Watching North Dakota’s Republican Governor Doug Burgum choke up while describing his state’s covid crisis is to witness a seemingly decent man brought face to face with the immorality of his own cruel political ideology, but still insufficiently moved to make a leap of conscience and actually take the measures within his control that would save some of the lost lives that drive him to tears. Bergum tears up as he describes a vulnerable child who could be saved by wearing a mask, yet his sadness cannot move him to mandate simple measures that might save that theoretical child and help turn those tears of sadness into tears of joy. And so he limits himself to recommending masks and social distancing, while denying that the state government has any role in backing those life-saving recommendations with the force of law.
“It’s not a job for government,” says Bergum.
Yet Burgum appears as possibly the least heinous of the lot of GOP governors discussed in an article out Sunday from The Washington Post. Iowa’s Governor Kim Reynolds “has refused to revisit her decision to lift most restrictions on businesses and to allow students back to class without masks” despite new state coronavirus records this month; she even echoed President Trump’s steroid-addled pronouncement that “We can’t let covid-19 dominate our lives.” Texas Governor Greg Abbott is re-opening bars even though they’re ground zero for coronavirus transmission. And South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem parrots Trump’s propaganda that increasing numbers of cases are due simply to more testing. The Post also notes that Noem shares Trump’s antipathy to scientific knowledge, writing that, “She is one of the few governors who refused to issue a stay-at-home order in the spring, has repeatedly questioned the validity of using masks to reduce viral spread and hosted the president for a massive, tightly packed Fourth of July celebration at Mount Rushmore.”
The common thread among these governors is that they “preach the mantra of “personal responsibility,” insisting that government interventions such as mask mandates or business restrictions are either unnecessary or harmful, and that people should be trusted to make their own decisions about how to keep themselves — and each other — healthy.” What’s especially insidious about this “personal responsibility” over government action line is that of course personal responsibility is essential to stopping the spread of the coronavirus. Of course everyone needs to do their part in slowing and stopping the spread of this virus. This is a point that no one of good faith would question. The problem, as experts interviewed for the article point out, is that a pandemic requires government coordination, not just individual efforts, including stronger rules about what people should and should not do.
The proof of this is the failures unfolding under the watch of these do-nothing governors. North Dakota, with a population of 900,000, has been seeing 900 new cases a day (for comparison, The Hot Screen’s home of Oregon, with a population of 4.2 million, has recently experienced an average of 324 new cases a day over the last week). The other states discussed are likewise seeing their coronavirus situations deteriorate.
And so, as coronavirus spreads in GOP-governed states where personal responsibility is supposedly all, the convenient conclusion is that the people themselves have failed. And this is the point at which Governor Burgum’s tears become not moving, but enraging. He cries at the thought that North Dakotans are not doing all they can to stop a young cancer patient from being infected by the coronavirus. And yet, if those people are constantly hearing from the government that there is no government role in fighting the coronavirus, and if that government does not put in place measures that would help them help themselves, a fair-minded person is in danger of reaching the conclusion that it is actually Governor Burgum, not the ordinary citizen, who has failed to live up to his personal responsibility. He has not done his job; he has failed his state; like Donald Trump, he takes no responsibility.
The reason Burgum and his fellow Republican governors refuse to govern in the matter of the coronavirus is in large part because their conservative ideology refuses to see such governmental activism as within the realm of the possible. After decades of the GOP proclaiming that a democratically-elected government is always the enemy of those who democratically elect it, they must now stand by their word and ensure that their actions make their twisted rhetoric into reality. Because in states like North and South Dakota, Iowa, and Texas, the governors have become, if not enemies, then de facto antagonists of their populace and unintended allies of the virus itself. How else to describe the actions of politicians who have the power to save lives by the most benign of actions — say, by mandating the wearing of a mask in crowded public places — but declare that such actions are not within their power?
And so Republican anti-government ideology has reached it logical conclusion, the murderous end point of what turns out to have been a suicide mission all along. To prove that government can do no good, they withhold the most basic governance amid a pandemic, even if it costs lives. In fact, because a pandemic proves the necessity of competent government, that is exactly when government’s role must be rejected at all costs. In this case, “all costs” means the mass death of innocent Americans who have been failed by those they elected to serve them.
There’s also a perfect fit between Donald Trump, who denies the seriousness of the pandemic so as to maintain the illusion that the economy is strong and he should be re-elected, and Republican politicians at the state level who are fine with pushing their nonsensical ideology to the breaking point. And just as Donald Trump has failed in his duty to protect the American people from harm, and should face voters’ retribution for his failure, no governor has the right to perpetuate mass death in his or her state. When Americans elect governors, they seldom think that they are making a life and death decision. Part of the reason for this is a baseline expectation that governors, when faced with a pandemic, would follow the advice of epidemiologists and other medical professionals. That baseline expectation has now been shown to be inoperative when a governor belongs to the GOP. Such politicians lack the most basic understanding of their responsibilities in a democratic society, and by all rights should be driven from office by an outraged and betrayed citizenry.
The incompetence of Republican governors, and their complicity with President Trump’s failed coronavirus response, has resulted in mass death, suffering, and disruption unseen in the United States within our lifetimes. This needs to be the final chapter of a party that’s made opposition to democratic, competent government its guiding star. If Trump and the GOP are dealt the defeat they deserve in November, it will have been bought at an indescribable price, literally paid for in American lives and incomprehensible suffering. The 200,000-and-counting American dead are not just victims of a virus, but martyrs in the fight to render the anti-democratic GOP null and void as a major American political party.