This is intercepted.

I'm Jeremy Skahill coming to you from my basement in New York City and this is

episode 126 of Intercepted. Well this has been a pretty major week in both

political developments and with the coronavirus pandemic. Bernie Sanders of

course has suspended his campaign for the Democratic nomination for president

and it seems likely that we're going to be facing a choice between Joe Biden and

Donald Trump on the ballot in November. We are also seeing a continuing rise in

the cases of infections and deaths from COVID-19 across the United States and I

think a lot of us have been walking around or sitting in our homes feeling this

ominous sense of what the future might look like for us for our families for

this country for the world and I've also been thinking a lot about the claims

of American exceptionalism or greatness and juxtaposing that rhetoric with the

systematic failure to prevent unthinkable catastrophe for so many people here in

the United States. We are nearing 20 million unemployment claims just in the

past few weeks alone. We are seeing hospitals struggling to obtain basic

supplies. We're getting data showing that the virus is hitting African

Americans disproportionately and we're watching both political parties unanimously

voting for the most massive corporate economic stimulus in US history. Now I'm

not alone in this observation but what we are seeing right now in bold, stark

ways about our reality is that contrary to the rhetoric of American greatness we

are witnessing a failed state that placed all of its faith in the radical ideology

of capitalism, the free market, at the expense of protecting the lives of our

...