A Pandemic: Forty Years in the Making
It was always going to come to this.
History will not be kind to Donald Trump. The longest and most painful chapter in his presidency is the one we’re living through now: the corona virus pandemic.
But unlike many of the other disastrous aspects of his administration, Trump should not bear the bulk of the blame for the federal government’s handling of the crisis. The Republican Party’s bungled response has been forty years in the making. Trump is not the cause of the poor response; he was just the unfortunate sucker who was left holding the ideology when the music stopped.
The scope of the federal government had been increasing for decades as a result of World War II and the expansion of social policies, both of which, we should recall, had a hand in righting the ship after the Great Depression of the 1930s. Similarly, the Great Society programs continued the expansion and sought to set right the tragic record of civil rights in the country.
These were all good and necessary things that should have been the final founding and a completion of the ideals set out in the Declaration of Independence. Instead, the Republicans, beginning with Nixon’s new federalism, set out to restore the Confederacy.
That’s why Trump and son-in law Jared Kusher can speak of a national stockpile of equipment that is somehow separate from the supplies in the states that have been declared by the president as federal disaster areas. It is an extremist, antiquated, and immoral take on what heretofore has been part of the legal norms of how the country operates in times of crises.
The two crises since Reagan became president and set the country on its course, were both international in scope. The Cold War was largely caused by but also resolved by the Republican emphasis on national security and a massive military stockpile. The attacks on 9–11, indirect blowback from the Cold War, was also met with a military response, even if a restrained and diplomatic one would have been more advisable.
This is one of the reasons the Trump administration is so insistent on calling the coronavirus “the Chinese virus”: to move it into the realm of foreign policy, where they know (or at least think they know) how to maneuver. From their perspective, it merely has the added benefit of being xenophobic.
But this is a health crisis and an entire collapse of the economic, which does not respond to demagoguery and scapegoating. It will require urgent, bold, and real responses, not empty rhetoric and graft, the Republic Party’s go-to currency.
The anti-government instincts of the Republicans have seeped into the country were so well that politicians from the Democratic Party are also susceptible, thinking it is the only path to victory. The economic crisis of 2008, which came on George W. Bush’s watch, was the result of deregulation that occurred during the Clinton administration. (He doesn’t get enough blame for that.) And Obama signed a stimulus that was mostly a massive bailout for the banks. The historically slow recovery, however predictable, coupled with the decision of the Hillary Clinton campaign to run as an extension of the Obama administration, played a large part in the election of Donald Trump.
And then there’s the Republicans in Congress, who can do little more than confirm judges not named Garland and cut taxes and that cares about deficits only when Democrats are in power. Enabling and exonerating Trump in the Russian and Ukranian scandals is only the latest in a long line of its dirty deeds.
Meanwhile, the media, Fox News, as the usual suspect, but also CNN, the New York Times, and other outlets, are too busy with their bothsidesism attempt at fairness to call out the corruption, irresponsibility, and wickedness of the Republican Party. They, like Trump and McConnell, have a good bit of blood on their hands.
No one can doubt that we would not be in a mess this bad if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders were president. No one. Democrats, the evidence shows, bring with them stronger economies. They also respect expertise and evidence and have not sought to ignore science when it can’t be politicized.
We cannot be surprised that the early years of the Trump administration brought with it more rollbacks of the agencies and offices designed to stop a global health crisis like this one. Their entire party is built on that brand; it’s what they do. Trump says this was entirely unforeseen. But it was always going to come to this.
Our only hope must be that not too many hundreds of thousand will die. We can also work to make sure in every way possible that we learn the right lessons about the need for a coordinated and competent government that can prepare for the next crisis (see: climate change), which could very likely be even more deadly.
Count me among the skeptical.
