If a Nation Catches the Flu

Nations are subject to a particular type of influenza that may be but a brief illness and a fast recovery or may instead imitate the black death visited on the planet in 1919 — a scourge that killed millions.    It all depends on what the leadership decides to do when confronted by this common illness.

That leadership can act like the adult in the room taking steps that will induce an immediate cure so that the nation is unscathed.  Or it can act like an adolescent in the room throwing a temper tantrum, and therefore prolong the illness and seriously disrupt the nation.  Or it can act like the baby in the room balling its eyes out and inconsolable, and bring the nation to its knees or perhaps even destroy it entirely.   The illness, the influenza that nations catch from time to time, on a more or less regular…