The national selfish-unselfish divide
At the worst, most extreme of times, defining what is selfish and unselfish politics is at the heart of the democratic struggle.
We seem to be at such a point now.
What do you call it when governors want to keep their economies closed and businesses shuttered, with workers shunted to the sidelines, as long the deadly coronarvirus stalks the land?
Selfish or unselfish?
Consider: the coronavirus-induced economic coma the country is experiencing has been draconian. Forget the Great Recession of 2008-2009. The best equivalent touchstone is the Great Depression of the 1930s.
In five short weeks, or since mid-March, 26 million Americans have been thrown out of work. That’s equal to the entire labor force of more than 23 states. Ten years of job growth — across two administrations — has been wiped out. A total of 19 million jobs have disappeared. Some may never return.
Conversely, what if a governor wants to reopen his or her state economy now, coronavirus be damned? Is that selfish? For many Americans, it sounds shortsighted, at best. At worst, criminal.
Consider: by Friday of last week, the nation had recorded a little over 30,000 COVID-19 deaths. Two days ago, the total number of dead stood in excess of 50,000. That’s a lot of dying in one week.
As it is, tens of millions of Americans are suffering economic hardship. There is a burgeoning food crisis, a burgeoning mental health crisis, a burgeoning family abuse crisis. People are lonely and adrift. At the same time, the medical suffering has been tremendous, and not only in total numbers. COVID-19 is a terrible way to die: sucking for air even as the lungs are flooded and finally overwhelmed by congestion.
As a people, we are a nervous and uncertain.
Nothing more vividly epitomizes the growing tension between virus mitigation and the economy – and the increasingly political nature of that tension — than a scene that played out last week in Denver Colorado, when a health care worker stood defiantly in the middle of the street blocking a pickup truck from getting to a state capital protest rally.
On YouTube, you can watch as a woman sticks her head out the truck’s passenger side window. She shouts, “This is a free country” and “You can go to work, why can’t I go to work,” as the man, dressed in light blue scrubs and a face mask, stands his ground.
At one point, the medical worker gets an encouraging pat on the shoulder from a passerby. Throughout the video, he maintains a stoic silence.
The woman at one point yells, bizarrely enough, “Go to China if you want communism.”
High minded? No. But most political arguments aren’t.
The scene in Denver could very well have happened in Harrisburg, where protesters have targeted Gov. Wolf’s lockdown orders for Pennsylvania.
That Republicans, generally, are on the protest side of things and Democrats are on the other is pretty clear.
One side see the pandemic sheltering rules as wimpy. “We are Americans, we are rugged, we are freedom-loving. We place our trust in god, not in science. We don’t want to be told what to do.”
The other says, “Be safe, not sorry. It’s ‘one for all and all for one.’ Trust the data, follow the data. ‘Gut’ reactions don’t count for much. Don’t be stupid.”
One side looks to Andrew Cuomo. The other to Donald Trump.
That the president is aiding and abetting the protesters is clear enough. He’s simply unbelievable as the judicious guy in charge of social distancing. His real self — and it’s pretty clear everyone believes this — comes out in his answers to news media questions and in his tweets. “Free Michigan… Free Virginia… Fake news… You are a third rate reporter… Some governors don’t get it.”
The president doesn’t want to be blamed. He blames others. He deflects. He hedges his bets. He leads from behind.
We need leadership. In the absence of presidential leadership, that means gubernatorial leadership. We need governors who can strike a balance. Governors who can bend but not break. We need governors who are forthright and honest and who can sense what the public will accept, and for how long. In short, we need master politicians.
Maybe our politics is rigged in such a way that even superb leadership is unequal to the task. In the end, maybe we can’t bridge the chasm between what looks like selfish politics to some and unselfish politics to others.
In any event, all of this, especially Donald Trump’s stewardship, will be fought out in the November elections.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.