Red
Well-Known Member
America gasps for air: the virus and the cops and the masks and the anxiety all have the same result.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/05/america-gasps-for-air.html
It’s pure coincidence that America feels like it is dying this summer because nobody can breathe. It’s a powerful metaphor though, and one that bears some parsing: Cities are literally on fire and nobody can breathe, people of color are being strangled by white police officers and their last words— captured on camera—are “I can’t breathe.” A pandemic has taken over 100,000 lives and the death, the disease, and the attempt at prevention keep us from breathing fully.
To be dying of a lack of air is a powerful symbol; it’s a metaphor for scarcity, for insufficiency. It’s a marker for ways in which the “richest country in the world,” the “most powerful nation in the world,” and the “leader of the western world” somehow finds itself gasping. Fighting for what should be plentiful.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/05/america-gasps-for-air.html
It’s pure coincidence that America feels like it is dying this summer because nobody can breathe. It’s a powerful metaphor though, and one that bears some parsing: Cities are literally on fire and nobody can breathe, people of color are being strangled by white police officers and their last words— captured on camera—are “I can’t breathe.” A pandemic has taken over 100,000 lives and the death, the disease, and the attempt at prevention keep us from breathing fully.
To be dying of a lack of air is a powerful symbol; it’s a metaphor for scarcity, for insufficiency. It’s a marker for ways in which the “richest country in the world,” the “most powerful nation in the world,” and the “leader of the western world” somehow finds itself gasping. Fighting for what should be plentiful.