Mass grave in New York to bury Covid dead bodies in 2020
Paul Krugman writes that Texas flood disaster should be politicized to hold Trump regime accountable. The austerity cuts in government, the firing of government employees, the under-staffing of essential departments has crippled many essential programs and services. All this is true. Trump regime’s dismantling of America has aggravated and elevated the impacts and risks of natural disasters. But will politicizing national tragedies be effective?
Politicization of national tragedy is meant for two purposes. First is to shook the conscience of government, to make them take moral responsibility of their failures. Recall that in decent nations, ministers and bureaucrats do take moral responsibility of their shortcomings if something terrible happens on their watch and they resign. But we have a sadistic, immoral and cruel regime in power in America. So be assured that you can’t shook their moral conscience because this regime has no morals or a conscience.
Second and a more important purpose of politicization of national tragedy is to inform the electorate, arouse public sentiments and make people aware that ruling government is failing in their duties. An informed electorate will thus deliver their verdict in the polls to dispose incompetent politicians. But if public was really conscious of its interests, we would be living in a different world.
Around 20% of voters have lost all rational thinking. They are battered and abused by their political party and they still remain married to it. That’s the core Republican base which is like a battered wife who cannot leave abusive relationship with husband. It’s well known that Republican policies of austerity, dismantling of social safety net and deregulation has first and foremost harmed its own electorate in Red States. Yet, people continue to vote Republicans year after year, decade after decade - think of deep Red States in South and mid west. Some of the poorest regions of America are deeply red. They will die waving the Republican flag (MAGA flag or confederate flag or don’t tread on me flag) into their grave.
Then there are so called conservatives, centrist Republicans and independents. The problem with them and America in general is that people have no depth in understanding of national politics, issues and policies. This is a much deeper problem. People just don’t understand what’s good for them and they have lost interest in politics. The detachment between social consciousness (you can also say Class interest) and political reality has greatly widened.
People just don’t have time, resources and inclination to participate in national politics. The media is thoroughly corrupt. It always has been. In earlier days, it normalized Neocon war of aggression and mission to export democracy to the middle middle east. In current times, media is busy normalizing, truth-washing and sane-washing a madman like Donald Trump. The social media has become a sewer of lies and misinformation.
To invest in politics, one must understand the societal reality. In our market economies & competition, people are busy with their daily lives and employment. Many work for long hours and some even work multiple jobs. A tired mind has little freedom to think freely. Then our education system and institutions are primarily built to make people adjust to markets and competition - to become employable. The critical thinking is never developed in most of the people because it’s not requirement in our economic system.
The intellect of American society is dying just like it’s already dead in 3rd world backward nations. No amount of national tragedy, natural disasters, suffering, scandals and ruin changes the opinion of people. People don’t wake up from their slumber, they tolerate everything like boiling frogs. Take example of Pandemic. Donald Trump’s gross incompetence and intentional sabotage of government response caused hundreds of thousands of excess deaths. If we live in a normal society, Republicans would’ve never come to power for at least next 20 years after such a debacle. But Trump got re-elected. Donald Trump is more dangerous than any other lethal virus in the world.
But it goes way back than Donald Trump. The entire Republican party is a criminal enterprise and a scam since last several decades. From the scam of trickle down Reaganomics to Bush’s lies on War and terror to Trump’s insanity - This is a party of national disaster. Countless natural and man-made disasters have happened under Republicans, countless scandals have happened which has caused great misery in America. Yet they keep winning elections.
Another cruel irony about national discourse is how narratives are created for consumption of public. While society is ignorant and asleep to real tragedies and disasters, the public is also highly sentimental and aroused by synthetic issues. For example, the artificial narrative of migrant crisis, Christian nationalism, Biden’s inflation, threat to White race and outright crazy conspiracy theories like anti-vax and QAnon have more political traction.
Public reacts more to lies because finding the truth in today’s world is difficult and time consuming in society which has lost power to think. An outrageous lie is much more powerful than an unadulterated truth. I don’t know how politicizing of natural disasters will actually improve our national discourse. Only remedy to this is to just abandon the truth and start telling different sort of lies to people for sake of political convenience. That’s what our political process has reduced to.
Musical Coda
Kill Bill - Battle without honor of humanity
A point i missed out in this article which i had in my draft was this.
Public has very short memory on things. People remember National tragedies as long as it's in News cycle. They forget once news cycle is over, which is typically in few days or few weeks time.
I don’t think politicization of tragedy works anymore in a land without compassion or conscience.