If good news happens, then government's instinctive
response is: how can we spin this in order to take all the credit? Usually,
they find a way, and spin it they do. So
if, for example, the economy improves, or some new innovation makes life easier
for everyone, then of course it happened because of our superb governmental leadership!
Handling bad news is a bit more
complicated, but there are still options.
The classic technique is to find an enemy, or a scapegoat; a "they",
if you will. Other nations make great
enemy scapegoats. Some examples: Our enemies are planning to attack us! Foreigners are stealing our jobs! Other nations are competing unfairly! "They" have the wrong style of
government, or worship the wrong god, and besides they don't look like us or
talk like us!
If it's not feasible to find a foreign scapegoat
to blame, then the fallback strategy is:
hide it or lie about it. The
classic example of this approach occurred during the Chernobyl disaster. The Soviet government repeatedly said: all is well, nothing to worry about, we have
the situation under control.
A variation on that strategy is to kill
the messenger. You saw this happen when
the Coronavirus first broke out in China.
When a Chinese physician discovered that a mysterious and highly
infectious disease was on the loose, the Chinese government had him arrested
and jailed. (He later died in jail.)
Here in America, our illustrious
President regularly follows that playbook.
His favorite scapegoats are the Democrats, the news media, his predecessors,
or anyone who dares to criticize him. He
would love nothing better than to silence or severely restrict the news media
so they would quit saying negative things about him, or quit asking tough
questions, or failing to worship and idolize him. (But that darn, pesky Constitution keeps getting
in the way, dang it.)
Regarding the Coronavirus, Trump has been
all over the map. First he tried to deny
it, Chernobyl-style; it's nothing, all is well, we have it under control, it
will go away tomorrow. When the virus
failed to go away, he next blamed it on the Chinese. In fairness, yes, the Chinese government
indeed deserves scorn and condemnation for their attempt at suppressing news of
it. (Side note: it was the Chinese GOVERNMENT, not the Chinese
people, who committed this crime. Hate
and racism directed to Asians is totally misplaced.)
But blaming it on the Chinese doesn't solve
the problem of what to do about it now that it is clearly spreading rapidly
across our land. Next strategy: get the governors involved in the blame/credit
game. Initially, it was something like
this: if a state's virus cases go down,
claim credit, but if they go up, blame the governor. Then that morphed into: if a state's economy improves, claim credit,
but if it worsens, blame the governor.
Never mind the obvious contradiction here, that nobody has figured out a
way to simultaneously accomplish opposite goals of preventing the virus spread AND
opening up the economy.
Remember, dear reader, that protecting your
health and welfare never was a true goal of government. Governments can and will lie and obfuscate
and distort the facts to preserve their power and control over us. Some governments are worse than others, that
is true, but no government anywhere is the godly saint that some make it out to
be. During these hard times with global pandemics
tearing our world apart, government is NOT your friend. Be cynical and vigilant of everything.
No comments:
Post a Comment