COVID-19 in America: Politics

This will be my last piece on COVID-19 in the United States. To recap how COVID-19 affected the supply chain, click here. For the health-care system, click here. In terms of the education system, click here. For information on COVID-19 and the justice system, click here.

No country has escaped the COVID-19 pandemic unscathed, but with the possible exceptions of China and Russia, no country performed worse in terms of handling the virus than did the United States.

Despite having some of the best scientific minds in the world and an unmatched capacity for innovation, despite the superhuman efforts of American health-care workers, and despite on paper being the best-prepared nation for a pandemic, the United States utterly and disastrously failed the test of COVID-19.

It is true that then President Donald Trump bears much responsibility for the catastrophe that befell us all. He spent the first critical weeks denying that there was even a pandemic in the first place. When that became untenable, Trump played politics with who got access to vitally needed PPE and other supplies. In addition, he encouraged his supporters to disobey shutdown orders across the country, orders that were ugly but necessary to contain a virus that was overwhelming the health-care system. After George Floyd’s murder, Trump used his authority as president to turn much of the DHS into his willing brutes, game to carry out orders even the Minneapolis Police Department would have trouble stomaching.

Systematic Problems

But Trump could not have done so much damage on his own—not without so many collaborators at all levels of American society: a potent far right media ecosystem to propagate lies about COVID-19, a social media ecosystem that played to the worst parts of human nature, a large population of people eager to carry out his most demented wishes, and a widespread disregard for expertise.

I already talked about the systemic problems infecting many of America’s systems before COVID-19, and that made the pandemic so much worse.

In a report that said the United States was the most prepared for a pandemic, there was a value that was at zero, a variable that would prove to be the Achilles’ heel of the American response to COVID-19.

Trust in government.

To be fair, the United States government under Donald Trump had proven itself untrustworthy.

In addition to this disregard for expertise, there was also the problem of far right media amplifying disinformation about COVID-19, which had tragic consequences. This media ecosystem had (and still does have) a population willing to put its own and others’ health at risk for a demented political agenda. Any warning about COVID-19 was thus interpreted by a large percentage of Americans as just a part of the culture wars.

These culture wars caused otherwise common sense measures such as masks to become controversial issues. Masking is routine in much of East and Southeast Asia when one is sick, and mask requirements were not much of a problem in Europe, Australia, or Canada (though all had their own problems containing the pandemic).

Why people got so emotional in the name of opposing this basic measure I still don’t understand.

Meanwhile, too many Americans ignored basic measures to control the spread of COVID-19 by flagrantly violating stay-at-home orders, not wearing masks, and making vaccination decisions based on politics/emotions, not science or history with American medicine.

The anti-vax movement (a movement as an autistic person I intensely loathe) got a boost from Trump’s base in order to spite Dr. Fauci and expertise more broadly. But this movement was already gaining momentum by the time Trump decided they were useful idiots.

The pandemic both exposed and accelerated a major breakdown in trust across American citizens. Thanks to how determined red America was to pretend that COVID-19 was not a problem despite all evidence to the contrary and refuse common sense measures like masks/vaccines out of political spite against blue America, the pandemic has claimed many more lives than it needed to. Millions of Americans did this all because they were sore over culture wars and elections.

Needless to say, I don’t trust millions of my fellow Americans to make any type of decent decision. I have had this mindset since 2016, but it has gotten much further entrenched.

The pandemic did not cause the phenomenon of millions of Americans deciding to ignore reality out of political spite, but it did make the problem much worse.

“You Don’t Have a Better Bad Idea Than This?”

The above quote from the movie Argo may as well be a motto for having to make any type of decision in government.

A major flaw in American thinking that got exposed is that Americans are not adept at operating in situations where there are no good options. Another situation where this got exposed is that Americans wanted both to keep the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan and to withdraw, refusing to accept the fact that it would be one or the other.

An out-of-control pandemic is a situation where all of your choices have severe consequences for someone. It’s a matter of picking the best terrible choice. Other situations where this is the case include economic meltdowns like the one in 2008, wars, natural disasters, and civil unrest.

The caveat, however, is that if you are in a situation where there are only bad options, a lot of bad decisions were likely made beforehand.

As climate change continues to worsen, totalitarian governments like Russia and China continue to make moves out of a combination of arrogance, desperation, and fear, and highly destructive far left and (much more destructive) far right movements continue to rise in the Free World, these types of situations will only become more common. So we all, myself included, must become more comfortable with these choices.

What Must Be Done

Out of all the systems in America, our political system failed the worst. All the systematic failures can be in some way traced back to political, and most painfully still, failures in the American citizens.

During 2020, the federal government was so useless at best that quite a few states formed their own compacts on how to contain the virus, coordinate supplies, and manage the fallout from the virus.

If the republic is going to survive, then the following must happen.

Americans must change the way they select their elected officials. Right now, the process is more dependent on who people want to have lunch with versus who is the best-prepared person to carry out a job. Keep in mind that someone who is well equipped to serve in one capacity as an elected official may be completely in over their head in another capacity.

For example, Minnesota State Representative Ryan Winkler, a candidate for the Hennepin County Attorney Office, is a solid legislator with a good record of passing bills that help people, but he has no experience in criminal law as either a defender or prosecutor or even executing policy. Ergo, he is best suited to stay in his current position. By contrast, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison was an OK representative of the Minnesota 5th Congressional District but has been an excellent attorney general. So it was, in retrospect, a good idea for Keith Ellison to switch offices.

But right now, voters tend to make decisions in primaries and the general election based on “vibes.”

This is a poor process for choosing people for such critical positions—although it sometimes works. After all, people supported then Illinois Senator Barack Obama over then New York Senator Hillary Clinton during the 2008 Democratic primary because Obama was much more charismatic.

The voters were lucky that Barack Obama turned out to be an excellent president who managed to rescue the United States from a Second Great Depression, fundamentally improved the way health care is done through the Affordable Care Act, and did so much more.

But the way voters approach selecting elected officials is more likely to produce results like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (friendly enough people but in over their head).

Even likelier is that you get people like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (plus the majority of the Republican Senate Caucus outside of McConnell), the Squad, and Representatives Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar, and the rest of the Freedom Caucus.

These are people who are charismatic or are otherwise skilled at dealing with the public but due to either incompetence or ideology are utterly unprepared for the work of governance. Their incompetence and destructive actions played a role in getting hundreds of thousands of Americans killed.

Americans must change how they select people to run for office.

In addition, my fellow Americans must realize just how much our modern world depends on experts. If a group has a particularly bad history with a community of experts, such as the medical community (thinking of Black Americans in particular here), then steps must be taken to incorporate them into said community of experts. I would recommend you all read a book called The Death of Expertise by former Naval War College Professor Tom Nichols. Personally, I think the book gets things wrong occasionally, but overall it hits the mark.

For reconciliation to work, both sides need to want to de-escalate. That is not what is happening right now with red America. Red America only wants to escalate. As shown with the Russians, attempting de-escalation with this type of party is tantamount to appeasement.

If anyone has a better bad idea than this, I would like to hear it.

Let me know below.