The proof that identity politics is a national-security issue finally stared us in the face during this pandemic.
First, we had Joe Biden and friends slamming President Trump as “xenophobic” for banning flights from China in January effectively to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Then the World Health Organization kowtowed to China and gave the Wuhan virus the politically correct new name COVID-19.
When the president kept calling it the “Chinese virus” he was berated as a racist even as Communist Party of China officials lied that the bug had been spread by the American military.
Then CNN complained that the president’s coronavirus task force exemplified the “Trump administration’s lack of diversity,” as if race or gender were more important than assembling the best brains.
Meanwhile, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, rather than concentrating on not botching the rollout of coronavirus test kits, spent time clogging its COVID-19 public-information Web page with gratuitous admonitions about “stigma.”
At the top of the CDC “Frequently Asked Questions” page, two of four items headlined “Basics” are about stigma: “How can people help stop stigma related to COVID-19?”
Under “Symptoms and Testing,” one-third of topics involve stigma.
You have to scroll past these irrelevancies to find important health information, such as “Can the virus . . . be spread through food” and “How can I protect my child.”
We are told at great length what stigma is, who suffers (“persons of Asian descent”) and that it is bad.
Maybe the CDC would do a better job if it remembered its purpose is to control disease, not dictate our interpersonal behavior.
This is just one example of how bureaucracies lose sight of their core business, and blur priorities to satisfy a politically correct agenda, invariably sacrificing competence and clarity.
Today, only the incorrigibly hubristic think they still have the luxury of virtue-signaling in place of virtue.
Which brings us to Nancy Pelosi. You always can tell when the House speaker is doing something egregious because she comes over all prayerful.
This week, as America faced a full-blown economic crisis, Pelosi invoked the pope as she tried to sabotage the Senate’s emergency coronavirus bill.
The surprise alternative House Democratic bill she launched Monday night amounted to a poisonous grab bag of liberal projects: mandatory diversity for company boards, special LGBTQ provisions, pork-barreling for wind and solar, cuts to aircraft emissions, voter-registration strategies designed to help Democrats win elections, and so on, for 1,400 pages.
None of it belonged in a bill designed to bring urgent relief to suffering families and shuttered businesses.
A few hours later, perhaps sensing the mood of the nation, Pelosi dropped her bill like a hot potato, or “put aside some of our concerns for another day,” as she characterized her retreat to CNBC. , after the needless delay, The Senate finally reached agreement on its $2 trillion bill early Wednesday, before hitting a new delay.
Pelosi should be a national pariah for the stunt she pulled in our darkest hour.
She exploited the opportunity of a deadly pandemic to inject the virus of identity politics into corporate America when it was on its knees.
For example: “Any corporation that receives federal aid related to COVID–19 must maintain officials and budget dedicated to diversity and inclusion initiatives for no less than five years after disbursement of funds.” Of course, after five years the company would be wholly woke.
And even to think of demanding airlines cut greenhouse-gas emissions when there is barely a plane left in the sky is perverse to the point of psychopathy.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell treated Pelosi’s ugly opportunism with the contempt it deserved.
“Tax credits for solar energy and wind energy,” he said, reciting various ambitious claims in the bill.
“Force employers to give special new treatment for Big Labor.
“And listen to this: new emissions standards for the airlines.
“Are you kidding me?”
How much of our society’s energies have been squandered on such woke triviality in recent decades, and how effete has it rendered us in the face of adversity? When this is all over, we need to count the opportunity cost.
At least one thing this virus is showing us is that the artificial divisions of identity politics, which the left has used to control us, mean nothing. We all are equally human, and the virus doesn’t distinguish if we are black, white, gay, straight, Chinese, Italian, male or female. We can be Prince Charles or a homeless person and it still can infect us.
Let’s hope our current predicament restores an appreciation of our shared humanity and the wisdom to view Pelosi’s bill as a curious artifact of a dangerously trivial age.
Blasio being hardly ‘handy’
While doctors fretted about the city’s capacity to treat the growing number of victims, Mayor de Blasio tended to such important matters as whether bicycle-repair shops should be counted as essential services, and gratuitously bashing the president on CNN.
His fecklessness forced Gov. Cuomo to do the mayor’s job as well as his own.
As much as Cuomo has stepped up, it’s not ideal, as our greatest ex-mayor, Rudy Giuliani, says, because the governor doesn’t know the capacity of the city like the mayor should.
He might be sidelined but de Blasio is keeping busy. Just the other day, he had the city churn out coronavirus sex guides. Masturbation is encouraged because “you are your safest sex partner . . . especially if you wash your hands . . . with soap and water for at least 20 seconds before and after sex.”
Talk about fiddling while Rome burns!
Safety’s in these bags
It’s time to bring back our beloved single-use plastic bags. Who knows what nasties are lurking inside recycled bags these days? They’re a hazard for customers and grocery workers alike.