In the first two decades of this century, the United States has suffered three costly calamities from which our government failed to protect us:  the murderous terrorist attacks of 9/11, the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, and the coronavirus pandemic of 2020.  The results have been an enormous loss of life, loss of life savings, loss of way of life, loss of confidence in our government, and economic devastation.

All three calamities resulted from a failure of imagination on the part of those in government responsible for protecting us as well as leadership’s failure to heed the experts in and out of government who warned of all three.  In each case, the devastation of the original event was then compounded by the disastrous response of the president and congress.  It wasn’t just that our administration failed to protect the country, it was that each time in responding, the administration — abetted by congress — made things worse for us — over-reacting in the first case and under-reacting in the second and third with responses that were corrupted by partisanship.

Are we now in an age of escalating calamities?  I don’t recall any time in our country’s history when we’ve suffered three such destructive events in just nineteen years.  Of course, the country has weathered terrible wars, pandemics, and depressions before.  But three in nineteen years?

We need major reforms to our government, or a new form of government capable of anticipating and mitigating such modern calamities, and responding to them quickly and intelligently in order to minimize the damage to us, to our economy, and to our way of life.