Watching the debauched US go down in shards...with help from George Packer at The Atlantic

Thanks to The Atlantic for this month's "Failed State of America" article by staff writer George Packer.

Of course Packer writes what we've all felt, and particularly brings alive the peculiar institution of the executive branch as it's now displayed for the world to gawk at. There will never be enough time, nor ink, to outline the gutless self-interest of Kushner and Trump and the boys and girls who surround them.

I can't add much--but I would like to offer a further point of emphasis to this very satisfying description of the United States of America, and how we got from our last dying gasp of decency (9/11) to our current post-mortem, made real by the ambulances rushing to the mass graves.

Had Packer asked my editorial advice (he didn't need it and my comments wouldn't improve what he actually wrote!) I might have mentioned not just the executive branch, since we’re all poisoned from that source. I would have summarized the failed state of all the key elements of what most people would consider a civilization—all of which were debauched and failing already and now have fallen dead on their faces. You could start anywhere, but here's my beginning list:

• Education—primary, secondary, higher…that’s one. Turning out the world's 28th best product, and somehow completely unprepared to serve any one during a period of duress.  Mandela ran a university from Robbins Island, for gods sake. We don't even have internet for foster home students.
• Then there’s the health care system—both health services and research. It’s lived for over forty years by repeating to itself “we’re the best on the planet” without any substance and now it’s failed at every instance. Our entire research system was apparently surprised to learn that a virus can be contagious before it's symptomatic. What were all those biology students memorizing back at university?
• Next? How about the banking infrastructure. It failed in 2008 completely and finally, got bailed out, and surprise it’s stuck again, though this time it’s richer due to the significant increase in concentration of wealth in the last decade--we're down to 23 people controlling the same wealth as the bottom 50% now. 
• The list goes on!  Food supply, 90% of which comes from a desert state in chronic drought and literally burning to the ground, and the only thing the rest of the agribiz country is responsible for--wheat--went out of stock in five minutes of lockdown. What on earth are you guys doing in Kansas and Iowa and Chicago? ConAgra and Monsanto: call me.  You've got a problem!
• Energy—private capital invested in overpriced shale since 2009 like drunks at a cocktail bowl.  Problem: shale is unsellable unless the price of global crude is inflated. Shale oil can’t survive for a moment when the price comes down because any one can get fuel cheaper from everywhere else (carbon or alternative, now, both crush shale.  I mean, the shale markets lock their doors as the dust settles the minute the price per barrel gets anywhere near $55.  It's trading at $14 as I type this, and last week we had to pay others to haul it away from our pipeline depots, before we just shut down the industry. It'll be back after Trump and Putin work out this spat, but it may take three more years of blowing up Pennsylvania.).
• Justice--oh, come on. Half of our federal judges didn't meet the minimum jurisprudence standards from the American Bar Association. We're a kangaroo nation with kangaroo courts. Thanks, Mitch--stick with that rule of never employing any one smarter than yourself and see what it does for the moral quality of your country. The United States correctly lost our false number 1 ranking as the economy with the least "rule of law" risk last year, to a much more deserving economy:  Singapore.  Great universities, clear corporate law, and judges who can read (in multiple languages). Even you Trump supporters--tell me you didn't know justice was a joke here, long before Singapore blew past us.
• Reader participation:  insert your favorite dead American institution here. Or, better yet, tell me about one that works at all.

Reading the article felt very comforting…seeing your own thoughts in print always has a nice if cynical smile attached!  Which brings me to my final institution: America as the moral leader of the free world!  Don't make me puke.