From NY Times "Sadness and Disbelief From a World Missing American Leadership"

As the article says, this crisis is exposing the weaknesses of the US social safety net and its healthcare systems. This is showing how central these systems are to the real strength (or weakness) of the nation as a whole. What the article does not mention is the primary underlying reason for these weaknesses: Race. The US has a unique 400-year history of racial politics and it has not found the will to overcome that history. The results of our failure are being exposed now in the safety net and healthcare dysfunction. Those systems are intentionally underfunded because of the long-standing dread that white peoples' money will be taken from them and given to people of poverty (many of whom are people of color). This is not new! Many of the features of "The New Deal" were carefully designed to avoid benefitting African-Americans. Today, our widely recognized inequalities, with their special emphasis on racial inequality, are showing our national weakness to the whole world. Are we going to wake up to the fact that "We the people of the US" cannot be strong until that "we" includes everyone?