Someone Else's Problems

How did we get to this, a weekend of COVID panic among the Republican elite?

Some of this was tied into their overall philosophy of cruelty, as Adam Serwer pointed out in his must-read article "The Cruelty Is the Point" a few years ago.

It's tied into the stuff I wrote chastising the Republicans for their lack of empathy, long before trump ever showed up on the playing field:

We're getting reports now of Republican congresscritters are getting "coached" into how they should show empathy to the unemployed.  Like compassion and sympathy and empathy are things to fake before a camera crew, rather than a genuine expression from the heart.  Do the Republicans even have genuine expressions from the heart for those struggling to find good jobs at good wages?...

We're coming off a 2012 election where the winning Republican candidate out of the primaries was a rich guy who had no sympathy for what he viewed was 47 percent of the American population, and dismissed them as "takers" and moochers.  And in the primaries, dear God, the other candidates were worse.

The Republican voters - some of whom are genuinely nice in the real world, and hug puppies and feed unicorns whenever possible - have a problem: the Republican Party they're stuck with has the habit of talking and acting like assholes.  There's no other way to describe this behavior...

Well, actually there is a way to describe this behavior.

It's a world-view called "Someone Else's Problem."

You see, as long as the problem in question - the severe climate, the burning forests, the failing schools, the millions on food stamps, a pandemic of great lethality compared to the regular flu, stuff like that - does not directly affect the person whose philosophy is "Someone Else's Problem," it doesn't matter to that person. They aren't bothered by the problem, so they can't BE bothered by the problem at all. And they'll let someone else fix that problem, because it IS someone else's problem after all.

It's also known as Bystander Effect, Buck Passing, and a form of Cognitive Bias.

And the Republican Party - especially with trump at the helm - suffer Cognitive Bias to an unhealthy extreme.

But as my 2014 blogging against Republican failures at empathy prove, this isn't just a trump problem, it's a Republican problem, and it's something we've seen for decades now. This list of arguments, for example, how many times have we heard Republicans and conservatives throw out these lines over the years?

"It's the poor people's fault they're poor. They don't save money or work hard enough. And they're all immoral, getting high on drugs while squeezing out babies they can't feed. If they can't pull themselves up by their bootstraps working those three part-time jobs, they should go work a fourth. And in the next issue of Forbes, we'll be reading a glowing biography of a twenty-something who got to be a billionaire straight out of high school rehab when his parents took care of the startup fees for his successful IPO."

"Don't talk to me about student debt, it's their fault they chose to go with $75,000 worth of loans for a worthless Humanities degree. If young people can't afford college they should go straight into the workforce. Oh by the way all the good-paying jobs will require college degrees."

"Colleges shouldn't enroll minorities who didn't earn their way in. It's their problem if they can't pass the SATs or afford the prestigious Ivy Leagues. Pay no attention to that billion-dollar new College of Ethical Studies building that was just donated to Yale/Harvard by that new student's rich parents."

"Housing is not a problem for me. I can get a great four-car garage McMansion in a gated community with a great rate from my bank. So why should I care about all these Black families who get evicted from homes because their overextended mortgages? What's this 'Redlining' you keep screaming at me?"

"It's your fault if you're unemployed, should have worked harder even if the business closed, forced mass layoffs, or went bankrupt. Work harder to find the next job, and there's all these jobs listed all the time so just get one. So what if Target or Wal-Mart won't hire you if you're overqualified? So what if the job description requires skills you don't have? Just lie on the application and bluff your way in. And don't expect more than $200 a week to pay for expenses while you rush around job-hunting and all. I don't want to pay MY taxes to let you loaf about using unemployment benefits to pay your bills."

That's just the ones I can recall off the top of my head, especially the ones I had to fight against in real life.

Now imagine that same kind of contrarian bullshit out of trump and the Republicans when it came to this pandemic.

"Oh, well, I spoke to the Chinese leader and he said it was all under control, so I don't have to worry." - this is a rough summary of what trump actually said. The implication here is that trump believed it was under control and so didn't care to get the U.S. pandemic response up and running in any way. It also explains how quickly trump and other Republicans resorted to accusing China of screwing up and labeling COVID as "the Chinese Flu."

"Let the state governors fight the pandemic." - trump and his handlers saw the pandemic be more of a problem at the state and local levels and decided rather than fighting the pandemic as a national problem, left it all to the state governors... that they could then blame later for mishandling the crisis.

"Why should we wear masks when the problem is everybody else being sick?" - And yeah, we've seen where this Far Right talking point goes...

"We don't have to worry about large gatherings, or social distancing, or any of that stuff when we host our political events. We're safe. COVID is not our fault and not our problem." - trump and his fellow Republicans kept behaving and talking as though they were above it all, never had to worry about the spread of the coronavirus, because their circle of friends were all healthy and tested every day. So they held trump's rallies in Oklahoma and Arizona and Michigan and other places and they're turning into COVID hotspots as we speak. It's why trump and the Republican Senate leadership held their coming-out party - in violation of local emergency orders against large gatherings - for Amy Coney Barett's SCOTUS nomination not just in the Rose Garden but also indoors for long hours about two weeks ago (right about the time span it takes for the virus' symptoms to crop up).

It's why the Republican leadership is suddenly testing Positive for COVID, and it's why trump has spent the weekend at Walter Reed Hospital undergoing a hyper-level treatment for his illness.

Because, guess what, COVID isn't Someone Else's Problem after all.