We Are Living in a Failed State
我們美國人生活在一個失敗國家
The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken.
冠狀病毒沒有破壞美國， 只是揭露已經壞掉的一面。
原文： The Atlantic https://tinyurl.com/y98zlj7b
譯文：https://www.guancha.cn/GeorgePacker/2020_04_27_548392_s.shtml
作者：George Packer
譯者：聽橋
When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying
conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt
political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and
distracted public—had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live,
uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a
pandemic to expose their severity—to shock Americans with the recognition
that we are in the high-risk category.
新冠病毒到來時，發現了一個基本狀況危險的國家，並無情利用了那些狀況。腐敗的精英
階層，僵化的官僚體制，冷酷無情的經濟，四分五裂且心煩意亂的公眾，——這些慢性病
多年來一直得不到治療。我們早就學會了別彆扭扭地容忍這些症狀。要用如此規模的一場
大流行病和與這流行病的親密接觸，那些症狀的嚴重性才得以暴露，使美國人震驚地意識
到，我們眼下屬於高風險類別。
The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational, and collective. The
United States reacted instead like Pakistan or Belarus—like a country with
shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too
corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering. The administration squandered
two irretrievable months to prepare. From the president came willful
blindness, scapegoating, boasts, and lies. From his mouthpieces, conspiracy
theories and miracle cures. A few senators and corporate executives acted
quickly—not to prevent the coming disaster, but to profit from it. When a
government doctor tried to warn the public of the danger, the White House
took the mic and politicized the message.
這危機要求我們在全國層面快速展開理智的集體行動。但相反，美國的應對是巴基斯坦或
白俄羅斯式的，就像是個基礎設施敗壞、政府功能失調的國家，其一眾領導人太過腐敗和
愚蠢，乃至於無法阻擋大眾蒙受苦難。行政分支浪費了無法挽回的兩個月準備時間。總統
有意視而不見，嫁禍他人，誇誇其談，謊話連篇。從他的喉舌那裡，則冒出一個又一個陰
謀論和神奇療法。一些參議員和企業高管行動迅速，但不是要預防即將到來的災難，而是
要從中獲利。當有政府醫生試圖警告公眾有多麼危險時，白宮拿走了話筒，把那條消息政
治化了。
Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find
themselves citizens of a failed state. With no national plan—no coherent
instructions at all—families, schools, and offices were left to decide on
their own whether to shut down and take shelter. When test kits, masks,
gowns, and ventilators were found to be in desperately short supply,
governors pleaded for them from the White House, which stalled, then called
on private enterprise, which couldn’t deliver. States and cities were forced
into bidding wars that left them prey to price gouging and corporate
profiteering. Civilians took out their sewing machines to try to keep
ill-equipped hospital workers healthy and their patients alive. Russia,
Taiwan, and the United Nations sent humanitarian aid to the world’s richest
power—a beggar nation in utter chaos.
在沒完沒了的3月間，美國人每天早上醒來，都發現他們自己成了一個失敗國家的公民。
沒有全國性計畫，根本沒有一以貫之的指導方案：家庭、學校和辦公場所都被告知，它們
可以自行決定是否關閉和尋求庇護。檢測工具、口罩、醫護服裝和呼吸機的供應嚴重短缺
，各州州長懇請白宮提供這些物品，遭搪塞後，又向私人企業發出呼籲，而它們無法交貨
。各州和各市被迫陷入投標大戰，這讓它們成了漫天要價和企業逐利的犧牲品。民眾拿出
他們的縫紉機，竭力維持醫院工作人員的健康和病人的生機。俄羅斯、台灣和聯合國向這
個世界上最富有的大國，一個陷入徹底混亂中的乞丐國家，送來了人道主義援助。
Donald Trump saw the crisis almost entirely in personal and political terms.
Fearing for his reelection, he declared the coronavirus pandemic a war, and
himself a wartime president. But the leader he brings to mind is Marshal
Philippe Pétain, the French general who, in 1940, signed an armistice with
Germany after its rout of French defenses, then formed the pro-Nazi Vichy
regime. Like Pétain, Trump collaborated with the invader and abandoned his
country to a prolonged disaster. And, like France in 1940, America in 2020
has stunned itself with a collapse that’s larger and deeper than one
miserable leader. Some future autopsy of the pandemic might be called Strange
Defeat, after the historian and Resistance fighter Marc Bloch’s
contemporaneous study of the fall of France. Despite countless examples
around the U.S. of individual courage and sacrifice, the failure is national.
And it should force a question that most Americans have never had to ask: Do
we trust our leaders and one another enough to summon a collective response
to a mortal threat? Are we still capable of self-government?
唐納德‧川普幾乎完全從個人和政治角度看待這場危機。因為擔心連任，他宣佈新冠病毒
大流行病為一場戰爭，而他自己是戰時總統。但他令我們腦海中浮現的領袖，是法國將軍
菲利普‧貝當（Philippe Petain）元帥。1940年，德國擊潰法國防禦力量後，貝當與德
國簽署了停戰協議，隨後組建了親納粹的 Vichy regime。川普就像是貝當，與入侵者勾
結，將他的國家拋入了一場曠日持久的災難。2020年的美國更像是1940年的法國，已經用
一場崩潰令自己目瞪口呆；相較於一位可悲的領袖，這場崩潰來得規模更大、程度更深。
未來，人們在剖析這場大流行病時，可以借用歷史學家、抵抗運動戰士馬克‧布洛赫（
Marc Bloch）對同時期法國淪陷的研究，稱其為“不可思議的失敗”（Strange Defeat）
。
儘管在全美國，個人展示勇氣和犧牲的例子數不勝數，但失敗是全國性的，而且理當迫使
我們提出一個大多數美國人從不曾必須問到的問題：我們是否足夠信任我們的領導人和彼
此，可以召喚人們以集體方式應對某次致命威脅？我們依舊有能力實施自治嗎？
This is the third major crisis of the short 21st century. The first, on
September 11, 2001, came when Americans were still living mentally in the
previous century, and the memory of depression, world war, and cold war
remained strong. On that day, people in the rural heartland did not see New
York as an alien stew of immigrants and liberals that deserved its fate, but
as a great American city that had taken a hit for the whole country.
Firefighters from Indiana drove 800 miles to help the rescue effort at Ground
Zero. Our civic reflex was to mourn and mobilize together.
這是這個短促二十一世紀經歷的第三場重大危機。第一場發生在2001年9月11日，那時，
美國人從精神上講還生活在前一個世紀，經濟衰退、世界大戰和冷戰的記憶依舊強悍。那
一天，中部農業腹地的民眾沒有將紐約視作理當承受那般命運的外邦移民和自由派人士的
熔爐，而是視作一個為整個國家承受了打擊的偉大美國城市。來自印第安納州的消防隊員
驅車八百英里，為在世界貿易中心廢墟的救援行動施以援手。市民的本能反應是共同哀悼
，齊心動員。
Partisan politics and terrible policies, especially the Iraq War, erased the
sense of national unity and fed a bitterness toward the political class that
never really faded. The second crisis, in 2008, intensified it. At the top,
the financial crash could almost be considered a success. Congress passed a
bipartisan bailout bill that saved the financial system. Outgoing
Bush-administration officials cooperated with incoming Obama administration
officials. The experts at the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department
used monetary and fiscal policy to prevent a second Great Depression. Leading
bankers were shamed but not prosecuted; most of them kept their fortunes and
some their jobs. Before long they were back in business. A Wall Street trader
told me that the financial crisis had been a “speed bump.”
黨派政治和危害嚴重的政策，尤其是伊拉克戰爭，抹去了國家團結的意識，催生了對精英
階層的怨恨，這種怨恨從未真正消失。發生在2008年的第二次危機加劇了那種怨恨。在最
頂層，金融崩潰幾乎可以被認為是一次成功。國會通過了一項兩黨都接受的救助法案，挽
救了金融系統。即將離任的布希的行政官員與即將上任的歐巴馬的行政官員展開了合作。
美聯儲和財政部的專家們運用貨幣和財政政策，防止了第二次大蕭條的發生。一些最重要
的銀行家遭到羞辱，但沒有被起訴；他們中的大多數人保住了自己的財富，一些人保住了
工作。沒過多久，他們的業務就回歸正常。一位華爾街交易員告訴我，那場金融危機早就
成了“減速帶”。
All of the lasting pain was felt in the middle and at the bottom, by
Americans who had taken on debt and lost their jobs, homes, and retirement
savings. Many of them never recovered, and young people who came of age in
the Great Recession are doomed to be poorer than their parents. Inequality—
the fundamental, relentless force in American life since the late 1970s—grew
worse.
身處中間層和底層的那些債務纏身，失去了工作、房子和退休儲蓄的美國人，感受到了所
有揮之不去的苦楚。他們中間的很多人從來沒有恢復元氣，在那場蕭條中成年的年輕人注
定比他們的父輩更加貧窮。不平等作為1970年代晚期以來美國人生活中的一支基礎性的無
情力量，變得更加嚴重了。
This second crisis drove a profound wedge between Americans: between the
upper and lower classes, Republicans and Democrats, metropolitan and rural
people, the native-born and immigrants, ordinary Americans and their leaders.
Social bonds had been under growing strain for several decades, and now they
began to tear. The reforms of the Obama years, important as they were—in
health care, financial regulation, green energy—had only palliative effects.
The long recovery over the past decade enriched corporations and investors,
lulled professionals, and left the working class further behind. The lasting
effect of the slump was to increase polarization and to discredit authority,
especially government’s.
第二場危機在美國人中間，在更上階層和更下階層、共和黨人和民主黨人、大都市人和農
村人、土生土長的人口和移民、普通美國人和他們的領導人之間，製造出了深刻的隔閡。
社會關係承受著越來越大的壓力，這種情況已有數十年，現在它們開始撕裂。歐巴馬執政
時期的一些改革舉措儘管在醫保、金融監管、綠色能源等方面意義重大，但僅有權宜之效
。過去十年的長期復甦，富了企業和投資者，但欺騙了專業人士，且將工人階級更遠地拋
下。經濟衰退的持久影響是，加劇了兩極分化，令權威，尤其是政府的權威，聲譽掃地。
Both parties were slow to grasp how much credibility they’d lost. The coming
politics was populist. Its harbinger wasn’t Barack Obama but Sarah Palin,
the absurdly unready vice-presidential candidate who scorned expertise and
reveled in celebrity. She was Donald Trump’s John the Baptist.
兩黨都遲遲未能領會到，他們的公信力喪失了多少。即將到來的政治是民粹主義的，其先
兆並非貝拉克‧歐巴馬，而是薩拉‧佩林（Sarah Palin），這位毫無準備到荒謬程度的
副總統候選人對專業知識嗤之以鼻，並陶醉在名人效應中。她是唐納德‧川普的“施洗者
約翰”（John the Baptist）。（薩拉‧佩林，生於1964年，2006年12月至2009年7月間
擔任阿拉斯加州州長，是該州歷史上最年輕且為女性的州長，共和黨人。施洗者約翰，是
公元一世紀早期的一位猶太巡迴傳教者。——譯註）
Trump came to power as the repudiation of the Republican establishment. But
the conservative political class and the new leader soon reached an
understanding. Whatever their differences on issues like trade and
immigration, they shared a basic goal: to strip-mine public assets for the
benefit of private interests. Republican politicians and donors who wanted
government to do as little as possible for the common good could live happily
with a regime that barely knew how to govern at all, and they made themselves
Trump’s footmen.
川普是作為共和黨建制派的反對者登上權力寶座的。但保守派精英階層和這位新領袖之間
很快達成了諒解。無論他們在貿易和移民之類問題上有何種分歧，他們的基本目標都是共
同的：為謀取私人利益而赤裸裸地開掘公共資產。那些希望政府儘可能少為共同利益做事
的共和黨政客和捐款人，可以與一個全然不知如何統治國家的政權愉快共處，而且自己充
當了川普的僕人。
Like a wanton boy throwing matches in a parched field, Trump began to
immolate what was left of national civic life. He never even pretended to be
president of the whole country, but pitted us against one another along lines
of race, sex, religion, citizenship, education, region, and—every day of his
presidency—political party. His main tool of governance was to lie. A third
of the country locked itself in a hall of mirrors that it believed to be
reality; a third drove itself mad with the effort to hold on to the idea of
knowable truth; and a third gave up even trying.
川普就像一個在乾燥的田野上扔火柴的男孩那樣肆意，開始犧牲美國人殘存的市民生活。
他甚至從來都沒有假裝自己是整個國家的總統，而是挑動我們，圍繞種族、性別、宗教、
公民身份、教育背景、地域，以及——在他上任以來的每一天——政黨問題，互相爭鬥不
止。他的主要統治工具是謊言。這個國家有三分之一的人將自己鎖在一個佈滿鏡子的大廳
，認為那就是現實；有三分之一的人因堅持認為真理可知，而自己發瘋了；另有三分之一
的人甚至放棄了嘗試。
Trump acquired a federal government crippled by years of right-wing
ideological assault, politicization by both parties, and steady defunding. He
set about finishing off the job and destroying the professional civil
service. He drove out some of the most talented and experienced career
officials, left essential positions unfilled, and installed loyalists as
commissars over the cowed survivors, with one purpose: to serve his own
interests. His major legislative accomplishment, one of the largest tax cuts
in history, sent hundreds of billions of dollars to corporations and the
rich. The beneficiaries flocked to patronize his resorts and line his
reelection pockets. If lying was his means for using power, corruption was
his end.
持續多年的右翼意識形態攻擊，兩黨都在推動的政治化，加上持續的資金缺乏，已嚴重戕
害川普斬獲的聯邦政府。他開始著手摧毀總統這項工作，破壞專業的公務員隊伍。他趕走
了一些最有才華和經驗的職業官員，留下一些重要崗位無人填補，並安插了忠於他的人士
充當政委，凌駕於飽受恐嚇的倖存者之上，目的是：服務於他自己的利益。他的主要立法
成果是減稅法案，作為美國歷史上最大規模的減稅行動之一，這部法案為大企業和富人送
去了數千億美元。受益者成群結隊，到他的度假勝地消費，排隊為他的連選提供資金。假
如撒謊是他運用權力的手段，那麼腐敗就是他的目的。
This was the American landscape that lay open to the virus: in prosperous
cities, a class of globally connected desk workers dependent on a class of
precarious and invisible service workers; in the countryside, decaying
communities in revolt against the modern world; on social media, mutual
hatred and endless vituperation among different camps; in the economy, even
with full employment, a large and growing gap between triumphant capital and
beleaguered labor; in Washington, an empty government led by a con man and
his intellectually bankrupt party; around the country, a mood of cynical
exhaustion, with no vision of a shared identity or future.
這就是呈現在新冠病毒面前的美國景觀：在繁榮的城市，一群與全球各處聯絡的辦公室工
作人員依賴一群朝不保夕、隱匿無形的服務業工人；在農村地區，衰敗的社區反抗著現代
世界；在社交媒體上，不同陣營之間充斥著相互仇恨和無休無止的謾罵；在經濟領域，儘
管就業充分，但成功的資方和受困的勞工之間存在巨大且不斷拉大的差距；在華盛頓，一
個由騙子和他智力破產的政黨，在領導一個無效的政府；在這個國家各個地方，瀰漫著一
股憤世嫉俗的疲憊情緒，你看不到人們有共同的身份或未來。
If the pandemic really is a kind of war, it’s the first to be fought on this
soil in a century and a half. Invasion and occupation expose a society’s
fault lines, exaggerating what goes unnoticed or accepted in peacetime,
clarifying essential truths, raising the smell of buried rot.
假如這場大流行病真的是一種戰爭，那麼這將是一個半世紀以來在這片土地上發生的第一
場。侵略和佔領暴露了一個社會的斷層線，誇大了在和平時期被忽視或被接受的東西，澄
清了基本的真相，揚起了被掩埋的腐爛氣味。
The virus should have united Americans against a common threat. With
different leadership, it might have. Instead, even as it spread from blue to
red areas, attitudes broke down along familiar partisan lines. The virus also
should have been a great leveler. You don’t have to be in the military or in
debt to be a target—you just have to be human. But from the start, its
effects have been skewed by the inequality that we’ve tolerated for so long.
When tests for the virus were almost impossible to find, the wealthy and
connected—the model and reality-TV host Heidi Klum, the entire roster of the
Brooklyn Nets, the president’s conservative allies—were somehow able to get
tested, despite many showing no symptoms. The smattering of individual
results did nothing to protect public health. Meanwhile, ordinary people with
fevers and chills had to wait in long and possibly infectious lines, only to
be turned away because they weren’t actually suffocating. An internet joke
proposed that the only way to find out whether you had the virus was to
sneeze in a rich person’s face.
這病毒本應當將美國人團結起來，對抗共同的威脅。假如領導層不同，美國人是可能被團
結起來的。相反，即使病毒從民主黨主政的地區蔓延到了共和黨主政的地區，人們的態度
依舊沿著我們熟悉的黨派分界線分裂了。
這病毒也本應成為一個重要的平衡因素。要成為病毒的攻擊目標，你不必在軍隊服役，也
不必負債纍纍，而只需要是一個人。但從一開始，病毒的影響就被我們容忍太久的不平等
扭曲了。在幾乎不可能找到病毒檢測方法的時候，富人和有關係的人——模特和電視真人
秀節目主持人海蒂‧克拉姆（Heidi Klum），布魯克林網隊（Brooklyn Nets）的全部候
選隊員，總統的保守派盟友——就能以某種方式獲得檢測機會，儘管許多人沒有症狀出現
。這樣的個人零星檢測結果對保護公眾健康毫無幫助。
與此同時，有發燒和發冷症狀的普通人不得不排在漫長且可能已被感染了的隊伍中等待，
但只是被拒之門外，因為他們實際上並沒有出現呼吸困難的症狀。一個網絡笑話提議，要
想知道你是否感染了病毒，唯一的辦法就是對著富人的臉打噴嚏。
When Trump was asked about this blatant unfairness, he expressed disapproval
but added, “Perhaps that’s been the story of life.” Most Americans hardly
register this kind of special privilege in normal times. But in the first
weeks of the pandemic it sparked outrage, as if, during a general
mobilization, the rich had been allowed to buy their way out of military
service and hoard gas masks. As the contagion has spread, its victims have
been likely to be poor, black, and brown people. The gross inequality of our
health-care system is evident in the sight of refrigerated trucks lined up
outside public hospitals.
當被問及這種明目張膽的不公正時，川普表達了不贊同的意見，但補充說：“也許這就是
生活。”正常時期，大多數美國人很少注意到這種特權。但在這場大流行病爆發的最初幾
個星期，如此特權引發了公憤，就好像在一次總動員期間，富人被允許出錢免服兵役，並
囤積防毒面具。隨著這場傳染病的擴散，其受害者已經可能是窮人、黑人和棕色人種。美
國醫療衛生系統的嚴重不平等，從公立醫院外排隊運送屍體的冷藏車可以明顯看出。
We now have two categories of work: essential and nonessential. Who have the
essential workers turned out to be? Mostly people in low-paying jobs that
require their physical presence and put their health directly at risk:
warehouse workers, shelf-stockers, Instacart shoppers, delivery drivers,
municipal employees, hospital staffers, home health aides, long-haul
truckers. Doctors and nurses are the pandemic’s combat heroes, but the
supermarket cashier with her bottle of sanitizer and the UPS driver with his
latex gloves are the supply and logistics troops who keep the frontline
forces intact. In a smartphone economy that hides whole classes of human
beings, we’re learning where our food and goods come from, who keeps us
alive. An order of organic baby arugula on AmazonFresh is cheap and arrives
overnight in part because the people who grow it, sort it, pack it, and
deliver it have to keep working while sick. For most service workers, sick
leave turns out to be an impossible luxury. It’s worth asking if we would
accept a higher price and slower delivery so that they could stay home.
我們現在有兩類工作：必不可少的工作的和非必不可少的工作。誰是必不可少的工人？主
要是從事低薪工作的人，那些工作需要他們本人在場，會直接危及他們的健康：倉庫工人
、填充貨架的工人、在Instacart為網上下單者買東西並交付的人、送貨司機、市政僱員
、醫院工作人員、家庭護理工人、長途卡車司機。醫生和護士是抗擊這場大流行病的英雄
，但配有瓶裝消毒液的超市收銀員和帶著乳膠手套的聯邦包裹公司（UPS）司機，是保持
前線部隊完好無損的供應和後勤部隊。（Instacart是一家技術公司，創辦於2012年，在
美國和加拿大運營，提供當日食品雜貨的送貨和取貨服務。——譯註）
在隱匿了各階層人類的智能手機經濟中，我們正在學習的是，我們的食物和商品從哪裡來
，是誰讓我們活著。在亞馬遜生鮮配送（AmazonFresh），下單一份有機嬰兒芝麻菜很便
宜，且可以隔夜送到，這部分是因為，種植、分類、包裝和運送它們的人在生病期間必須
繼續工作。對大多數服務業的工人來說，病假是一種不可能的奢侈。值得追問的是，我們
是否願意接受更高的價格和更慢的交貨速度，這樣他們就可以呆在家裡了。
The pandemic has also clarified the meaning of nonessential workers. One
example is Kelly Loeffler, the Republican junior senator from Georgia, whose
sole qualification for the empty seat that she was given in January is her
immense wealth. Less than three weeks into the job, after a dire private
briefing about the virus, she got even richer from the selling-off of stocks,
then she accused Democrats of exaggerating the danger and gave her
constituents false assurances that may well have gotten them killed. Loeffler
’s impulses in public service are those of a dangerous parasite. A body
politic that would place someone like this in high office is well advanced in
decay.
這場大流行病也明確了，誰才是非必不可少的工人。一個例子是來自佐治亞州的共和黨新
晉參議員凱莉‧呂弗勒（Kelly Loeffler），她1月份之所以能填補空缺的議員席位，唯
一的資質是她的巨額財富。上任不到三個星期，她參加了一次有關新冠病毒的可怕的秘密
簡報會，之後拋售股票，從中獲得了更多財富。然後她指責民主黨誇大了危險，並向她的
選民做出了錯誤的保證，這大有可能害了他們。呂弗勒在公共服務方面展示的衝動，是那
種危險寄生蟲的衝動。一個可以讓這樣的人擔任高級職務的政治體，已經敗落到了較晚期
。
The purest embodiment of political nihilism is not Trump himself but his
son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. In his short lifetime, Kushner
has been fraudulently promoted as both a meritocrat and a populist. He was
born into a moneyed real-estate family the month Ronald Reagan entered the
Oval Office, in 1981—a princeling of the second Gilded Age. Despite Jared’s
mediocre academic record, he was admitted to Harvard after his father,
Charles, pledged a $2.5 million donation to the university. Father helped son
with $10 million in loans for a start in the family business, then Jared
continued his elite education at the law and business schools of NYU, where
his father had contributed $3 million. Jared repaid his father’s support
with fierce loyalty when Charles was sentenced to two years in federal prison
in 2005 for trying to resolve a family legal quarrel by entrapping his sister
’s husband with a prostitute and videotaping the encounter.
政治虛無主義最純粹的體現不是川普本人，而是他的女婿兼高級顧問賈裡德‧庫什納（
Jared Kushner）。在他短暫的一生中，庫什納被欺騙性地宣傳成了精英和民粹主義者。
1981年，羅納德‧雷根入主白宮橢圓形辦公室的那個月，他出生於一個富裕的房地產商家
庭，是第二鍍金時代的太子黨。儘管學業成績平平，但在其父查爾斯（Charles）承諾向
哈佛捐贈250萬美元後，賈裡德仍被哈佛大學錄取。父親用1000萬美元的貸款幫助兒子創
辦了家族企業，然後賈裡德繼續在紐約大學的法學院和商學院接受精英教育，他父親向這
裡貢獻了300萬美元。2005年，查爾斯因利用妓女搆陷其妹夫並拍下了這次會面，試圖用
這種辦法解決家族法律糾紛，而被判入獄兩年，當時賈裡德以強烈的忠誠回報了他父親的
支持。
Jared Kushner failed as a skyscraper owner and a newspaper publisher, but he
always found someone to rescue him, and his self-confidence only grew. In
American Oligarchs, Andrea Bernstein describes how he adopted the outlook of
a risk-taking entrepreneur, a “disruptor” of the new economy. Under the
influence of his mentor Rupert Murdoch, he found ways to fuse his financial,
political, and journalistic pursuits. He made conflicts of interest his
business model.
賈裡德‧庫什納曾擁有一棟摩天大樓，並辦過一份報紙，都未獲成功，但他總能找到人來
拯救他，而且他不過是越來越自信。安德烈‧伯恩斯坦（AndreaBernstein）在《美國寡
頭》（American Oligarchs）一書中描述了他如何採納了一位敢於冒險的企業家即新經濟
“破壞者”意見的故事。在導師魯伯特‧默多克（Rupert Murdoch）的影響下，他找到了
融合財務、政治和新聞業追求的門道。他將利益衝突當成了自己的商業模式。（默多克，
1931年生於澳大利亞，美國傳媒業大亨。——譯註）
So when his father-in-law became president, Kushner quickly gained power in
an administration that raised amateurism, nepotism, and corruption to
governing principles. As long as he busied himself with Middle East peace,
his feckless meddling didn’t matter to most Americans. But since he became
an influential adviser to Trump on the coronavirus pandemic, the result has
been mass death.
因之，隨著其岳父成為總統，庫什納很快就在一個將業餘行為、裙帶關係和腐敗升級為統
治原則的行政分支中獲得了權力。只要他忙於中東和平，他那些沒有意義的介入對大多數
美國人來說就並不重要。但自從他成為對川普有重要影響的新冠病毒事務顧問以來，結果
就是大規模的死亡。
In his first week on the job, in mid-March, Kushner co-authored the worst
Oval Office speech in memory, interrupted the vital work of other officials,
may have compromised security protocols, flirted with conflicts of interest
and violations of federal law, and made fatuous promises that quickly turned
to dust. “The federal government is not designed to solve all our problems,”
he said, explaining how he would tap his corporate connections to create
drive-through testing sites. They never materialized. He was convinced by
corporate leaders that Trump should not use presidential authority to compel
industries to manufacture ventilators—then Kushner’s own attempt to
negotiate a deal with General Motors fell through. With no loss of faith in
himself, he blamed shortages of necessary equipment and gear on incompetent
state governors.
3月中旬，上任後第一週，庫什納參與撰寫了記憶中最糟糕的橢圓形辦公室演講稿，打斷
了其他官員的重要工作，或者已經違反了安全協議，參與到了涉嫌利益衝突且違反聯邦法
律的事項中，並做出了很快就化為烏有的愚蠢承諾。“聯邦政府的設計不是要解決我們所
有的問題”，他在解釋他將如何利用自己的公司關係，在免下車餐廳（drive-through）
設立核酸檢測點時這樣說。那些關係從未落到現實中。一些企業領導人說服他相信，川普
不應動用總統的權威強迫一些產業生產呼吸機。後來，庫什納自己試圖與通用汽車談判達
成協議，但未能實現。他對自己沒有失去信心，於是將必要設備和裝備短缺的責任算到了
不稱職的州長頭上。
To watch this pale, slim-suited dilettante breeze into the middle of a deadly
crisis, dispensing business-school jargon to cloud the massive failure of his
father-in-law’s administration, is to see the collapse of a whole approach
to governing. It turns out that scientific experts and other civil servants
are not traitorous members of a “deep state”—they’re essential workers,
and marginalizing them in favor of ideologues and sycophants is a threat to
the nation’s health. It turns out that “nimble” companies can’t prepare
for a catastrophe or distribute lifesaving goods—only a competent federal
government can do that. It turns out that everything has a cost, and years of
attacking government, squeezing it dry and draining its morale, inflict a
heavy cost that the public has to pay in lives. All the programs defunded,
stockpiles depleted, and plans scrapped meant that we had become a
second-rate nation. Then came the virus and this strange defeat.
看到這位面色蒼白、身材苗條的票友閒庭信步般介入一場致命的危機，拋開了商學院的行
話以掩蓋他岳父的行政分支的巨大失敗，就相當於看到了整個統治方式的崩潰。事實表明
，科學專家和其他公務員並非叛國的“陰謀勢力集團”（deep state）成員：他們是必不
可少的工人，將他們邊緣化，以理論家和諂媚者取代，是對國家健康的威脅。事實表明，
“靈活”的公司無法為災難做好準備，也無力分發救生物資，只有能幹的聯邦政府可以做
到這一點。事實表明，所有事情都有代價；經年累月地攻擊政府、榨乾政府資源、消耗政
府的士氣，造成的沉重代價是公眾不得不付出生命。
所有項目都被撤資，所有庫存都被耗盡，所有計畫都被取消，這意味著我們已經成了一個
二流國家。然後，病毒和不可思議的失敗就來了。
The fight to overcome the pandemic must also be a fight to recover the health
of our country, and build it anew, or the hardship and grief we’re now
enduring will never be redeemed. Under our current leadership, nothing will
change. If 9/11 and 2008 wore out trust in the old political establishment,
2020 should kill off the idea that anti-politics is our salvation. But
putting an end to this regime, so necessary and deserved, is only the
beginning.
制服這一大流行病的戰鬥也必須是恢復國家健康並重建它的戰鬥，非如此，我們眼下正忍
受的苦難和悲痛就將永遠得不到補償。
有目前的領導層，什麼都不會改變。如果說9‧11事件和2008年金融危機耗盡了人們對老
一代政治當權派的信任，那麼2020年就應當碾滅“反政治”是我們的救星的念想。結束這
個政權，是必須的和值得的，但這僅僅是個開始。
We’re faced with a choice that the crisis makes inescapably clear. We can
stay hunkered down in self-isolation, fearing and shunning one another,
letting our common bond wear away to nothing. Or we can use this pause in our
normal lives to pay attention to the hospital workers holding up cellphones
so their patients can say goodbye to loved ones; the planeload of medical
workers flying from Atlanta to help in New York; the aerospace workers in
Massachusetts demanding that their factory be converted to ventilator
production; the Floridians standing in long lines because they couldn’t get
through by phone to the skeletal unemployment office; the residents of
Milwaukee braving endless waits, hail, and contagion to vote in an election
forced on them by partisan justices. We can learn from these dreadful days
that stupidity and injustice are lethal; that, in a democracy, being a
citizen is essential work; that the alternative to solidarity is death. After
we’ve come out of hiding and taken off our masks, we should not forget what
it was like to be alone.
我們面臨一個選擇，這場危機讓這個選擇變得清晰到了無可逃避的地步。我們可以長期保
持自我隔離，懼怕和迴避彼此，讓我們共同的紐帶消失殆盡。
抑或，我們可以利用正常生活中的這種停頓，留意一下：那些舉著手機，好讓他們的病人
可以和親人說再見的醫院工人；那些從亞特蘭大飛去紐約幫忙的一飛機醫務人員；那些要
求把他們的工廠改造成呼吸機生產廠的馬薩諸塞州航空產業工人；那些因無法通過電話聯
繫到人手稀少的失業辦公室，而排著長隊的佛羅里達人；那些無懼沒完沒了的等待、冰雹
和傳染，在黨派立場強烈的法官強加給他們的選舉中投票的密爾沃基居民。
我們可以從這些可怕的日子中領會到：愚蠢和不公正是致命的；在一個民主國家中，充當
公民是必不可少的工作；團結的替代品是死亡。走出藏身之處，摘下口罩後，我們不應忘
記一個人獨處是什麼滋味。
（本文轉載自《大西洋月刊》，是美國最受尊敬的雜誌之一，創辦於1857年。作者是美國
《大西洋》雜誌特約撰稿人，著有《 Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of
the American Century 》和《The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America
》。）