长们得到了更多的关键资源，无论是呼吸机、口罩还是资金——而那些未对其效忠的州长们却一点也得不到。让我更直白地说。美国总统正在利用全球大流行病作为对政治忠诚的考验——如果这些国家生病死亡，谁在乎呢？到底是什么？你能想象在法国发生的事吗？意大利？德国？这是一种道德败坏的行为，语言已很难表达我的蔑视。即使是在巴基斯坦或阿富汗，元首也没有把流行病惩罚不忠者的工具。这表明美国沉沦得有多低。
我们还没有结束——但让我们总结一下。
美国经济正在走向死亡。因为在长达数月的全球大流行病中，它的政治机构现在几乎无力、瘫痪，甚至不能伸出一根手指拯救经济，只向企业和家庭提供一周的支持。
与此同时，总统不仅开始利用这种流行病巩固权力和牟取暴利——通过令人瞠目结舌的裙带关系——而且将之作为一种政治考验，来消灭竞争对手。在这种情况下，真真正正地：让竞争对手陷入疾病的深渊。
我的天。你的头晕了吗？你觉得有点不舒服吗？是的，我不是故意这么说的。
现在让我们来看看美国的知识分子，他们是如何教人们思考的。他们确实对上述问题大吵了一架——但只浅谈辄止，而且方向都不对。我想我是唯一指出经济刺激等于一周支持（week support）的人：这不是自吹自擂，而是要问：为什么我是唯一做了这道小学数学题的人？当然，任何一个有一半水平的知识分子都能做到这一点。这是一个更大失败的小例子（a small example of a larger failure）：美国的思想界并没有真正为任何一个人把失败的意识形态和失败的国家联系起来。
所有这些都揭示了一直处于美国思想核心的一种意识形态：达尔文主义（Darwinism）。弱者应该灭亡。只有强者才能生存。弱者是负担、负债和寄生虫。这是最美国的思维方式。在奴隶制时期，这个（非）逻辑被用来奴役一个大陆【译注：指非洲】，并把奴隶们运到世界各地。后来，在种族隔离时期，这是美国资本主义形成的道德逻辑，如厄普顿·辛克莱（Upton Sinclair）的权威著作《丛林》（The Jungle）所述。
这种噩梦般的逻辑——强者生存，弱者灭亡，变成了普通美国人自己相信的东西。一次又一次，鲁珀特·默多克，假新闻，纽特·金里奇【译注：美国共和党总统候选人、前众议院议长】，以及千千万万个由亿万富翁资助的“智库”，将这一概念砸到了普通美国人的头脑中。因此，到了20世纪80年代，美国人成为世界上唯一集体投票反对提高自己生活水平的人。在世界上，还有谁会拒绝拥有良好的医疗保健、退休、负担得起的教育、儿童保育、社会安全保障（safety nets）—— 这些东西（福利）从哪里来？真地，没有其它国家的人（这么做）。只有美国人一次又一次地投票反对一个正常运转的社会。
结果是：他们无法拥有一个（正常运转的社会）。到了90年代，严重的经济停滞已经开始显现。当然，互联网曾经繁荣过，但从70年代开始，普通人的收入就没有增长。流动性、信任、幸福感、储蓄都开始急剧下降。到了21世纪初，美国人的生活出现了反乌托邦（dystopia） 的迹象【译注：dystopia正是美版方方日记的宣传语中对中国的描述】：普通人开始过着比想象中的加拿大同龄人差得多的生活，一种寿命更短、更贫穷、更孤独、更不健康、更不幸福的生活。到了2010年代，由那些令世界其他地方瞠目的东西构成的美国的生活变成了真正的反乌托邦：每周都有学校枪击案，医院账单比买新房还高，大学教育费用比医院账单还高，等等。
所有这些都反映了一个简单的事实。美国人被教导（taught）说，拥有一个健全的政府（robust government）和一份有效的社会契约（a working social contract）是一件坏事。这种在当今全世界都很正常的人与人互相照顾的方式，如公共医保和退休保障，是软弱的表现，而软弱等于死亡。但是没有医疗，你怎么生活呢？收入？医学？简单的人类逻辑已经被颠覆了，现在已经被制度化为疯狂的经济学和政治学，被编入方程式，在常春藤名校内教授，然后每晚以头条的形式在广播中播出。没有人值得拥有任何东西！基本人权是共产主义的一种形式，共产主义就是大屠杀！把（共产主义）政府淹死在浴缸里！！你应该工作到你死的那一天，而且永远没有一分钱可以拿出来！！等等，什么？我去？美国变成了苏联：无法看穿愚蠢、幼稚、失败的意识形态。
【译评：“教导”（taught）毋宁说“洗脑”（brainwashed）。“戴口罩”是生病虚弱的人才做的事，健康人不戴口罩——这样的普通人的观点便是这种洗脑下的产物。】
价值观正在变僵硬，变成自我毁灭的，无法支撑一个现代的、运转正常的社会的价值观。数百年的达尔文主义，从奴隶制的剧毒中提炼出来，再到高资本主义的有毒鸡尾酒，教会了美国人只有下列东西是好的、可取的、必要的：侵略、残忍、自私、愤怒、暴力、最肤浅的个人主义，比任何人都有更多的收获。成为一个更大，更饥渴，更残忍的捕食者的能力。任何形式的集体行动——甚至任何形式的集体情绪——都不被真正允许、鼓励、容忍、接受。甚至连基本的公共医疗都被斥为“社会主义”甚至“共产主义”——但是等等，有人呼吁将能源电网和银行国有化，更不用说让人们住在公共公寓里了吗？
也许你怀疑我。你比我好。很好。但是为什么美国人是世界上唯一对彼此的痛苦完全漠不关心的民族呢？如此冷漠以至于他们会欣然拒绝邻居的医疗保健、退休和儿童保育？最终，美国人所真正拒绝的是一个有效的社会契约，一个有效的政府，以及能够为所有人提供基础的制度和机构。
疫病大流行只是凸显这一切。这是这一趋势的高潮，而不是开始。像特朗普这样的疯子当选，是因为有足够多的美国人，特别是工薪阶层和内爆的中产阶级，不顾一切地转向煽动者，他们把自己的问题归咎于同一个被憎恨的少数民族。但是，一个煽动者当然不会建立一个更强大、更有效的国家——他会把它层层剥离，制造一种影子独裁国家。这就是美国今天所拥有的。
为什么美国有盖世太保和集中营，但却不能提供呼吸机和口罩？为什么它能从父母那里夺走婴儿，却不能给人们提供体面的医疗和药品？因为一个当然是另一个的代价。美国悲惨而奇怪的故事中真正令人不安的部分是，美国人自己就是那些一步步选择了这种奇怪而严峻命运的人，在这种命运中，反社会者和威权主义者统治着他们，剥夺了他们最基本的东西：生活本身。他们把对方贬为奴隶。这是我能想到的对失败状态最清晰、最纯粹的定义。
美国失败了。它变得很像一个威权的法西斯式反乌托邦（authoritarian fascist dystopia）。你知道在这样的地方会发生什么吗？弱者被留下来毁灭。因为他们是真正的感染者，使纯洁和真实的人拥有他们在历史上的合法地位，而历史正以暴力统治着所有其他人。在法西斯的心目中，这场大流行只是做着与集中营、突袭、清洗、家庭分离一样的工作。风选。剔除。打谷。
我告诉过你一个黑暗而令人不安的故事。比十年前暗得多。我只剩下一个问题要问你。
美国什么时候才能学会放下割韭菜的镰刀？
——— 原文 ———
About a decade ago, I suggested that America was becoming a failed state. The pundits, instantly, went bananas. I think I was attacked in the New York Times and Vox and whatnot for that — or maybe it was for something else. No matter. My point was simple: all the major indicators of social progress in America were beginning to implode, from abstract ones, like trust to happiness, to hard-as-nails ones, like savings to income. America was becoming a society which was beginning to be unable to provide even the basics of life for its citizens anymore. What was going to happen to it?
Over the following decade, my thesis was proven grimly true. Americans confronted a dystopian new reality. Made of things like “medical bankruptcy” and “lunch debt.” The middle class became a minority. 80% of Americans began living hand-to-mouth. 75% struggled to afford basic bills like utilities, housing, and education. A full half of Americans worked in “low-wage” jobs. The consequences of such a collapse were as predictable, too, as they were dire. In their desperation and fury, Americans — enough of them — turned to a strongman. Today, he’s President.
And now, in the midst of pandemic, I think there can be little doubt left: America’s a failed state. It’s something bizarre and strange and new in history: the rich world’s first poor country, modernity’s first rich failed state. I’d bet that you feel that, too. Yesterday, the basic things America couldn’t provide for its people were: jobs, healthcare, education, retirement, and so on. Today, that list, amidst pandemic is longer — and even more disastrous: medicine, tests, ventilators, masks, guarantees of income.
The way that I think about failed states is simple. Can a society provide basics for people, or not? If not, in what particular systems and institutions have failed? Usually, it boils down to three: political, economic, and intellectual. Let’s think about that a little bit together.
In the midst of a pandemic, America’s economy is failing catastrophically. Ten million people have filed for unemployment in the last two weeks. That’s a rate of 3% of the labour force per week. And that means that a quarter of the American economy will be unemployed in two months, and half in four months. Those are horrific numbers, unseen in even in times of war: this is a catastrophe without parallel.
The reason that America’s economic systems are breaking down is that America’s political systems let them. Congress and the Prez offered people and businesses a stimulus package that supports them for just one week….amidst a crisis that’s going to last months. As a result, quite naturally, people and businesses are both panicking. Mass layoffs are beginning. Waves of businesses are shutting their doors. Who can afford to keep their doors open when the government’s offering you just one week of support…when it’s already been more than one week? Bang!
The economy is imploding, and poised now for a depression without equal, even during the Great Depression. The estimates are that the economy will shrink by about 30% or so. I think that’s optimistic. Whatever the final number is, it doesn’t really matter. Double-digit reductions like that? They’re genuinely unheard of. They are going to feel like the end of the world. People are already losing their jobs — next, they are going to lose their livelihoods, savings, assets, and homes. Furthermore, because America’s broken social contract ties any real form of social protection to employment, people are going to go without healthcare, medicine, and treatment in the middle of a literal global pandemic.
There is no other country on earth I can think of — not one — which has put its people in such a position. Yes, really. Even in Pakistan and Nigeria, heaven and earth are being moved to give the sick healthcare. Sure, those countries don’t have the resources America does — but at least they are trying. America is doing the precise opposite: abandoning and betraying people.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans are needlessly beginning to fall ill — and vast numbers will die. New York City is thinking of burying its dead in public parks. America is becoming a mortuary — made of failed ideologies, broken institutions, and despotic leaders.
Enter Jared Kushner, stepping bravely into the fray. He’s the head of the response to this pandemic. The President’s son in law, whose list of accomplishments mostly includes being a…slumlord. Wait, what? A lunatic demagogue has appointed his son-in-law…not just because he can…but more likely because there is plenty of money to be made amidst crisis. But see the deeper reality here. This is a level of nepotism that’s utterly breathtaking. A precise equivalent is Uday or Qusay Hussein. They tortured people. Kush is just letting them die en masse. There’s a difference, sure — but not a huge one.
Meanwhile, states are bidding against each other for ventilators — driving the price through the roof. Instead of a coordinated national response — no more bidding, we buy all the ventilators at a fixed, fair price, so that people can get treated…there’s…nothing. Just “market competition.” But it’s precisely during catastrophes that we must cooperate, or perish, the larger the catastrophe, the more so. Competing for dwindling resources during times of crisis only adds disaster to catastrophe, raising prices, limiting resources, warping allocation, preventing distribution, creating a widespread loss of confidence. By the way: even India’s announced a plan to fund to try to create low cost ventilators. Are you seeing the magnitude of America’s failure yet?
Which other society is just letting hundreds of thousands of people fall ill — and who knows how many die — for the sake of ideology, power, and profit? Through sheer negligence and irresponsibility of basic civid duty? Just because doing nothing is easier — and more money can be made that way? Literally nobody.
As if that weren’t enough, America’s lunatic President is using what’s in the national stockpile as a political bargaining chip. So states whose governors have been loyal to him are receiving more critical resources, whether ventilators, masks, or money — while those who haven’t are getting none. Let me say that more plainly. America’s President is using a global pandemic as a test of political loyalty — and if the nations falls ill and dies, who cares? What on earth? Can you imagine that happening in France? Italy? Germany? It’s an act of such moral depravity that it’s hard to even express my contempt in words. Not even in Pakistan or Afghanistan is the PM using a pandemic as a tool to punish the disloyal. That is how low America has sunk.
We’re not done yet — but let’s summarize. America’s economy is dying. Because it’s political institutions could barely by now, enfeebled and paralytic, lift a finger to save it, offering just one week of support to businesses and households, during a months-long global pandemic. Meanwhile, the President began to use the pandemic not just as a way to consolidate power and profiteer — through jaw-dropping levels of nepotism — but also as a political test, to eliminate rivals. In this case, quite literally: to leave them to the jaws of sickness. My God. Is your head spinning yet? Are you feeling a little ill? I am, and I don’t say that for effect.
Now let’s consider America’s intellectuals, how they teach its people to think. It’s true that they’ve made a ruckus about the above — but just a little, and in all the wrong ways. I think I’m the only one who pointed out that the stimulus amounts to one’s weeks support: that’s not to toot my own horn, it’s to ask why on earth I am the only one doing basic grade school level math. Surely any half decent intellectual’s cable of that much. That’s a small example of a larger failure: America’s thinking class hasn’t really connected the dots of a failed ideology and a failed state for anyone.
All the above reveals a certain ideology that’s always been at the heart of American thinking. Darwinism. The weak should perish. Only the strong should survive. The weak are burdens and liabilities and parasites. That is the most American way of thinking of all. During slavery, it was the (il)logic used to enslave a continent, and traffic them across the world. Later, during segregation, it was the formative moral logic of what was to become American capitalism, as chronicled in, for example, Upton Sinclair’s magisterial “The Jungle.”
That nightmarish logic — the strong should survive, and the weak perish, came to be something the average American themselves believed. It was pounded into their heads, over and over again, by Rupert Murdoch, by Faux News, by Newt Gingrich, by a thousand “thinktanks” funded by billionaires. Hence, by the 1980s, Americans became the only people in the world voting en masse against raising their own standards of living. Who else rejected having good healthcare, retirement, affordable education, childcare, safety nets…in the world…where such things were offfered? Literally, no one. Only Americans voted against having a functioning society, over and over again.
The result was that they were unable to have one. By the 1990s, serious economic stagnation had set in. Sure, there was a dot com boom — but the average person’s income hadn’t grown since the 70s. Mobility, trust, happiness, savings — all began to crater. By the 2000s, American life was showing glimmers of dystopia: the average person began to live a life much, much worse than, for example, his Canadian counterpart across an imaginary border, a shorter, poorer, lonelier, unhealthier, unhappier one. By the 2010s, American life become truly dystopian, made of the stuff that dropped the jaw of the rest of the world. A school shooting every week, hospital bills higher than buying a new house, college education that cost more than that hospital bill, and so on.
All that reflected a simple truth. Americans had been taught that having a robust government and a working social contract was a bad thing. That simple ways caring for each other now normal the world over…like public healthcare and retirement…were forms of weakness, and weakness equalled death. But how do you live without healthcare? Income? Medicine? Simple human logic had been turned on its head, by now institutionalized into crackpot economics and political science, put into equations, which were taught at fine Ivy League universities, and then broadcast in the form of headlines every night across the airwaves. No one deserves anything! Basic human rights are a form of communism, and communism is mass murder! Drown the government in a bathtub!! You should work till the day you die, and never have a penny to show for it!! Wait, what? What the? America had turned Soviet: unable to see through a foolish, childish, failing ideology.
Values were hardening — into self-destructive ones, incapable of supporting a modern, functioning society. Centuries of Darwinism, distilled from slavery’s bitter poison, to hypercapitalism’s toxic cocktail, had taught Americans that only the following things were good, desirable, necessary: aggression, cruelty, selfishness, anger, violence, individualism of the most superficial kind, having more acquisitions than anyone else. The ability to be a bigger, hungrier, more ruthless predator. No form of collective action — not even any form of collective emotion — was really allowed, encouraged, tolerated, brooked. Even basic public healthcare was dismissed and demonized as “socialism” or even “communism” — but wait, was anyone calling to nationalize the energy grids and banks, let alone make people live in communal apartments?
Perhaps you doubt me. You are kinder than I am. Very good. But why is it then that Americans are the only people in the world who’ve been absolutely indifferent to each other’s suffering? So indifferent that they’ll happily deny their neighbours healthcare and retirement and childcare? Ultimately, what Americans were really denying one another was a working social contract, a functioning government, and systems and institutions which could provide basics for all.
A pandemic only highlights all that. This is the culmination of that trend — not the beginning. A lunatic like Trump was elected because enough Americans, particularly amongst the working class and imploded middle, were desperate enough to turn to a demagogue, who blamed their ills on the same old hated minorities. But of course a demagogue will not build a more robust, functional state — he will strip it down to the core, and create a kind of shadow authoritarian state. That is what America has today.
Why is it that America has Gestapos and camps — but can’t provide ventilators and masks? Why is it that it can rip babies from mothers and fathers — but not give people decent healthcare and medicine? Because one, of course, is the price of the other. The really disturbing part of America’s sad and strange story is that Americans themselves are the ones who chose, step by step, this strange and grim fate, where sociopaths and authoritarians, rule over them, denying them the most basic thing of all: life itself. They dehumanized each other right back to serfdom. That is the clearest and purest definition of a failed state I can think of.
America failed. It became something very much like an authoritarian fascist dystopia. Do you know what happens in such places? The weak are left to perish. Because they are the true infection, keeping the pure and true from their rightful place in history, which is reigning supreme, with violence, over all the rest. The pandemic, to the fascist mind, is just doing the same job as the camp, the raid, the purge, the family separation. Winnowing. Culling. Threshing.
It’s a dark and disturbing story I’ve told you. Much darker than a decade ago. I just have one question left to ask you.
When will America learn to put the sickle that cuts the wheat down?
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“小王随笔” @xiaowang_essay 是小王叨叨唠唠的个人号，谈历史评时事，讲科学论技术。
诗书史书有之，论据数据有之，干货私货有之，凭君自取。
也疾言也善噵，也辛嘲也正告，也薅毛也挖角，我且为之。