[oregontim]

The basic anti-authoritarian 'don't-tread-on-me', element in American culture is in full play now. The absence of Presidential leadership doesn't help, but it is also true that it runs very deep in this society.

I chose that specific chart to illustrate my point because it includes Canada and Australia also. My sense of Canada and Australia is that both have cultures roughly similar to our own regarding independence and anti-authoritarianism (that's not my expertise, so correct me if I'm wrong). And yet they managed to deal with this pandemic way better than we have. I think that despite our culture we would have done way better given the right leadership and the right messaging. And I'd hope we'd still be willing to pull together if we got the right message of unity from the right span of leaders. Of course not likely with this president, we all know that. But maybe starting in November?

[oregontim]

The basic anti-authoritarian 'don't-tread-on-me', element in American culture is in full play now. The absence of Presidential leadership doesn't help, but it is also true that it runs very deep in this society.

I chose that specific chart to illustrate my point because it includes Canada and Australia also. My sense of Canada and Australia is that both have cultures roughly similar to our own regarding independence and anti-authoritarianism (that's not my expertise, so correct me if I'm wrong). And yet they managed to deal with this pandemic way better than we have. I think that despite our culture we would have done way better given the right leadership and the right messaging. And I'd hope we'd still be willing to pull together if we got the right message of unity from the right span of leaders. Of course not likely with this president, we all know that. But maybe starting in November?