Rigth-wing Partisanship Deadly Dangerous

Partisanship in the 21^st century can be deadly dangerous, let me give you a few examples. Republican led Texas continues to rise on the list of states by proportion of COVID-19 deaths as compared to population, now standing at number 17 with more than 30% greater proportional death toll than California, the state Texas Republicans like to bash most. According to a recently published study by Elisa F. Long, M. Keith Chen, and Ryne Rohla at the Anderson School of Management, University of California Los Angeles, Republicans were more than 10% more likely Democrats to disregard local orders to evacuate their coastal residences in the hours before a hurricane struck the area. The Department of Homeland Security now run by illegally appointed Chad Wolf has been downplaying and shelving reports on the threat of white nationalist terrorism according to a whistleblower complaint by intelligence-division chief Brian Murphy, he was told it was blocked because of the way it might “reflect upon President Trump.”

It’s been pretty clear for a while now that COVID-19 is deadly and while not a Black Plague level catastrophe, it has now killed nearly 200,000 Americans making it the third leading cause of death in the U.S behind cancer and heart disease. COVID-19 has proven to be more than three times as deadly as the flu and the year isn’t over yet. With more than three months left to 2020 the death toll is likely to approach four times the worst flu rate in decades. The U.S. has the tenth highest proportion of deaths to population in the world. Much of the death toll could have been prevented if the president had taken the measures that other countries such as South Korea and Germany did. Even if you’re inclined to discount the recording of Trump telling journalist Bob Woodward that he was downplaying the danger of COVID-19 to avoid a panic it is clear that the president failed to take appropriate measures in a timely manner and continued to discount the danger in public. His supporters in government and those in the public at large have followed his rhetoric with dangerous actions, some have paid the ultimate price by dying from the disease they didn’t believe was deadly.

In the days before hurricane Irma struck Florida in 2017, right wing blowhards Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter used their media platforms to downplay the seriousness of the hurricane claiming it was a liberal hoax. Evacuation patterns show that a significant fraction of Republican voters fell for their spiel and risked their lives as a Category 5 hurricane made landfall nearby.

While the popular vote loser occupying the White House continues to spout claims of the dangers of antifa and Black Lives Matter, he and his appointees are misleading both the public and state and local law enforcement agencies with distorted reports downplaying white nationalist groups like “Boogaloo Boys” and others while at the same time falsely claiming liberal groups are the real danger. Since these reports are coming from federal agencies that have been respected for providing factual information in the past state and local law enforcement act on that information and thus improperly allocate resources and endanger the public.

The final run-up and aftermath of the November election likely will see all of this get worse as Republican voters fall for the president’s claims of voter fraud and election results are delayed by the need to unusually high numbers of mail in ballots. Remember that when asked if he would leave the White House if he lost the election he said “We’ll see”.