By Kate Cohen
Contributing columnist |
Today at 10:16 a.m. EST
The lesson I took from big losses last week in Virginia — and nail-biters elsewhere — had nothing to do with Democrats being too woke or Republicans being super savvy or even gas prices being too high.
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The lesson I took was that it’s never going to end.
Republicans are never going to stop warping reality in a funhouse mirror of fearmongering, and voters are never going to stop falling for it.
I guess I had imagined that, once we emerged from the Trump Era — a.k.a. the Factchecker Era — we’d be able to rest a little easier. Once Democrats had ousted Donald Trump and won a majority in the Senate, we could start improving people’s lives unimpeded (okay, less impeded) by a party whose chief goal appeared to be keeping government from governing (side project: keeping voters from voting). I thought, given the chance, Americans would approve of this refreshing approach and stop buying the lies, and that finally the worst would be over.
That’s how I pictured covid-19, too: After we’d suffered through this terrible, havoc-wreaking, life-altering epidemic, there’d be an economic mess to clean up, losses to mourn and trauma to overcome. But there would be an “after.”
I was wrong on both counts.
As of this week, about 1,200 Americans are still dying of covid every day. And the numbers are worrisome not just in states rife with vaccine refusers: Vermont is experiencing its highest covid rates ever, though its population is more fully vaccinated than that of any other state. The United States might be looking at a fifth wave this winter, and in Britain, where there is a new spike in cases, health officials are monitoring the AY.4.2 variant (a.k.a. “delta plus”). Meanwhile, vaccine-makers are preparing to fight an “escape variant,” should one emerge.
Under these circumstances, it’s hard to foresee a future without masks and booster shots and testing and quarantines and periodic strains on intensive care units around the country.
As for politics, Trump is out, but almost a year later, false, irrational and toxic rhetoric is still in, and it still works: from the viral lie of the stolen election to the rash of anti-transgender legislation across the nation. Every time some crazy, trumped-up nonissue appears to subside, it turns out just to have mutated, as when cancel culture gave way to its shockingly contagious variant: critical race theory.
That’s the viral lie that (combined with assorted campaign comorbidities) killed Terry McAuliffe’s bid for Virginia governor.
What mutation will be next? Will a small subsection of well-funded right-wingers manage to convince voters that raising the minimum wage is a Chinese plot? That Democrats want to take away your milk? That the Scripps National Spelling Bee is anti-Christian? I’m trying to make up something absurd, but I’m afraid to check these fantasies against the Internet for fear they’re not nearly nutty enough. If you can make voters suspicious of voting itself, what can’t you do? Speaking of which, did you know Big Bird was brainwashing children?
Under these circumstances, it’s hard to foresee a future when Democrats won’t have to be countering false narratives, fighting to reach hearts and minds they thought were already won, and trying to convince people that climate change is a more urgent threat than the Woke Army.
This makes me so tired.
For those of us who continue to follow science, check our facts and think high school history classes should be trying to get history right … for those of us who had been inspired by the progress Virginia made over the past few years, from raising the minimum wage to abolishing the death penalty to expanding voting rights … this pandemic of cynical disinformation is exhausting. Just as the never-ending, always evolving actual pandemic is exhausting.
And where the figurative virus meets the literal virus — where spreading lies means spreading covid — it can be fatal.
A few days after the election, 16 Republican state attorneys general filed lawsuits against the Biden administration for its vaccine mandate on businesses employing more than 100 workers. Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers decried the “woke mob” that called him selfish for not getting vaccinated, or, as he put it (while infected with covid) making “a decision in the best interest of my body.”
On the same day, Pfizer announced its new antiviral drug, which the company says will reduce the risk of hospitalization and death for infected patients. That’s a relief. I just wish we could get that for politics too: an antiviral to treat disinformation so that, even if caught, it can be cured.
Because it seems like nothing is going to stop the spread.
Contributing columnist |
Today at 10:16 a.m. EST
The lesson I took from big losses last week in Virginia — and nail-biters elsewhere — had nothing to do with Democrats being too woke or Republicans being super savvy or even gas prices being too high.
Opinions to start the day, in your inbox. Sign up.
The lesson I took was that it’s never going to end.
Republicans are never going to stop warping reality in a funhouse mirror of fearmongering, and voters are never going to stop falling for it.
I guess I had imagined that, once we emerged from the Trump Era — a.k.a. the Factchecker Era — we’d be able to rest a little easier. Once Democrats had ousted Donald Trump and won a majority in the Senate, we could start improving people’s lives unimpeded (okay, less impeded) by a party whose chief goal appeared to be keeping government from governing (side project: keeping voters from voting). I thought, given the chance, Americans would approve of this refreshing approach and stop buying the lies, and that finally the worst would be over.
That’s how I pictured covid-19, too: After we’d suffered through this terrible, havoc-wreaking, life-altering epidemic, there’d be an economic mess to clean up, losses to mourn and trauma to overcome. But there would be an “after.”
I was wrong on both counts.
As of this week, about 1,200 Americans are still dying of covid every day. And the numbers are worrisome not just in states rife with vaccine refusers: Vermont is experiencing its highest covid rates ever, though its population is more fully vaccinated than that of any other state. The United States might be looking at a fifth wave this winter, and in Britain, where there is a new spike in cases, health officials are monitoring the AY.4.2 variant (a.k.a. “delta plus”). Meanwhile, vaccine-makers are preparing to fight an “escape variant,” should one emerge.
Under these circumstances, it’s hard to foresee a future without masks and booster shots and testing and quarantines and periodic strains on intensive care units around the country.
As for politics, Trump is out, but almost a year later, false, irrational and toxic rhetoric is still in, and it still works: from the viral lie of the stolen election to the rash of anti-transgender legislation across the nation. Every time some crazy, trumped-up nonissue appears to subside, it turns out just to have mutated, as when cancel culture gave way to its shockingly contagious variant: critical race theory.
That’s the viral lie that (combined with assorted campaign comorbidities) killed Terry McAuliffe’s bid for Virginia governor.
What mutation will be next? Will a small subsection of well-funded right-wingers manage to convince voters that raising the minimum wage is a Chinese plot? That Democrats want to take away your milk? That the Scripps National Spelling Bee is anti-Christian? I’m trying to make up something absurd, but I’m afraid to check these fantasies against the Internet for fear they’re not nearly nutty enough. If you can make voters suspicious of voting itself, what can’t you do? Speaking of which, did you know Big Bird was brainwashing children?
Under these circumstances, it’s hard to foresee a future when Democrats won’t have to be countering false narratives, fighting to reach hearts and minds they thought were already won, and trying to convince people that climate change is a more urgent threat than the Woke Army.
This makes me so tired.
For those of us who continue to follow science, check our facts and think high school history classes should be trying to get history right … for those of us who had been inspired by the progress Virginia made over the past few years, from raising the minimum wage to abolishing the death penalty to expanding voting rights … this pandemic of cynical disinformation is exhausting. Just as the never-ending, always evolving actual pandemic is exhausting.
And where the figurative virus meets the literal virus — where spreading lies means spreading covid — it can be fatal.
A few days after the election, 16 Republican state attorneys general filed lawsuits against the Biden administration for its vaccine mandate on businesses employing more than 100 workers. Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers decried the “woke mob” that called him selfish for not getting vaccinated, or, as he put it (while infected with covid) making “a decision in the best interest of my body.”
On the same day, Pfizer announced its new antiviral drug, which the company says will reduce the risk of hospitalization and death for infected patients. That’s a relief. I just wish we could get that for politics too: an antiviral to treat disinformation so that, even if caught, it can be cured.
Because it seems like nothing is going to stop the spread.
