Politics Rears Its Ugly Head

I'm trying to refrain from talking about politics in these times fraught with frustration and pain, but some of the articles I'm reading are making me angry.  There is no conclusive evidence that any of this is true, but unless we talk about them, nobody will look for evidence.

The pressure to open up the economy seems to be part of a longer thread of decisions that I had not paid attention to.  After the administration rejected the need for distancing and being careful in January, remember that they abruptly changed plans, and supported taking action.

Why was this?  There is some reason to believe that that the administration initially thought that only foreigners were likely to get infected, essentially Asians, Chinese, Koreans, etc, and they were infecting people in California, and mostly in communities of either immigrants, or elderly folks.  But then, it seemed that wealthy white folk were also being affected.

For a while, the White House was following the suggestions of the CDC and the team of medical advisors we saw on the President's briefings.  But then there appeared to be agitation for reopening the economy.  From where?  Rural areas where infections were few.  Political leaders were noticing that most of the infections were in low-income places where blacks and Latinos lived tightly packed.  In fact, the workers in meat-packing plants were forced to live in dormitories, and when there was a case of infection, it was followed by scores of workers also getting sick.  So loosening restrictions (or 'opening up') would affect mostly blacks and Latinos, the sorts of citizens that the Administration loves to hate.  Also, with meat packing places deciding to close down, the public loses its access to meat.  It seems that those who vote Republican need more meat to survive than Democrats do!  (This may explain why they seem to need more guns, too.)

When people are forced to go to work (or lose their jobs), it is usually the poorer people who are affected, the people who have more dangerous jobs, and disproportionately blacks and Latinos.

Can you imagine how devastating it would be if all those who do not think it advisable to go to work defied the orders of their bosses and stayed home?  This would be the time for them to do so, except that going on strike is not something that happens very often.

So the seemingly random response of the administration to the pandemic turns out not to be very random after all, but driven by racism.  The administration looks at states as white states, like Texas and Georgia, and non-white states, such as New York, and California, and Michigan.

Just the thought that the US government responds to racist principles makes me almost sadder than anything else.  Of course, certain individuals in the government have been manifestly racist all along, but it was easy to think that the government as a whole was not.  But when response to a pandemic is suspiciously race-related, we have descended to a new low.

Kay