This July 4, 'freedom' is breaking America

The Biden administration has branded this year's Independence Day holiday as celebrating a "summer of freedom," but the truth is, the country is dangerously broken.

Nowhere is this more obvious than its botched response to the COVID-19 epidemic.

The Biden administration has missed its goal of having 70 percent of the population vaccinated against COVID-19 with at least one shot, even as the dangerous Delta variant has started to tear through the country.

In truth, the Biden administration has probably done about all within its power to ensure Americans are vaccinated. Shots are available for free to all who choose them.

In fact, companies and government officials at various levels are offering the chance to win prizes including $1 million, gift cards, amusement park tickets, fishing licenses and even beer and shotguns to encourage people to get vaccinated.

Nonetheless, polls show that about 20 percent of Americans don't want to be vaccinated. Worse still, the world is believed to be seeing almost two types of America – highly vaccinated vs. not vaccinated.

COVID-19 has already killed more than 600,000 Americans. This approaches the number of Americans killed in combat in all wars since the US was founded.

Why, then, do people need to be convinced to get a vaccine?

The vast majority of the people who do not want to get vaccinated are Republicans. This is reflected on the map. Democratic areas of the country have much higher vaccinations rates than Republican areas.

This should not come as surprise, as the previous Republican administration downplayed the risk from COVID-19 and spread contradictory and false information about its dangers from the beginning of the outbreak, and never relented.

The federal health official who arguably did the most to save American lives during the first year of the outbreak, Dr. Antony Fauci, is now considered a villain by the American right.

Right-wing news outlets like Fox News constantly spread fear of vaccines with sensational headlines such as "Mom details 12-year-old daughter's extreme reactions to COVID vaccine, says she's now in wheelchair."

In short, as the Delta variant threatens to rip through areas of the country where people are not vaccinated, the US federal government does not have the capacity to protect its citizens.

The US system may be excellent at supporting individual creativity in areas like the arts and entrepreneurship. But when it comes to facing major dangers that threaten the entire society and require a collective response, the US system breaks down.

Even a simple matter of collective interest like updating the nation's crumbling infrastructure has brought the federal system to near-paralysis.

Systemic issues such as poverty, drug abuse, lack of access to medical care, racial discrimination and financial inequity have plagued the country for generations.

It is fair to say that Americans have given up hope that these issues will ever be resolved. Instead, they are treated as an inevitable condition of life.

This pessimism seems to have leaked into areas of global concern, such as fighting climate change, environmental destruction, and the global epidemics.

Somewhere along the line, America's famous "can-do" attitude has been replaced with "can't-do" resignation.

Biden has implicitly recognized these failures by claiming this century is a battle between what he calls "democracies" and "autocracies." Presumably, he means the US is a “democracy,” even though study after study shows that Congress makes laws based on the wished of donors and lobbyists and ignores the wishes of common people.

The world needs the US as a partner in fighting common enemies, but the country has lost its footing. Its poisonous news and social media environment is leaving it divided and weakened, unable to convince people of something as simple as the utility of a lifesaving vaccination.

People feel so alienated and distrustful that they believe wild conspiracy theories instead of trusting authorities about the dangers of everything from COVID-19 to climate change.

The problems facing the US are complex and deep-seated.

It is unrealistic to expect Americans to be able to fix their broken country quickly.

However, on this Independence Day, for the sake of the world, let's hope the US begins to fix its broken system so it can join the rest of the world as a partner in fighting the common threats to all humanity.