The right wing of the GOP, which, I suppose, is really ALL of it, at this point, is pressing hard for a quick re-opening of the U.S. economy all over the media.
The reason is NOT because they want it to happen, or even believe it can happen. They know as well as anyone, that it cannot happen without wide-spread testing (which is not happening any time soon under this failed Administration, for lack of capacity, facilities, PPE, reagents, etc.), contact tracing (which will require an army of personnel, and fighting uphill against claims that it infringes our vital freedoms), and effective isolation of infected persons (which requires economic and social support that isn’t likely forthcoming).
The GOP knows that re-opening too soon without such precautions in place simply won’t work. People will not sacrifice themselves and their loved ones for a few percent of GDP or the corporate bottom line. Rescind “shelter-in-place” orders if you will, but the vast majority of people simply will not venture forth until it is safe to do so. Of course, a small percentage of the population are idiots, and will go get themselves and everyone around them infected if allowed to do so, which is why we need such public, and enforceable, rules.
No. The reason they are pushing hard to re-open now, despite there being no measures in place to do so safely, is purely political positioning for November.
They don’t want the blame for the coming Coronavirus Depression.
They want to be able to claim, “Well, I WANTED to open the economy, but those damn libruls and their overblown concerns for safety…”
It’s a complete and total sham. I can’t bring myself to truly believe that they are all stupid enough to not realize that as soon as the epidemic spikes again, which it predictably would, we go right back into shutdown with nothing to show for it but a bunch of dead Americans.
I can, however, easily believe that they are calculating and venal enough to try to shift blame for the economic fallout of this crisis onto those who are acting responsibly and ethically in the face of Trump’s epic failure in leadership during an unprecedented natural disaster.
All Trump and his right wing allies really want is a plausible argument to their base, and maybe a few gullible but economically-minded moderates, that they tried to get the economy up off the ground, but the damn cautious liberals wouldn’t allow them.
The depression is not really their fault for treating the Coronavirus as no big deal, something that wouldn’t affect us, and a Democratic hoax. It wasn’t Trump’s failure to respond in a timely manner to contain the outbreak that caused economic chaos. No, it’s everyone else’s fault: China’s lies and concealment, WHO’s credulity toward China, the Democrats’ insistence that we enforce social distancing until we have a handle on required containment measures to go back to work safely. They are the reason you lost your job, your business, your apartment, your house, your grandparents, your life; not us! Never us!
It’s all a monstrous lie and huge political grift. Don’t let them off the hook. Call out their lies. Tell people what they really want. Not to re-open the economy, but the shift the blame away from their own failed leadership in this crisis. They have been tested and found sorely wanting. It’s so obvious that they have to babble complete non-sense to distract everyone.
They failed to fund bio-defense preparedness by cutting the DCD and DHS budgets. They destroyed our institutional expertise and leadership by disbanding the Security Council task force on bio-defense. They shut down co-operation with China, in China, on infectious disease identification and response. They laughed off the risk of an outbreak, until it was too late. They did nothing as the virus spread exponentially in this country. They sat by while thousands of Americans died as a result. They refuse to mobilize the federal government to test, trace and isolate the infected.
They own the coming depression. It is entirely their doing from root to branch.
We can’t let Americans forget who got us into this mess. The GOP will do its damnedest to muddle that picture. Don’t let them. Don’t give them hell; tell the truth, and they’ll think it’s hell.
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And this is the party that incessantly preached personal responsibility. Guess their secret motto has always been “personal responsibility for thee but not for me”. Especially when there’s an election to be stolen.
Because the GOP is the forward thinking, outcome oriented party, they put in place a solution to our current situation years ago.
If someone is next to you in the grocery store, without a mask, maybe coughing, and you feel at all threatened, you’re allowed by law to shoot them dead.
Stand Your Ground.
Brought to you by your friends at ALEC and the NRA.