US coronavirus crisis exacerbated inequalities, political dysfunction: Analyst

By Dennis Etler

The COVID-19 pandemic rampaging throughout the US, has exposed all the bleeding ulcers and festering sores of the American economic systems of corporate capitalism, social oligarchy and political plutocracy.

The frayed social safety net has been stretched to its limits, putting society's most vulnerable and marginalized populations at greatest risk.

In particular, people domiciled in closed quarters in which a viral infection can spread rapidly and unhampered, are in most danger of contracting the disease. This includes residents of nursing homes and convalescent centers, homeless shelters and jails.

These same people are more often than not those most susceptible to COVID-19. There have been reports of mass deaths in nursing homes, the rampant spread of the disease in homeless shelters and prisons.

US prisons are hotbeds for the spread of disease. With the largest prison population in the world, warehoused in overcrowded often filthy conditions, both inmates and their overseers are extremely vulnerable to the spread of a pandemic.

In response to the looming catastrophic spread of the pandemic in prison populations and the destabilizing effect that would have on law enforcement, many low-risk, none violent prisoners are being released.

The question then arises, why were they still imprisoned to begin with? Many inmates are either waiting for trial unable to post bond, innocent defendants jailed because they agreed to a plea bargain or people with underlying mental, social, emotional or physical disabilities who have self-medicated with opiates to gain some degree of relief. They need rehabilitation and appropriate health care not jail to remediate their condition.

Those left behind in jails and prisons often have no recourse but to resist their condition in whatever way possible, resulting in prison uprisings and disturbances.

As COVID-19 continues to spread throughout the US, the fissures in American society will only get wider and deeper.

All the contradictions inherent in the American system of political governance, social control and economic exploitation, all the inequities resulting from racial and ethnic discrimination, income inequality, political dysfunction and social disintegration have been exacerbated and bared for all to see. 

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Dennis Etler is an American political analyst who has a decades-long interest in international affairs. He’s a former professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California. He has a PhD in anthropology from the University of California in Berkeley. He recorded this article for Press TV website.

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