I listened to a podcast on the coronavirus response in the UK. It went through aspects of the pandemic response over the last nearly-year, and asked if it was inevitable that things would be this bad. The answer, inevitably, was no. They summed it at the end: an unserious prime minister, a weak centre, good preparations for the wrong pandemic. But they forgot to add some other points that they touched in the course of the episode: a population beaten down by austerity, the British conviction of exceptionalism, corruption and cronyism, and a care sector that was and has long treated like a bin for migrants, the impoverished and the elderly. A good podcast and made me very sad indeed to listen to it (however, they should fire their music person). I’ve been far from it all this year, first in the fortunate country of Taiwan and now in Turkey where my life remains fairly unaffected even by the terrible winter wave. But it’s a year of sadness, certainly in the Global North, a strange and sad year.
From tragedy to the farcical: I read today that America has declared that the personnel in its new Space Force will be known as Guardians. I suppose this is the country with an unironic Department of Homeland Security.