The fire this time

摘要

One hundred thousand Americans are dead from a virus. A feat of space flight demonstrates American ingenuity. In cities across the country, protests sparked by racial injustice are showing an ugly side of America to the world. In November voters must choose between a Republican running on a law-and-or-der platform, and an uninspiring vice-president running for the Democrats. The year is 1968. It is also 2020. In 1968 the virus was flu and the space mission Apollo 8. But the injustice had the same corrosive effect. As James Baldwin wrote in the early 1960s, racism "compromises, where it does not corrupt, all the American efforts to build a better world-here, there or anywhere." Today more than 350 cities nationwide erupted after George Floyd, an unarmed African-American man, was killed by a white police officer (see Obituary). For nearly nine agonising minutes, deaf to Mr Floyd's pleas and the growing alarm of the crowd, the officer choked the life out of him.