Think of SARS 2 as the Republican preview for climate change. We told Republicans that the novel coronavirus was a severe threat long before it was declared a pandemic. After the White House briefed Sen. Richard Burr, the Senator dumped his stock and privately warned his high-dollar supporters that shit was coming. And then, of course, Republicans lied to the rest of us. That’s the GOP.
Republicans watched as country after country fell into the same growing epidemic: China, Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Iran, Japan, Italy, one after the next, after the next. We all saw it coming, and we all saw each country make the same mistakes. We all talked about not repeating everyone else’s missteps.
And guess what? Republicans insisted that COVID-19 was fake. It was just a heavily veiled attack against Donald J. Trump. When Democrats asked the administration if they needed more money to buy essential stuff ahead of time; Republicans said no, they had everything they needed. (And that was technically true, since ‘doing nothing’ was their damn goal.) The experts told Trump what to avoid. Faced with mass mortality and given this informed advice, Trump copped an attitude and ordered us to do everything the real experts said we shouldn’t do. That, he thought, would prove he was right! And every single Republican in power was required to repeat that terrible mistake. That’s what Republican membership requires.
Unsurprisingly, as fervently as Republicans yelled that the threat was fake, reality suggested a different outcome. So America is in the middle of a terrible coronavirus epidemic. We’re in first place in every horrible sense. We haven’t just lost the most citizens; we have the highest transmission rates and the fastest growth rates. And despite that, Republican governors are still slow to implement isolation requirements. Even now, many Republicans won’t limit social contact in their states. They don’t see the need. Not after the Trump-dictated reality was announced.
Bullheadedness is the Republican disease. That’s why I say the coronavirus response is the Republican preview for climate change.
Look, Every Republican who isn’t a moron knows their denials are lies. They’ll still make it all worse anyway, just to spite their enemies. That’ll show ‘em! Facts won’t change their minds since reality isn’t what formed their positions in the first place. They entomb their decisions on ideology: it’s what you believe, not what you know, that matters.
We saw coronavirus march through country after country before it got to America. Each country delayed too long, not believing the threat was real. In every case, the delays hurt that country. We saw all that. But somehow, we have to make the same mistakes as everyone before us, first nationally, and then state-by-state. Despite seeing China and Italy, America repeated their example. Inside America, we learned that Washington and New York saw higher infection rates because they delayed isolation. We can measure those results; we know that social isolation works. And every state Republican had to repeat that same mistake for every goddamn state in the union. Social isolation? No! Dead people be damned!
As of this writing, these states haven’t issued stay-at-home orders: Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, and Arkansas. I was shocked to learn that Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak is a conservative Democrat, but the other five state governors are Republicans. No surprise there. And the following states have only issued partial stay-at-home orders: Utah, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf is the lone Democrat; the other nine are Republican. These states already have hellacious outbreaks, but their governors have decided that acting wasn’t in their interests.
Be honest now. Who among you are surprised that Republicans aren’t responding to the deadly consequences of reality? That’s been their collective response to every anti-ideological part of reality for decades.
Trump is still pretending that coordinating the federal response to SARS 2 – the worst plague in a century – isn’t a federal responsibility. Not his job. That’s bad enough, but under cover of this disaster, the Trump administration is already gutting fuel economy standards, pollution reporting, and more. It’s only useful as a cover for their long-term plans.
The SARS 2 response is the Republican preview for climate change. They’re already planning how to do everything just the same, creating the same disaster with climate change as with COVID-19.
Republicans have demonstrated their determination to make the same mistakes every time, no matter what! Facts won’t change that. Hell, deaths don’t matter to them; why would reality move them? Republican stupidity about this pandemic has guaranteed hundreds of thousands more dead Americans. The GOP is already complicit in mass-murder. Do you think they’ll slow down for the next disaster?
No. I can’t see anyone believing the GOP will somehow act more responsibly in the future. COVID-19 is their preview for climate change, and we already know how it’ll go. Republicans won’t just avoid harming us; they’ll lie about it to us. Perversely, they’ll lean into the worst response, almost welcoming each new disaster. When things go as terribly as everyone else predicted ahead of time, Republicans will pretend they’d been following the problem the whole time. They’ll crow about how their most disastrous mistakes were successes. They’ll insist they were right and everyone else was wrong. Remember: that’s what Republicans have been doing for decades. They’re not changing now.
The Trump Republican Party has become a weird death cult. And we seem to believe them when they lie to us. Really. We know Trump and the Republicans are lying to us now. Why isn’t that more of a problem?
