Anti-intellectualism impedes US COVID-19 fight
Violating
social distancing requirements, protesters gathered on Saturday afternoon,
April 25, in Austin and Dallas of Texas, to rally against local stay-at-home
orders and to demand Texas businesses reopen, according to local news portal
the Austin American-Statesman.
Video
clips circulating online show protesters holding signs calling COVID-19 “a hoax”
with a crowd shouting “Arrest Bill Gates!”
During a
“You Can’t Close America Rally” in Austin on April 18, some 300 protesters
decried local government’s COVID-19 control measures. Protesters shouted “Fire
Fauci!” during the rally and declared the virus “a hoax.”
Bill
Gates, a philanthropist, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, US top medical expert on the
coronavirus pandemic, have been targets of some right-wing campaigns in the US
as both of them have been at odds with US President Donald Trump on the measures
to contain coronavirus.
Such
rallies reflect the prevailing anti-intellectualism in some parts of the US,
where people have little scientific knowledge of COVID-19’s severity and of the
function of vaccines. Some of them even believe in a conspiracy theory that
says Bill Gates’s goal is to reduce global human population.
Anti-intellectualism
is not new in the US, but the Trump administration’s handling of the
coronavirus has exposed its existence in an unprecedentedly absurd way.
President Trump has been exploiting populism, which drives anti-intellectualism
further in the US.
The US
is now trapped in a series of problems - governance, policy,
anti-intellectualism, populism, white supremacy, and so on all looped together.
The sequence to disentangle the loop is yet to be found due to severe political
polarization.
Many
people in the conservative states believe in Trump without a shadow of doubt.
They take anything or anyone at odds with Trump as part of a political
conspiracy, regardless if Trump is correct.
Such
being the case, calls to poison control hotlines skyrocketed across the US as
more Americans have questions about using bleach and other disinfectants to
kill the coronavirus, after Trump suggested injecting disinfectant to the lung
could be a treatment, Toronto-based CityNews reported Sunday. Even Canada has
issued warnings regarding Trump's suggested COVID-19 treatments.
It is
unbelievable to see people in the US, the most powerful and most developed
country both economically and technologically, make such nonsense.
Some
argue all these phenomena reflect the degradation of the US. But there are
still capable politicians who could better lead the US. If the US were hit by
COVID-19 during Barack Obama’s tenure, it would have been a very different
situation today.
The main
factor leading to these astonishing phenomena in the US to a large extent lies
in Trump being a very unusual president, who has made existing problems even
more protruding.
For any country
including the US, the more critical a crisis, the stronger the leadership it
needs, leadership that can convey correct information, take effective measures,
solidify public opinion, and unite the whole country to fight the pandemic.
Trump is incapable of achieving that. Apart from Trump’s spreading of
information that lacks a scientific basis, scenes such as the scramble for
scarce resources between state and federal governments have also been
witnessed, igniting the public’s anxiety and uncertainties over the outbreak.
These have fueled some Americans’ willingness to attend public gatherings in an
attempt to express their mood.
To some
extent, the capacity of a government is matched by the people it governs. The
kind of government it is and the policies it makes determine how the public -
at least some of them - behave or believe. The Trump administration provokes
populism and fans anti-intellectualism, which has contributed to its failure in
effectively containing the coronavirus.
The US
is the world’s largest economy, and it is strong and powerful in pharmaceutical
and technologic sectors. There should not have been so many infections, so many
deaths, nor such a massive economic and social impact, but all have become the
truth and will continue. This is a tragedy for the US.
The article was compiled by
Global Times reporter Lu Yuanzhi based on an interview with Xin Qiang, deputy
director of the Center for US Studies at Fudan University.
opinion@globaltimes.com.cn
Source:Global Times
Anti-intellectualism impedes US COVID-19 fight
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