Difficult to know exactly what to say about the USA just now. For the first time in a very long while, the first fifteen minutes of the TV news wasn't about coronavirus, but I didn't want it to be this that knocked it off the top of the news agenda. Once again, a black man dies at the hands of a white police officer, and America erupts in flames.
Undoubtedly there are some deep-rooted and long-standing problems here, but two observations. Firstly, they are surely made worse by a pandemic that hurts certain segments of society disproportionately hard, and the welfare system has no idea of how to cope with forty million unemployed. Getting a cheque (delayed so it could have the president's name on it) for $1,000 isn't going to go very far. I can imagine how people who have worked hard for a long time and now find themselves with no job and limited prospects in the near future must be scared, and how that can easily turn to anger. Secondly, the country's leader is a moron. Being governed by someone so out of touch, so uncaring, so deeply at odds with public sentiment that he thinks that sending out police with tear gas to clear peaceful protesters out of the way to provide him with a photo op is a good idea, is truly staggering.
I am so sorry to see what is going on, and I hope that some healing and some ways forward can be found soon. A big step could be made in November by voting out the moron.