On a mask-free affair – David Remnick in The New Yorker:

‘Throughout his term, Trump openly waged war on democratic institutions and deployed a politics of conspicuous cruelty, bigotry, and division. He turned the Presidency into a reality show of lurid accusation and preening self-regard. But what finally made him vulnerable to defeat was his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed nearly a quarter of a million Americans. His disdain for scientific and medical expertise, his refusal to endorse even the most rudimentary preventive measures against the spread of the virus, was, according to medical experts, responsible for the needless deaths of tens of thousands. Perhaps the most emblematic sign of his heedlessness was the Rose Garden ceremony at which Trump announced his nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court; within days, it was clear that the ceremony, a predominantly mask-free affair, with people seated in tightly packed rows, had been a superspreader event.’

(…)

‘On April 8th, after suffering a string of primary defeats, Sanders suspended his campaign. Calling Biden “a decent man,” Sanders declared that he had won the ideological argument on climate change, the minimum wage, and many other issues. And, in some ways, he was right. He had hardly converted Biden to democratic socialism, but he had at least pushed him in the direction of greater ambition. Biden, who had begun as the most establishmentarian of the Democratic candidates, now seemed to understand that some sort of Obama-era restoration was insufficient to the moment.’

(…)

‘The task of repairing liberal democratic institutions and values awaits Biden, too. The country’s intelligence agencies concurred that Vladimir Putin had acted on his long-standing antipathy for Hillary Clinton and meddled in the 2016 election in Trump’s favor. Historians and experts in cyberwarfare will continue to argue about the degree to which Russia interfered in the election and the degree to which it mattered. What is less mysterious is why Putin preferred Trump. The Russian leader wished to be left alone, free of American intrusion in Ukraine, free of nato’s influence in the Baltic States and in Eastern and Central Europe. So long as the United States was tied up in its own internal tumult, so long as the new President disdained postwar international alliances, Putin was pleased. For him, America’s pretensions to moral authority on the world stage were—particularly after its military adventures in the Middle East—a colossal hypocrisy. “The liberal idea,” Putin told the Financial Times last year, has “outlived its purpose.” Trump’s victory seemed to vindicate Putin’s dark conviction.’

Read the complete article here.

It’s fairly safe to say that the pandemic and the economic crisis that followed helped us to get rid of the 45th president of the United States. Nevertheless, you must be rather religious and slightly cynical in order to believe that God or the universe sent us this virus in order to have this side effect.

A commentator on CNN just said that American people couldn’t take the language of the 45th president anymore. And yes, imagine this man having been a smooth talker and a serious charmer, let’s say a Ronald Reagan…

Sometimes, you must be lucky.

Thanks to a majority of the American people we extended the post-war world order a bit, that’s nothing to be cynical about.
The liberal idea has not yet outlived its purpose.