What people can get used to, live with, accept... It's no surprise, perhaps, that a soulless demagogue should see these infections and deaths as numbers to fudge. (Isn't that what numbers are for, just as power is for fudging all you can, the more brazenly the better?) But why do so many others accept it, even think that we're doing as well as possible? Such big numbers are impossible to absorb - even if you try - and denial is even understandable as the first reaction of a broken heart. But it's also that American society is inured to death. Citizens we don't know are not, to use a term of art, grievable - think of the legions lost to gun violence year after year. Or to use another, they are disposable - think of the millions of uninsured, disproportionately people of color, who live shorter lives, even when they don't confront police violence and the prison industrial complex. One of our presidential candidates tries to make space to grieve, refuses to dispose. How can anyone support the other, who makes a manly virtue of looking away?
