A kakistocracy, if you're not careful

Yesterday, just in time for the evening news, putative president Donald Trump held a press briefing on the coronavirus outbreak. At that briefing, he appointed nonentity Mike Pence as the coronavirus czar, in charge of organizing the US's response to the growing pandemic.

Centuries ago, Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of government we were going to have, and he replied famously with the aphorism "A republic, if you can keep it." The second part of his reply should have been "A kakistocracy, if you're not careful."

We are now being governed by the worst, most incompetent members of our society. There was always a chance this would happen, as the electorate grew apathetic, and, as Yeats wrote, the best lack all conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity. Republican voters will crawl over broken glass to vote for their mouth-breathing leaders, while Democrats argue about how many angels can dance on the head of needle.

I will argue that the situation in which we find ourselves was inevitable, ever since the civil rights movement of the Sixties and the concomitant white flight to the GOP. White voters who abandoned the Democratic Party in reaction to marginalized communities rising up and claiming their piece of the American dream didn't want competent government. Competent government was the problem. They wanted government which would put the hammer down on those they saw as existential threats to their way of life. They didn't care about CVs or accomplishments; they wanted brutes and thugs to be modern day night riders in Brooks Bros. suits.

The GOP has devolved year to year, becoming more nativist, more authoritarian, more reactionary, until we are where we are: Headed by a carnival barker suffering from dementia, and now facing a possible new pandemic.

I hope that the coronavirus turns out to be yet another thing we have to get through, like the yearly flu, which also kills people in the thousands. But the fact is that a competent administration would have been ahead of this months ago, not ignoring for fear of rattling the markets and denting its electoral prospects. The only reason Trump is acting belatedly is because Wall St. is taking a beating from fears of what the virus will do to the world economy. China is shuttered, which will throw the global supply chain into chaos. No one knows the genesis of the virus or how to treat it. A mortality rate of 2% is not a thing to scoff at, no matter what the likes of Rush Limbaugh say. And at this time when we need the best to lead us, we instead have the worst in office.

I will say this: I wish Mike Pence all the best, just because I don't particularly want to die. But I have absolutely no confidence that this incompetent regime will get a handle on the outbreak. We're in for some interesting times, as the regime faces a crisis not of its own making, and which it can't control.