Opinion: American Politicians Are Failing During the Pandemic

We need direction. Clear, consistent, agreed upon direction and we need it sooner than yesterday. World leaders are struggling to keep the infections down; meanwhile, the US is struggling to keep its healthcare system afloat and the population with food and shelter. As the food banks become overwhelmed and the ICU capacity dwindles to its lowest availability since the start of the pandemic, we see one thing very clearly: Nobody knows what the hell is going on.

Both sides of the aisle, equally incompetent, are bicker like children. Meanwhile, only a handful of elected representatives want to stand on the floor and at least attempt to represent their constituents. Most of our elected officials seem to want to make shady closed door deals, and brag about withholding the financial aid that the American people have needed for months, like it’s ransom money in a hostage negotiation; so they can fit in whatever other devious money making scheme they’ve concocted into the last two paragraphs of the bill. Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi, I’m looking at you.

They want to shut things down. That’s fine. But what we need is consistency. You can’t close a restaurant because it’s a gathering of people and then turn around and send kids to a petri-dish of other children for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Each day returning home, as if we don’t know about the high rate of asymptomatic transmission, and up to 2 week length of incubation/ transmission period. I mean, honestly, does that really make any sense? Do people really believe their kids go to school and follow mask rules, when we can’t even make full grown adults do it?

The failure of this government to act like they are “of, for, and by the people” is deserving of legitimate reform. Maybe they could find it useful to act in our best interest and lay out proper guidance, (as well as provide some form of financial relief and shelter protection), if they didn’t get paid until they actually did their jobs? Or, what if we created legislation that prohibited bribing of public officials. Zero lobbying, no little gifts or favors from corporations, or anyone for that matter. Since so many people are paying attention now, we could even have election finance reform! All the candidates get equal airtime on the networks, and their campaigns are funded via a tax rebate that goes to the candidate you choose. Imagine, politicians being able to act in the best interest of the American people instead of campaigning, making calls, and throwing fundraisers just to ask for donations?!

As countries that took the warnings seriously and put into action swift motions to protect their population begin returning to normal during the holiday season, the US is hitting record numbers for cases and deaths. People are losing their employment, healthcare, and homes because our government failed to act and continues to do so. One thing is for certain, if our political leadership does not figure out how to work together, and very soon; the current situation will have millions of Americans struggling for survival and have 100,000’s more in body bags, needlessly.