Politicizing Tragedy

Politicizing Tragedy

When yet another mass shooting occurs in the United States, Republicans respond with “Thoughts and Prayers,” Democrats renew the call for common-sense gun safety laws, and Republicans respond by telling Democrats to stop politicizing a tragedy.

When huge swaths of Los Angeles burned up during the past week, everyone responded with efforts to meet the immediate needs of putting out the fires and finding ways to help the thousands of people who have literally lost everything and the neighboring communities that will never be the same.

Both sides politicized the tragedy – the Republicans by blaming Gavin Newsom for failing to rake the forest and for hiring women and people of color to work for fire departments, and Democrats by lamenting their inability to get Republicans to recognize the reality of climate change and support legislation that could mitigate its impacts.

I was trying to figure out why I don’t find the Democrats’ concerns troubling while I’m appalled by what the Republicans do and say in both sets of circumstances. It may be that I almost always find Democrats to be more reasonable and responsible than Republicans, but I hope there’s more to it than that.

One of the differences is that when the Democrats politicize a mass shooting by calling for gun safety legislation, it’s not when there is still an active shooter in a school or at a concert. After the fact, when the perpetrator is either dead or in custody, Democrats raise the policy options for trying to avert the next mass shooting. When the Republicans politicized the fires this week, however, it was while the disaster was still unfolding. Republicans were trash-talking, in real-time, the firefighters and support personnel who were literally working around the clock, at great risk to their personal safety, to extinguish the fires, rescue and evacuate people, and help them figure out what to do next.

In both situations the Democrats’ approach is forward-thinking and policy-oriented; the Republicans’ approach is to throw up their hands in despair and say “what are you gonna do” when they are faced with a big problem. Their decades-long disdain for government leads them to believe – truly, I think – that there really is nothing government can do.

But there are things the government can do. Republicans have spent decades proclaiming that government doesn’t work – and when they win elections, they fritter their power away on nonsense like renaming the Gulf of Mexico, thereby proving that government doesn’t work. If they are right – that government cannot and does not work – then we are f**ked, because in the absence of government, people who have money will make things happen. But they won’t be working for us – they’ll be working for themselves. As long as it helps them materially, they’ll continue to lie about smelt, water, and anyone who is not a white male — while the world burns.