Coronavirus has exposed the myth of British
exceptionalism
The American Exception by Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith notes:
“Death absolute is the truth of our existence as a
whole, of course, but America has rarely been philosophically inclined to
consider existence as a whole, preferring instead to attack death as a series
of discrete problems. Wars on drugs, cancer, poverty, and so on. Not that there
is anything ridiculous about trying to lengthen the distance between the dates
on our birth certificates and the ones on our tombstones: ethical life depends
on the meaningfulness of that effort. But perhaps nowhere in the world has this
effort—and its relative success—been linked so emphatically to money as it is
in America”.
A tale of two New Yorks: pandemic lays bare a
city's shocking inequities