This is true in the same way that if a homeless person had a million dollars he might not be homeless. The trick is how to get a functioning welfare state when your government is fundamentally broken.
Note that the even the CDC failed spectacularly at its primary job; its literal raison d'etre. You can criticize that the CDC lacked funding, but that is wrong[^1] and it misses the point: not being able to properly fund our agencies is itself evidence (if not proof) of government incompetence.
[^1]: Procuring masks and other PPE or even planning for a supply chain shortage is the cheapest, most impactful thing they could have done even without the benefit of hindsight (we knew from previous epidemics like SARS and MURS that the most likely epidemic would be respiratory in nature). Similarly, it's cheap enough to plan for standardized outbreak data collection and reporting (we should have known right away how many confirmed cases, deaths, recoveries, and tests we had in every locale). Similarly, we should have also had plans for scaling out testing capability. We also shouldn't have rolled our own (fallible, time consuming) tests if we were cash strapped--we should have used the WHO tests. Planning is relatively cheap and by all appearances the CDC didn't do it at all.
I liked Obama and everything, but I don't think the federal government was meaningfully more capable of administering a significant welfare program then than it is now. As much as we like to pretend that Obamacare was a great success, I don't get the feeling that it dramatically improved circumstances on balance (premiums went up across the board but coverage for preexisting conditions is guaranteed so that's something I guess).
I'm sure we'll all talk about how this is all the Republicans' fault, and that may well be true; however, it doesn't excuse us from perpetuating the cycle of divisiveness at every opportunity; however, cathartic that may be. We need to work to understand and build bridges if we're to be more than Pyrrhic victors. Of course partisanship and tribalism will always be more popular until we've reached whatever low we're willing to accept.
Obamacare was huge for pre-existing conditions and the marketplace, you actually had options now, instead of zero. Also Obamacare was watered down to appease Republican interests at the time. There was no interest in building bridges during it's building, Republicans were laying out the dynamite, and spent a hell of a lot of wasted effort after Trump took office trying to trigger that dynamite.
It is hard to meet in they middle when both sides are extremely far apart, and each side has factions that are even further apart than ever before.
Really we need more than two parties dictating the agenda. It is getting harder for the far left to even want deal with Democrats, much less Republicans. The same is happening with the far/alt right.
Why? Naivety. He wanted it to be bipartisan. This is about as in the middle as you can get, and it wasn't good enough. It wasn't just watered down for the blue dogs or Lieberman.
I mean, ok. But, if Lieberman (the 60th vote) was willing to vote for something farther left (hypothetically), why not remove that stuff once you realize it won't get republican votes?
I'll agree that Lieberman played a large role in the death of the public option. That said it was eleventh hour and further changes to the bill would require more time to rectify, and Republicans were still involved down to the wire, even if they didn't vote for it.
> There was no interest in building bridges during it's building, Republicans were laying out the dynamite, and spent a hell of a lot of wasted effort after Trump took office trying to trigger that dynamite.
So what's the point? One could argue that Republicans were responding in kind. You would disagree (as would I, but that doesn't matter). This kind of endless litigation only polarizes us--we each permit our own extremists because we believe they are slightly less bad than the other side's extremists. I think a multi-party system would be helpful, but I think the problems run deeper (especially since we're seeing the same trends toward polarization in countries with multi-party systems).
I think at its core the problem is that our epistemological institutions are corrupted by extremists. We aren't having an actual debate because the "hosts" or "moderators" of the debate are only presenting one perspective and only the facts that support it. The other side isn't going to have their opinions changed because their questions aren't being addressed, only shouted down and maligned. I think this lack of real national discussion drives each side to be more entrenched and more extreme, and I think this is somewhat by design--the media in particular seems to be optimizing for it deliberately.
I think we need to build a collective awareness of the manipulation we're subject to. We need to understand that the folks on the other side of the party line aren't evil, but that we're being presented with a distorted perspective (although certainly many on each side really are bad). We need to start moderating ourselves as individuals and developing empathy for people on the other side of the party line while demanding better of our institutions. We won't start agreeing with each other on everything or indeed many things (and certainly not overnight), but we should be able to have productive debate and work gradually through issues. We need to start humanizing each other and finding common ground.
Obamacare didn't actually need Republican support, but Obama did try to reach out an olive branch to the right, and it was stomped on repeatedly.
It is very hard to empathize with conservative capitalists, libertarians or the alt right, when much of their policies seem to be based on a lack of empathy.
It's also kind of sad that rioting, protests and raw anger over recent social issues has been more effective at moving the needle than decades of political handwringing. I don't think this is going to help with any "see it from both sides and meet in the middle" arguments.
> Obamacare didn't actually need Republican support, but Obama did try to reach out an olive branch to the right, and it was stomped on repeatedly.
Right. He had the right idea. Of course things wouldn’t change over night. One man making positive gestures is important but insufficient to turn the ship on a dime. A lot of mistrust had been built up by that time and others were continuing to build that mistrust. I think he did a lot to stem the tide of divisiveness, especially given how quickly things fell apart in that regard after he left office.
Again, I don't buy the "meet in the middle" approach or the "both sides are at fault" theory. Only one side has a populist leader who's platform was to foment racism and pledged to destroy Obamacare, and basically no one is reigning him in. If anything, people are volunteering for their chance to be thrown under the bus. It's very hard to meet in the middle with the current situation. There is serious moral concern if meeting in the middle means "a moderate amount of racism is acceptable", and when reaching an olive branch on policies results in no cooperation and instead pledges of destruction down the road.
However even with Democrats, there are a lot of people who think Bernie was unfairly treated, and that Biden is in bed with corporations, while establishment democrats think you should vote "blue no matter who", and that Bernie supporters were loons. Again, hard to come to a middle ground even within each party.
I don’t know man. I don’t see how we’re going to go anywhere if we’re determined to only see the worst qualities in our opposition. Notably contrary to your point, lots of conservatives are Never Trumpers and are very unhappy about the populist turn things have taken. Anyway, if you’re interested in minimizing racism, “the middle” is where we should be. The poles are obsessed with their racial hierarchies. Moderates are committed to a post-racial egalitarian future, even if they don’t have all of the information or political power to push things over the line. But anyway, good luck; it feels like doubling down on polarization, division, intolerance, etc is a recipe for disaster, but I guess I hope I’m wrong since it seems like the direction we’re committing ourselves to as a country.
I have a hard time finding a middle ground that would have it be acceptable for people of color to be considered lesser, but this has been the status quo for decades after the civil rights act. There is no moderate position to take on the matter of racism, no meeting in the middle with those who want to uphold racist institutions or systems. Moderate behavior comes off as weak tea inaction in order to restore an unsatisfactory status quo. Both sides should have polarized views pointed towards anti-racism, it should not even be something on the table that needs to be bargained for, but that's not the case.
MLK Jr was not a moderate, and had problems with their ineffectiveness.
The article is 2 years old, what was done in those two years to help prevent the outcome we're seeing now? More black men got shot by police with little to no action done about it.
I think you’re mistaken. The moderate position minimizes for racism; moderate doesn’t mean “status quo” or “50% racism” or whatever you seem to think it means. Like everyone, moderates don’t know how to fix the cycles of poverty and violence in inner city communities that lead to disparate outcomes, but that doesn’t mean they are unwilling (note that there is broad support across the spectrum for police reform). And progressives haven’t articulated any policies apart from “abolish the police” (which is flatly rejected by 70% of black Americans)—otherwise they just kind of shout about “dismantling whiteness/white supremacy/systemic racism/systems of oppression/capitalism” but they can’t seem to define any of those terms concretely or coherently much less articulate policies. So it’s not like progressives are actually going to do anything about racism that moderates wouldn’t; the difference in my mind is that in their effort to eliminate racism they would succeed only in creating a hyper-racial society that doesn’t value free speech, due process, equality, or other human rights (not to mention widespread economic damage from “dismantling capitalism”).
Police are being charged with murder for things that would likely have been covered up and swept under the rug previously. Confederate monuments and those paying tribute to slavery and/or colonialism have been torn down from public display. Racist mascots are being retired. Conversations around hostile work environments and pay gap for POC are happening and being aired in the open. Why hasn't moderate action been effective enough to even get that done? It seems a few weeks of unrest has done more than decades of tepidness.
Treat people as equals doesn't exactly need a list of demands, but the discrimination has become so ingrained that some need it spelled out for them.
> when much of their policies seem to be based on a lack of empathy
This is a misunderstanding. The difference is not in the presence or absence of empathy, but rather in how that empathy is expressed: private interaction or government programs. The libertarians are not lacking in empathy; they just don't see it as a suitable justification for political action.
Of course, if you only discuss the problem from a political angle, and consider only political solutions, then it would indeed seem like they aren't interested in solving it at all, when in fact they are very interested in finding a solution—just one that doesn't involve force.
> Procuring masks and other PPE or even planning for a supply chain shortage is the cheapest, most impactful thing they could have done even without the benefit of hindsight
IIRC we did have a massive stockpile of masks, but it was only discovered at the start of the pandemic that they weren't being rotated out and most/all of them had degraded too far to be safe.
> You can criticize that the CDC lacked funding, but that is wrong[^1] and it misses the point: not being able to properly fund our agencies is itself evidence (if not proof) of government incompetence.
I'm not sure how this works out, considering we have one party whose entire stated goal is to defund the government and reduce government size. They are also the ones pulling the levers right now and have admitted over and over again to slash-and-burn styles of governing. Our government is fundamentally broken because we elect people who break the government and then say it's broken, so we need less of it.
> Similarly, we should have also had plans for scaling out testing capability. We also shouldn't have rolled our own (fallible, time consuming) tests if we were cash strapped--we should have used the WHO tests. Planning is relatively cheap and by all appearances the CDC didn't do it at all.
We had a pandemic response team and the previous admin did make plans in case of a future pandemic. Our current one decided to toss most of that out and downsize said response team. Additionally the US Government was literally seizing masks and undermining the CDC every step of the way.
> I'm not sure how this works out, considering we have one party whose entire stated goal is to defund the government and reduce government size. They are also the ones pulling the levers right now and have admitted over and over again to slash-and-burn styles of governing. Our government is fundamentally broken because we elect people who break the government and then say it's broken, so we need less of it.
I agree with this assessment to the extent that we keep electing poor officials, but I don't think it's a "one party is amazing and the other is terrible". In particular, the CDC's issues were around a long time before the prior administration (again, SARS was in 2003 and we scarcely made preparations in the intervening years). To the extent that the problem is the officials we elect, I think that's partially true--I think the government is an emergent property of the health of our body politic, but our body politic is highly partisan (as evidenced by your comment). This is partly due to a divisive media but also probably to our two party system. We will keep electing worse officials because those officials can make a plausible argument that they are at least marginally better than the officials in the other party. The bar keeps getting lower; it's a race to the bottom.
> We had a pandemic response team and the previous admin did make plans in case of a future pandemic. Our current one decided to toss most of that out and downsize said response team. Additionally the US Government was literally seizing masks and undermining the CDC every step of the way.
The pandemic response team wasn't part of the CDC, but yes, disposing of that team was a bad idea in hindsight. It doesn't absolve the CDC; however, and it misses the point in the same way that the "but the government didn't properly fund the CDC!" argument misses the point.
Note that the even the CDC failed spectacularly at its primary job; its literal raison d'etre. You can criticize that the CDC lacked funding, but that is wrong[^1] and it misses the point: not being able to properly fund our agencies is itself evidence (if not proof) of government incompetence.
[^1]: Procuring masks and other PPE or even planning for a supply chain shortage is the cheapest, most impactful thing they could have done even without the benefit of hindsight (we knew from previous epidemics like SARS and MURS that the most likely epidemic would be respiratory in nature). Similarly, it's cheap enough to plan for standardized outbreak data collection and reporting (we should have known right away how many confirmed cases, deaths, recoveries, and tests we had in every locale). Similarly, we should have also had plans for scaling out testing capability. We also shouldn't have rolled our own (fallible, time consuming) tests if we were cash strapped--we should have used the WHO tests. Planning is relatively cheap and by all appearances the CDC didn't do it at all.