No time for partisan privilege

No time for privileged partisanship

Virus threatens us all, regardless of where partisan lines lie

Once again, we see the partisan divide rear its nasty head. This time it is about how we should confront the pandemic, but the underlying arguments are the same as they have always been. They boil down to local versus broader geographical control and white privilege.

Starting at the local level, moving on up to counties and then states and then countries, we hear leaders say they are best equipped to deal with the crisis, especially when it comes to allowing businesses to reopen.

I understand the arguments from individuals wanting to go back to work in order to feed themselves and their families. I understand the need of small-business owners to do the same. When I see the “reopen now” protesters’ signs and listen to them, their arguments seem to center not on their individual need to make a living, but on their desire for others to provide services to them such as a haircut or the ability to go shopping as they please. When I dig into large business arguments, I see the need for corporate profit. What we have is a worldwide problem. In our global community with its global economy and ease of international travel, what happens in one place will eventually have an impact every place. It is not as simple as closing national borders; we are too dependent on foreign supply chains for that to be a reality. That leaves us with the need for national leadership to address the problems within our national borders. Unfortunately, our president and his team have not been up to the task.

President Trump has used the pandemic to create his reelection campaign events. Where he could have enlisted the aid of scientists who understand the problem and are the best equipped to solve it, he delivered inconsistent and even conflicting messages that were sometimes life-threatening. Where he could have coordinated a national response to the shortages of personal protective gear for health care workers and first responders, he seized orders for the gear placed by states for a federal stockpile his son-in-law thought was for the federal government to have, not the states. When he could have implemented plans to reopen the economy that protected workers in essential and other endeavors, he left it to employers to look out for the welfare of their employees.

With the failure of our national leadership, each state has been left to its leaders elected to manage the crisis within their respective borders. In states with single-party control in at least two branches of government, responses have been comparatively effective to the extent that those plans have relied upon the advice of scientists and health care providers. Governors Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y., Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, and Larry Hogan, RMd., have all shown what effective and responsible leadership looks like and brought some measure of control to the spread of the virus in their states. States with responsible leaders are forming regional alliances in the West, Northeast and Midwest to coordinate uniform responses to help contain the spread of the virus.

In those states where governors and legislatures have been led by business interests and not science and health care, the virus continues to spread.

Within states like Wisconsin with divided government and a strong partisan divide, the problem becomes much clearer. We have a state where the virus is just about everywhere, but the numbers of people infected and the numbers of deaths are far greater in urban communities of color and places where hourly wage earners work shoulder to shoulder, like meat processors.

Those who live outside of these hotspots have not seen the impacts up close and personal, except on the news or if a friend or relative got sick. In this space of privilege, leaders feel comfortable opposing state-level controls and demanding local or regional control efforts more closely tailored to the needs and desires of their constituent populations.

Here in Kewaskum, our village president rails against outside control because our numbers are zero. He conveniently ignores Highway 45 that leads directly from urban Milwaukee through our village and those who will commute to the city if and when it reopens for business. We have county leaders who have penned their own blueprint for reopening and joined the lawsuit against Governor Evers’ statewide orders aimed at containing the spread. Their arguments are similar, noting our county’s numbers of those infected and those who have died are low so we should be allowed to move faster than other places to reopen for business. They, too, ignore the reality that what happens in Milwaukee or Kenosha or Jefferson or Brown or Dane County will eventually impact us here.

This is not a time for local, much less individual, control of the response to the virus. We are all in this together and unless we all work together to contain the spread, the virus will spread to all our communities, infecting and killing even those privileged to live in what are now relatively safe places.