How did this happen? How much will the defendant pay? And who is that anyway? Who is to blame? What will the damages be?
Lives crushed, the shock of unbelievable, tremors felt in blood lines, immeasurable pain turned goddamn angry, families condemned to heirloom nightmares.
Are we not exceptional? How did this happen? Are we not exceptional?
These things, such things, such catastrophic things happen in the world below us, several stories down, according to the BBC. They don’t happen here. We are exceptional.
If there’s a crack, we fix it, right? A hole in the ozone, we patch it, right? We were first to the moon, in the last golden age, now the dark side — 390 millions guns and just as many potholes, 600,000 dead from a virus the President wanted to kill with Lysol, 90,000 dead from drugs, millions high on lies.
So a condo collapses, and now rescue workers and dogs search for the dead and, as in all things, for what happened to America.
Dan Rodricks 
This is what happens when profits take priority over people, and self-interest and advancement override personal integrity become the dominant values of our culture. Everything you cited – the Trump administration’s failed response to the pandemic, the explosion of opioid deaths, the gun violence, and more – stems from the sea change in our society that kicked into high gear in the 1970s. We are now reaping the whirlwind of the nation’s collapse into this ethical abyss.
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Dan, you hit the bullseye on this one. Both the building collapse and the 600,000 deaths due mainly to the lying ex-president seem impossible to happen in a rich country. But they did!
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That reads like a poem. And a prayer.
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