Outsourcing Outrage

The Republican right - which is the vast bulk of that party - has jumped onto the protest bandwagon. A major astroturf operation is underway, in part financed by extreme right wingers like the DeVos family, to provide Trump with a grass roots movement to give him cover for his criminal dereliction of his duty and violation of this oath of office. They have turned loose a motely collection of fringe groups demanding the right to contaminate all of us with the Covid-19 virus. In Michigan this was downright ugly.

It’s important to pull back for a moment. The policies Whitmer and 42 other governors have put in place to stop a pandemic have been carefully crafted by public health officials. It’s not that they want to be a buzzkill or kill the economy (seriously, no politician wants that, just out of sheer self-preservation). It’s because the disease has spread so rapidly and killed so many. Drastic times call for drastic measures.

With almost 30,000 COVID-19 cases, Michigan has the fourth-most in the nation. But the protestors didn’t even do a feint to acknowledging the 2,000 people who have lost their lives or the families they left behind. It was just primal screams against the Democratic governor and calls for Trump to make everything great again.

For a party that’s ostensibly dedicated to the sanctity of life, Republicans have repeatedly and flagrantly demonstrated how little they care about their neighbors dying of an excruciating disease that can feel like shards of glass have filled your lungs.