Relative to the pandemic and why the United States has something like the 70th highest rate of vaccination in the world and is lagging behind our allies is what I see as the incredible growth of anti-government ideology and propaganda. It began to grow around 1980 when Ronald Reagan would say things like “Government does not have the solutions to our problems because government is the problem.”
Something else that took off at the same time was the growth of hyper-individualistic and and hyper-libertarian ideology and propaganda. The anti-government machine has been helped along by the conservative news media, which spoon-feeds this ideology to the people, as well as by the many conservative think tanks, all of which are well funded by many right-wing billionaires who hate the federal government social programs that help the middle and lower classes and want them to be cut back, if not totatally abolished. The social program that they hate the most is Social Security.
They have spawned the growth of new American patriots who love their country yet hate their government.
Stewart B. Epstein
Rochester, N.Y.