好英语网最坏的尚未来临
For as long as I can remember, I have identified as an optimist. Like a seedling reaching toward the golden sun, I’m innately tuned to seek out the bright side.
从记事起，我就认定自己是个乐观主义者。就像一株幼苗向着金色的太阳生长，我天生就善于寻找光明的一面。
Of course, in recent years this confidence has grown tougher to maintain. The industry I’ve long covered, technology, has lost its rebel edge, and grown monopolistic and power hungry. The economy at large echoed these trends, leaving all but the wealthiest out in the cold. All the while the entire planet veered toward uninhabitability.
当然，近年来，这种信心愈来愈难以维持。我长期报道的科技产业已经失去了叛逆的锋芒，变得垄断而且渴望权力。总体而言，美国经济呼应了这些趋势，除了最富有的人以外，其他人都受到忽视。与此同时，整个星球都变得愈发不适合居住。
And yet, for much of the last year, I remained an optimist. A re-energized Democratic Party looked poised to push for grand solutions to big problems, from health care to education to climate change. There was finally some talk about reining in monopolies and creating a fairer economy. Things weren’t looking good, exactly, but if you squinted hard, you could just make out a sunnier future.
然而，在去年的大部分时间里，我仍然是乐观主义者。恢复活力的民主党似乎准备推动重大问题的宏大解决方案，从医疗到教育，再到气候变化。终于出现了一些关于控制垄断、创造更公平经济的讨论。确切地说，情况看起来并不乐观，但如果眯着眼睛仔细看，还是能够看到一个更美好的未来。
通常情况下，盐湖城市中心在早高峰时段不会是这个样子。
Now all that seems lost. The coronavirus and our disastrous national response to it has smashed optimists like me in the head. If there is a silver lining, we’ll have to work hard to find it.
现在一切似乎都已失去。新冠病毒和我们国家对它的灾难性反应，对我这样的乐观主义者来说不啻为当头一棒。如果绝境中尚有一丝希望，我们必须努力去寻找。
To do that, we should spend more time considering the real possibility that every problem we face will get much worse than we ever imagined. The coronavirus is like a heat-seeking missile designed to frustrate progress in almost every corner of society, from politics to the economy to the environment.
为了做到这一点，我们应该花更多的时间去考虑，当前面临的所有问题有可能会比想像的还要糟糕。新冠病毒就像一枚热追踪导弹，仿佛专门用来阻碍社会几乎每一个角落的进步，从政治到经济再到环境。
The only way to avoid the worst fate might be to dwell on it. To forestall doom, it’s time to go full doomer.
要想避免最坏的结果，唯一的方法可能就是对其深思熟虑。为了避免厄运，现在是做最坏打算的时候了。
Why so glum? It is not just that nearly 92,000 Americans are dead and tens of millions are unemployed. It’s not just that our federal government has been asleep, with Congress unable or unwilling to push a disaster-response bill on anything like the scale this crisis demands, and an inept president unable to muster much greater sympathy than, “It’s too bad.” It’s not only that global cooperation is in tatters when we need it most.
为什么这样悲观？不仅仅是因为近9.2万美国人死亡，数千万人失业。不仅仅是因为我们的联邦政府好像陷入沉睡，国会没有能力或不愿推动这样的危机所需的大规模灾难应对法案，一个废物总统所能表达的最高同情就是“太糟了”。不仅如此，在我们最需要的时候，全球合作也变得支离破碎。
It is all these things and something more fundamental: a startling lack of leadership on identifying the worst consequences of this crisis and marshaling a united front against them. Indeed, division and chaos might now be the permanent order of the day.
除此之外，还有更为根本的问题：在明确这场危机最糟糕的后果，并组织统一战线对抗危机方面，美国惊人地缺乏领导力。事实上，分裂和混乱可能成为当下持久的主旋律。
In a book published more than a decade ago, I argued that the internet might lead to a choose-your-own-facts world in which different segments of society believe in different versions of reality. The Trump era, and now the coronavirus, has confirmed this grim prediction.
在十多年前出版的一本书中，我提出，互联网可能会带来一个“选择相信你自己的事实”的世界，在这个世界里，不同的社会阶层会相信不同版本的现实。特朗普时代，以及现在的新冠病毒，证实了这一可怕的预测。
That’s because the pandemic actually has created different political realities. The coronavirus has hit dense, racially diverse Democratic urban strongholds like New York much harder than sparsely populated rural areas, which lean strongly to the G.O.P. That divergent impact — with help from the president and his acolytes — is feeding a dangerous partisan split about the nature of the virus itself.
这是因为大流行实际上创造了不同的政治现实。新冠病毒对纽约这样人口密集、种族多元化的民主党城市据点的打击，比对人口稀少、强烈倾向于共和党的农村地区打击更大，在总统及其助手的推波助澜下，这种差异正在助长关于病毒本身性质的非常危险的党派分歧。
Consider the emerging culture war about wearing masks or about whether to take certain unproven therapies. Look at the protests over whether it’s safe to reopen. Now play these divisions forward. As The Times’s Kevin Roose wrote last week, when a vaccine does emerge, what if many Americans, fed on anti-vax rumors, simply refuse to take it?
想想正在兴起的关于戴口罩，或者是否接受某些未经证实的疗法的文化战争吧。看看关于重新开放社会是否安全的抗议吧。现在，让这些分歧更进一步。正如《纽约时报》的凯文·鲁斯(Kevin Roose)上周所写的那样，当疫苗出现时，如果许多美国人受到反疫苗传言的影响，干脆拒绝接种会怎样？
The virus’s economic effects will only create further inequality and division. Google, Facebook, Amazon and other behemoths will not only survive, they look poised to emerge stronger than ever. Most of their competition — not just small businesses but many of America’s physical retailers and their millions of employees — could be decimated.
病毒的经济影响只会造成进一步的不平等和分裂。谷歌、Facebook、亚马逊和其他巨头不仅会生存下来，而且似乎会比以往任何时候都更加强大。他们的大多数竞争对手——不仅是小企业，还有许多美国实体零售商和他们数以百万计的雇员——都有可能遭到灭顶之灾。
Worst of all, it’s possible that the pain of this crisis might not fully register in broad economic indicators , especially if, as happened after the 2008 recession, we see a long, slow recovery that benefits mainly the wealthy. There are already signs that this is happening: Thousands died, millions lost their jobs, but stock indexes are rebounding.
最糟糕的是，这场危机的痛苦可能没有完全反映在广泛的经济指标中，尤其是，如果像2008年衰退后发生的那样，复苏之路漫漫，而且主要惠及富人。已有迹象表明，这种情况正在发生：数万人死去，数百万人失业，但股指正在反弹。
The economic impacts feed into the political ones: The virus-induced recession could further destroy the news industry and dramatically reduce the number of working journalists in the country, our last defense against misinformation.
经济方面的影响也造成了政治影响：病毒引发的衰退可能会进一步摧毁新闻行业，并大幅减少美国在职记者的数量，他们是我们抵御错误信息的最后防线。
Even worse, the virus is making a hash of emerging solutions to entrenched problems. As The Times’s Conor Dougherty chronicled in “Golden Gates,” his recent book on America’s housing crisis, activists have lately been finding success in pushing to build more housing in restrictive regions like the San Francisco Bay Area. The virus may put such reforms on ice. And consider the grim future of public transportation after the pandemic: Will people just get back in their cars, driving everywhere they go?
更糟糕的是，病毒扰乱了解决社会痼疾的新方法。正如《纽约时报》的康纳·多尔蒂(Conor Dougherty)在他最近出版的关于美国住房危机的书《金色大门》(Golden Gates)中所写，在推动旧金山湾区等限制严格的地区建造更多住房方面，活动人士最近取得了成功。新冠病毒可能会使这种改革搁浅。再想想大流行后公共交通的黯淡前景：人们会否干脆退回他们的私家车里，自己开车去任何地方？
I called a few economists, activists and historians to discuss my growing alarm about the future. Many were less pessimistic than I am; some suggested that the virus could prompt much-needed action. The most instructive example is the Great Depression. In the 1930s, after years of inaction, reformers who came into office with Franklin D. Roosevelt were able to push through laws that improved American life for good.
我给几位经济学家、活动人士和历史学家打了电话，讨论我对未来日益加深的担忧。许多人没有我这样悲观；一些人认为，这种病毒可能会促使人们采取目前亟需的行动。最有启发性的例子是大萧条。在上世纪30年代，经历多年无所作为之后，同富兰克林·D·罗斯福(Franklin D. Roosevelt)一起上台的改革人士终于能够推动通过一些法律，永久地改善美国人的生活。
Matt Stoller, an antimonopoly scholar at the American Economic Liberties Project, a think tank, agreed that this crisis could be the jolt we need to fix American institutions. But he also noted that the United States has failed to make the best of our most recent national calamities. The 9/11 attacks pushed us into needless quagmires in the Middle East. The 2008 recession deepened inequality.
智库美国经济自由项目(American Economic Liberties Project)的反垄断学者马特·斯托尔勒(Matt Stoller)也认为，这场危机可能是我们修复美国制度所需要的震荡。但他也指出，美国未能充分利用我们最近的全国性灾难。9·11袭击在中东把我们推入了不必要的困境。2008年的衰退加深了不平等。
Let us not squander another crisis. We need to take a long, hard look at all the ways the pandemic can push this little planet of ours to further ruin — and then work like crazy, together, to stave off the coming hell.
让我们不要再次浪费一场危机。我们需要长期、认真地审视这场大流行可能会将我们这个小小的星球推向进一步毁灭的所有方式，然后一起拼命努力，避免即将到来的深渊。