Set aside for a moment that our government was woefully unprepared to deal with a freak virus like the new one straight out of China because, more importantly, our culture almost set us up for it.
There’s no other way to explain so much of the response to it that seems less like an urgent fear of seeing the COVID-19 virus spread and more like an aggressive backlash to anyone who might say, You know, maybe Americans should be a lot more skeptical of foreign countries that don’t really see things the way we do.
China is out and out hostile to American interests, even bragging that they’re well-positioned to stand by and watch a lot of us die lest we cease blaming them (accurately and appropriately) for unleashing this havoc on the world. And yet the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, chosen by millions of voters, has called it “xenophobic” and “racial” to point the finger at the culprit.
Following the president’s referrals to the coronavirus by its country of origin, or as “Chinese,” Democratic California Rep. Ted Lieu wrote in the Washington Post that the “repeated insistence on calling coronavirus the ‘Chinese virus’ is more than just xenophobic; it causes harm both to Asian Americans and to the White House’s response to this life-threatening pandemic.”
There’s a big distinction between blaming Chinese Americans or the Chinese people and accurately pointing out the culpability of the Chinese government, whose early lies turned what might have been a containable outbreak into a pandemic that has brought the world to a halt and already killed tens of thousands.
The New York Times, our country’s most important newspaper, actually suggested in an editorial last week that even as three of the last pandemics originated abroad, including in Mexico (H1N1, aka swine flu), now is the time to revisit President Trump’s “animosity” toward illegal immigrants, which the paper said have been disproportionately victimized.
When every American, having been told by the administration to stop working and shutter themselves in their homes, was looking at Congress for financial relief, House Democrats crafted multitrillion-dollar bill that, among other things, mandates that any business in need of financial relief “has adopted a policy, plan, or strategy to promote racial, ethnic, and gender diversity.”
This is life or death. Or rather, it’s life, but with an anticipated 100,000 to 200,000 deaths come August. But these are the things so many of the people who hold power within our culture care about.
Yes, both Democratic and Republican administrations have failed us in preparing for something like this. But even worse, our culture got us ready for it to happen.
