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Crises following one another in rapid succession tested Americans as they had not been tested for generations. The political order seemed unable to cope. The calamities that accumulated during 2020 fostered a sense of things coming undone. As for the popular uprising known as Black Lives Matter, it exposed deep-seated and widespread residual opposition to genuine racial equality. The coronavirus pandemic exposed gaping flaws in the prevailing concept of national security, with Americans exposed to life-threatening perils to which government authorities responded tardily and ineffectually.6 In a matter of weeks, the economic crisis it induced threw tens of millions out of work and drove millions of businesses into bankruptcy. Trump’s ascent to the White House exposed gaping flaws in the American political system, his manifest contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law placing in jeopardy our democratic traditions. Each caught members of the nation’s reigning power elite by surprise. Each exposed weakness and rot in institutions whose integrity Americans had long taken for granted.
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Rancor, pestilence, want, and fury: These are the Four Horsemen comprising our own homemade Apocalypse. Before Americans had fully absorbed these disruptions, a mass movement demanding a reckoning with the nation’s legacy of racism erupted, unleashing, in turn, a white nationalist backlash. Trailing just steps behind came an economic collapse so severe as to elicit comparisons with the Great Depression of the 1930s. Then in the spring of 2020, a deadly pandemic engulfed the nation, nearly bringing it to its knees. First had come the toxic and divisive presidency of Donald Trump. THE APOCALYPSE FEELS NIGH.1 THE CLIMATE APOCALYPSE HAS ARRIVED.2 HOW THE APOCALYPSE BECAME THE NEW NORMAL.3 AN APOCALYPTIC AUGUST IN CALIFORNIA.4 APOCALYPSE IN CALIFORNIA-COMING TO YOU SOON.5 By implication, that you could be anyone anywhere.įires and floods were only the latest in a succession of punishments Americans were obliged to endure. Editors inserted the term itself into headlines. Fears that events were literally taking an apocalyptic turn became explicit and widespread. Wildfires scorching vast areas of California, Oregon, and Washington and hurricanes pummeling the Gulf Coast reinforced those terrors.
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During the summer of 2020, as I was writing this book, nervous Americans sensed the onset of a terrifying Apocalypse.