The American Mega-Crisis: COVID-19 and Beyond

Bruce Parrott

Challenge, 2020, vol. 63, issue 5, 245-263

Abstract: The United States arguably has entered the greatest crisis in its history—bar none. Recent studies have illuminated the political and socioeconomic dimensions of the crisis, but observers have given too little attention to accelerated scientific and technological change as perhaps its central feature. This acceleration has generated a widening range of dangers extending from recurring pandemics and unchecked genetic engineering to intrusive artificial intelligence and global warming. Combined with the U.S. constitutional crisis, such dangers constitute a mega-crisis that is likely to evolve in unpredictable ways. To address it, we must think imaginatively about our past national crises without being blinkered by them. The COVID-19 pandemic shows the urgent need for major reforms of U.S. political, economic, and intellectual institutions—reforms that will become possible only with a dramatic repudiation of Donald Trump and the Republican Party in November.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/05775132.2020.1804756 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mes:challe:v:63:y:2020:i:5:p:245-263

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/MCHA20

DOI: 10.1080/05775132.2020.1804756

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Challenge from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().