Response to Nguyen, “The Ideas That Won’t Survive the Coronavirus”
This response was written on April 20th, 2020 for an English class. It has been slightly modified from its original form.
In reading that NYT article, I laughed, cringed, and then at the end began to have serious thoughts provoked. The author has a very clear vision for America and he hopes that the Coronavirus can be leveraged to the point of enough chaos to bring about his revolution. I think his idea of what America is is emphatically incorrect and that he doesn’t really care if America continues to be America, but rather that it fulfills certain economic and social requirements. Nguyen states “Our real enemy is not the virus but our response to the virus — a response that has been degraded and deformed by the structural inequalities of our society.” Ignoring the fact that the virus is killing people and shutting down vital economic processes, he argues that the real problem is this “inequality.” He believes our ability to respond to the virus is hindered by the social stratification of America.
His solution? “Health care, welfare, universal basic income and education to take care of the neediest among us.” Essentially, he argues that America is unable to respond to Coronavirus because we don’t have enough leftist social policies implemented yet. I would argue that, had we shut our borders to foreigners at the advent of Coronavirus, there would be little to no virus in the United States. Despite the President, in an unprecedented move, especially for a Republican, okaying $1,200 checks to low-income Americans, Nguyen still claims that “our government prioritizes the protection of the least vulnerable.” Nguyen uses the medium of this article in the context of this virus to make a political jeremiad appear an honest, balanced analysis of the situation.
I think there is very little connection between exploitation of “the black and the brown” and the spread of a disease as Nguyen claims, but his approach to this discussion as a narrative in the vein of a super-hero movie creates a connection. He sees America as an undeveloped nation that can be made to grow to his social utopia by using a crisis as an impetus to radically change government and society. In my understanding of history, this is how revolutions and civil wars are started. Nguyen argues that “the hearty good cheer of American Exceptionalism” is simply a mask donned by our oppressive overlords (implied to be white men) to hide the true foundational values of America: “inequality, callousness, selfishness and a profit motive that undervalues human life and overvalues commodities.” It is not hard to understand Nguyen’s perspective. He is Vietnamese and came to America during the Vietnam War. His impression of America was an imperial power that came to his homeland to kill Vietnamese people because of their beliefs. Thus, America to him is inherently flawed and must be radically changed.
I would argue that American Exceptionalism is what makes America the greatest nation in the world. America had a republican form of government by 1783 — the same cannot be said for much of the world. America was one of the first nations to welcome dissident thought, religion, and culture. America has always progressed faster than the rest of the world. America ended slavery without any outside pressure and did not engage in African colonialism in the 19th century. America is not perfect, but nor has any nation been. I struggle to find one country that has not had poverty, racism, genocide, war, and disaster in its past. America transcended that and continues to model what free society is to the rest of the world as other world leaders take notes. Nguyen claims that there exists a “myth that we are the best country on earth,” but I would argue this “myth” is true. What nation, then, would Nguyen place above America, and why has he not moved there yet? Or does he just want to fundamentally change America, realizing that America at its core truly is an enlightened and forward-thinking nation whose fatal flaw is a capitalist system, represented by a President he dislikes?
The original article can be found here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-america.html