In the Fall of 2014, the hot new crisis de jour was the Ebola outbreak in Western Africa. From a public health point of view, the best way to keep the Western world safe was fairly boring and straightforward.
- Help Western Africa treat their victims
- Minimize the spread of Ebola from the current infection pool to future potential infection pools
- Send public health workers, nurses and doctors to support, reinforce and aid public health systems at risk of being overwhelmed.
- Send drugs
- Send money
- Monitor for infection of travelers to Western Africa.
- Don’t panic
This is a standard response to epidemics — contain the current pool, quarantine immediately at risk populations, and reduce the spread to new populations. It is also boring as hell.
The Republican Party collectively shit the bed and advocated policy solutions of flight bans, visa restrictions, quarantines for American medical personnel who were asymptomatic and lots of other things that would have made the actual problem on the ground worse.
And the Republican Party used Ebola as a fear inducing agent of the other, and picked up a boat load of seats in the mid-term. And then Ebola dropped from the political discourse by lunchtime on Wednesday after the election.
As Betty noted down-blog, it looks like radicalization will be the Ebola of 2015/2016. Policies that actually address the problem are seen as weak and ineffective and don’t re-assure fearful Americans, so we’ll compete to be stupid and counter-productive.
Wonderful!
JMG
Many Americans and most Republicans believe that if a problem can’t be shot or bombed, it can’t be solved.
JPL
MSM allowed the shit to flow. It was embarrassing to watch the way sitting members of Congress treated the head of the CDC.
Baud
I’d believe that if 2014 weren’t a low-turnout election, even for a mid-term. If Republicans have that much mind control over Democratic voters, then we should just disband the party.
Baud
On a positive note, I’m really happy recent comments is back.
benw
We’re way too far out from the 2016 election to know what the Right Wingers will be curling up in fear about in order to mobilize their base.
rikyrah
These are the same muthaphuckas who fell for Shrub lying us into 2 wars.
They deserve the contempt that I feel towards them.
muddy
Last year while the Ebola hooha was going on, a woman at work told me that we were in the end times, she could tell by Ebola and climate change. She said it very casually, as though she were discussing the content of the noon news.
I had to wonder why she was busting her butt for minimum wage, if I thought the end was nigh I’d sit home to wait.
Nutella
@JPL:
MSM didn’t just ‘allow’ it. They helpfully provided the firehose for it.
burnspbesq
Hardly surprising.
BTW, the officiating in the women’s College Cup final really sucked. Hope that wasn’t you out there.
piratedan7
The whole idea here revolves around the concept of being safe, feeling secure.
For some reason the MSM (at this point a wholly owned fellow traveler of the establishment GOP) is focusing on Muslims and DAESH as the vector for instilling fear into the lives of everyday Amerikuns when we’re all a damn sight more likely to be killed by a disgruntled co-worker and/or your “lone-wolf” gunman who decides that the best way to get back at a tyrannical government is to kill people in schools and movie theaters (excepting being killed while being black by local LEO).
The GOP feeds on fear, and to be fair, that’s all they have to sell. I think once you break it down, we have one group that simply wants to try and allow us all to get along and live our lives and try to be fair to folks, for the most part. Then we have the other side that wants to be in power and doesn’t want anyone else to be in charge because of reasons and the vague idea that making them pay more in taxes is somehow the worst fucking thing evah.
Elie
I always hope and pray that good people everywhere will be present and act in just the right places to prevent the worst. Its always that way anyway… a few people saving the day through their courage and willingness to do what is necessary.
I look for many disruptions – intentional and non – over the next year. Since fear is all that the right has, I expect to be getting it morning, noon and night, but I am not despairing and I do not believe that we should as a group. We keep each other strong and lean into whatever is needed to be done to try to keep civilization on top.
D58826
Changing a few words in the bullit points and that is what Obama is trying to do with Daesh. Obviously it isn’t quite as easy since Daesh is made up of sentient human beings but the general principle still applies.
jl
Been very busy, so my TV time has been limited to important things, like watching Golden State Warriors win all their games and evening news. But, I guess there is a terrorism panic ambling about the countryside? The corporate hack news actor frauds on the corporate hack news TV tell me there is, so I suppose so.
So far, I see no reason to believe the criminals who committed the atrocity in San Bernardino are much different the Dear or Roof crimes. Lone wolf fans of violent extremism freelancing. So, I don’t see why there is more fuss about this one than any of the others. But then, I live in the SF Bay Area, so probably doesn’t make any difference, since US reactionaries like Lush and O’Reilly are as eager for us to get blown up as anyone else is.
Did catch the Trump and Sanders interviews on the Face the Nation. Trump was idiotic and disgusting. Sanders was too willing to let the hack Dickerson control the interview.
Edit: and thanks to RM for reminding us about the perfect record of our wonderful reactionaries, who are compiling a perfect record of cowardice, craven demagoguery and fear mongering to further the cause of bad policies that would lead to failure and catastrophe. But they are treated like Very Serious People who have something useful to say by the corporate media.
Elie
— adding to what I commented on — remember the elderly black ladies who were made to stand in line for almost 12 hours to vote (for Obama) because there weren’t enough ballots or some such. They refused to leave without voting. Volunteers brought them chairs but they waited. Lots of people will do this sort of bravery…
We must keep talking about the good, the things that are at the heart of what we value. We must point ourselves in that direction no matter what.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
Pretty amazing to think that Paris is in TRUTH(tm) an American city like Des Moines and not a den of cheese eating surrendor monkeys like I seem to recall my friends on the Right telling me for years. The one that got my teeth really grinding was The Globe demanding Obama be impeached because he knew about the Paris attacks and did nothing – even if he did, since when has France stopped being a soverign nation?
Anthony
I think the democrats may have figured out a way to defuse the situation with the ban guns from people on the terror watch list. Sure, it’s patently illegal, but it looks like a COMMON SENSE SOLUTION(TM), and forces republicans into the position of mumbling about due process and supreme court precedents. And that sort of confusion/red-herring is sort of the perfect evil genius strategy for defusing the mounting pressure to force Obama into doing something stupid like more ground troops in Syria or racial profiling.
the Conster
This country is itching to be fascist. I’m terrified.
scav
@Enhanced Voting Techinques: That and their drooling hero worship of bare-brested KGB Putin while trumpeting the US President is a commie, a gay-enabling commie . . . .
Gin & Tonic
I was thinking of the ebola comparison just last night. All that breathless panic, and in the end, not a single American contracted the disease in the Us and died. Zero. But the obvious lesson there is, I guess, too obvious for our media. Panic sells clicks/views/minutes/papers. Calm and rational responses do not.
Bobby Thomson
@D58826: I think that’s exactly Richard’s point.
D58826
@Gin & Tonic: And its working. From KOS
Will we ever learn? That is a rhetorical question I already know the answer.
Peale
@Enhanced Voting Techinques:
Obama: Yeah, I knew something like this was going to happen. It was only a matter of time. Let’s keep calm.
Globe headline: Obama Knew About Paris Attacks
OzarkHillbilly
@JMG: Wrong. Many Americans and most Republicans believe that nearly ALL problems can be bombed into submission. The few problems that can’t can be solved by tax cuts.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Thank you. I’ve seen it repeated as an article of faith that the Ebola scare caused the midterm losses, and that never rang true to me either.
rikyrah
@the Conster:
They were always itching….you weren’t paying attention.
So stand up and call it out for what it is.
FlipYrWhig
@the Conster:
Just the Republicans. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the stupidest and most bloodthirsty part of the country IS the country.
Baud
@D58826: A disturbing trend, but “ground troops” doesn’t necessarily mean that Americans are yet ready to support an Iraq-style invasion.
sharl
@JPL:
~
They sure did! I remember Diane Rehm going all Edith Heare on her NPR show around that time, with her expert guest Anthony Fauci doing everything in his power – largely in vain, as I recall – to keep the discussion on a sober and thoughtful level.
I dunno, maybe it was useful to bring awareness to Fauci – in the (IMO unlikely) event that he wasn’t already aware of the depths of ignorance in the general populace – if Rehm was acting as a stand-in representative of her older and relatively affluent totebagging listeners. At the time though, it sure seemed like a waste of a world renowned expert’s time. I was pissed off listening to that, and thought Rehm deserved the History Channel guy with the weird hair instead of Fauci.
jl
@D58826: Ugh.
” The broadest gap comes on refugees. Overall, 38% of Americans say the U.S. should allow refugees from Syria to seek asylum, 61% say they should not be allowed to seek asylum in the U.S. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaners, 60% think Syrian refugees should be allowed to seek asylum in the U.S., just 17% of Republicans and Republican-leaners agree.”
Here’s a link to the CNN poll quoted in the DK story:
Poll: Most Americans say send ground troops to fight ISIS.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/06/politics/isis-obama-poll/index.html
And the story notes that the poll was taken before the shootings in San Berdoo.
And the front page of TPM is full of disgusting and cowardly and stupid GOP filth on the issue.
Reminds me of before the Iraq invasion, when I was trying to talk panicked (self-professedly liberal) friends down from supporting W’s Iraq invasion. Their arguments went “We have to to do SOMETHING!”. Trying to reason with them was pointless.
I think Sanders is hitting a good note in bluntly warning the country to not be stupid and reminding everyone of the mess we got into the last time the country panicked and let a tough talking incompetent run off and do half-assed tough stuff.
OzarkHillbilly
@sharl:
That’s exactly what Diane was doing. She does it often, especially when she can’t find someone with relevant knowledge to take the opposite side, which in the case of ebola was no one in existence. She could have put up any of a dozen Republicans but they all knew Fauci would make them look like an idiot.
It is irritating but sometimes necessary.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: I tend to think Ebola and ISIS porn put Cory Gardner and Tom Tillis over the top (though the former was also helped by a really fucking bad campaign by Mark Udall and a couple other factors)
D58826
@Baud: , True but it took a couple of months for the Bushes to convince the public that invading Iraq was a good idea. While things are a bit different now, i.e. a democratic president, things could still spiral out of control by next falls election. The fact that a majority are even thinking along those lines after the experience of the past 15 years is depressing.
jl
Tweet from E Erickson for anniversary of Pearl Harbor attack:
” Growing up, I remember my parents never letting us have Asian food on December 7th. They were children of WWII. ”
I guess another clipping for the Annals of GOP Outreach. And a reminder of that US reactionaries are bigoted racist ignorant morons. Looks like they are bringing the same level of knowledge and wisdom to the problem of mass shootings and terrorism.
The Environment in Which Trump Can Thrive
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2015/12/the-environment-in-which-trump-can-thrive
sharl
@OzarkHillbilly: Aw man, if she’s doing a totebagger version of Stephen Colbert, I’ll have to tip my (figurative) hat to her. I just hope (and would assume) she preps her expert/qualified guests before going on air, to avoid them getting exasperated in a very audible and inconvenient manner.
Has she said publicly somewhere that she does that? I’d love to read the interview (or whatever).
D58826
@jl: From the annals of the stupid. After WWI they dropped German from high school curriculum because …. So in 1941 we were bit short of translators. And just as with freedom fries they renamed sauerkraut freedom cabbage. Nothing much changes.
Baud
@D58826: I think we can stay off the ground if we can get others in the region to take the situation seriously. But unlike Saddam, ISIS is actually targeting the U.S. and Europe. We can debate how high a death count they can achieve in comparison to the other things that kill us, but I think it’s unrealistic to expect people to be ok with the government doing nothing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@D58826: I wish I could type in Molly Ivins’ drawl to quote her about how they went around kicking dachshunds, you wanna bet none of them sumbitches ever kicked a german shepherd…
les
At least we can win this one…
different-church-lady
The thing to remember here is that the goals of the two sides are utterly different: Republicans didn’t shit the bed because they’re fretful or incompetent or stupid, they shit the bed because getting people freaked out is the goal itself. Sane people view Ebola as a public health threat. Republicans see Ebola as a tool towards a political goal.
These are not honest people we’re dealing with.
JMG
It’s really easy for Americans to favor a ground war because they know they won’t be going. If Obama really wants to put an end to war fever, he should just say that if circumstances require another ground war in the Middle East, he’ll reinstate the draft or ask Congress to do so, and if they won’t, no war.
Betty Cracker
@jl: The dumb acorn didn’t fall far from the stupid tree, then…
jnfr
As Charlie Pierce said:
The President Seemed to Be Talking to Some Other Country Last Night
One that is wiser, more rational, and would not buy the snake oil being peddled by Donald Trump.
“I would like to live in that country some day.”
So would I, Charlie. So would I.
jl
@Baud:
” but I think it’s unrealistic to expect people to be ok with the government doing nothing. ”
But the government is not doing nothing. Maybe it should do more, but (recalling Sander’s warnings) it should not do stupid things. I think both mass shootings by freelance violent fanatics (which is what I think the Charleston, PP and San Berdoo shootings were) and organized efforts to use terror as a tool by ISIS and al Qaeda are very serous problems, at least as serious as Ebola. So, they should not be handled stupidly. But the GOP and worthless corporate media are pushing the US towards stupid and failure.
Edit: and note the the intrepid GOP is still can’t get a spending plan together. They won’t help with Syrian refugees, either by taking some in or sending money to help Jordan and Lebanon.
scav
Supporting war is simple: they’ve seen it in the proper movies. Heroic! Epic! Starring roles in Pure Technicolor and better still, probably won’t actually impact their actual lives in any real fashion. There are other people to get actually hurt, for both teams. Detect Obvious. Blockbuster Reruns are all the rage.
les
At least it’s a competition we can win…
different-church-lady
@jnfr:
Perhaps it’s the part of the country that doesn’t spend its entire life watching cable news.
Richard Mayhew
@burnspbesq: Most definitely not me. my last game was early November
Michael Bersin
Yes, and those large city community organizers are the worst of all.
One of the two republican candidates for Missouri Attorney General in 2016 couldn’t resist typing an inanity on social media after the President’s remarks last night:
Because words that criticize bad behavior are so much more harsh than airstrikes?
Moron.
D58826
@Baud: I don’t expect the government to do nothing but I’m skeptical that a large western ground force will improve the situation. Then there is the practical issue of where will this force be based and supplied? Iraq has already vetoed the idea of a large American ground presence. Turkey? It took months to get them to agreed to let us us their airbases and they flat out refused the right of transit for the 4th ID in 2003. Israel? Jordan? Lebanon? Maybe just a flat out invasion of Syria?. NATO has already said no ground troops. I think the best we can do is special ops in limited numbers and maybe forward air controllers to improve the air operations. Now we can quibble over the numbers of special forces. Is 50 to few, 1000 to many but we are basically arguing around the edges of Obama’s policy. On the other hand the GOP is complaining about the lack of details in Obama’s speech but they never tell us what they would do. They won’t even vote on the AUMF.
scav
OT, having just heard a snipping of Alvarez going on about the stupid public when defending handling of police actions in Chicago? What was going to be a mere housekeeping voting chore has been transformed into a positive pleasure.
gene108
@Baud:
A constant stream of negativity from the media / political class discourages a lot of voters, who shift from kind of sort of convinced “government is the problem” and can’t do anything right, but things could be better to firmly believe government can’t do anything right and feel their participation in democracy means nothing.
The more miserable most people feel towards government the more likely they will sit at home, and the more it benefits Republicans because they’ve spent 35 – 40 years training a group of conservative Christian voters to turn up and vote.
Therefore the Ebola scare and ISIS going to jump out of your closet and murder you, back in 2014, helped drive down voter participation and thus the propaganda benefited Republicans.
Paul Weyrich explains in 1980.
D58826
A quote from the next thread
This is a reference to the President of the United States. I have never heard such vial language in public (in private yes but not in public) That statement sums up the entire problem. If Obama dropped an atomic bomb on Syria the GOP would complain that it wasn’t an H-bomb. The issue is OBAMA. There is nothing that he does or doesn’t do or anywhere in between that isn’t wrong. If he does today what Faux news recommended yesterday they will find a reason to criticize. All of it Ebola, terrorism, etc is because that n-clang is in the White House. I’m sure that the right will be angry about Hillary is she is elected but the skin color just adds a huge drop of racism that is driving our political system into the ditch
jl
@D58826: Like al Qaeda, Daesh would like the US and its allies to rush in like fools and put a bunch of troops on the ground. Their leadership is crazy and their longed for apocalypse would just end up with their violent deaths. The problem is, what to do next? It takes time and patience to figure out how to defeat them without committing our obvious mistakes of the past, which lead to an impressive short term victory, and which then paved the way to worse and more intractable problems. But repeating the mess is exactly what will happen if the ‘We have to do SOMETHING’ crowd gets its way. I think half the GOPer presidential contestants are smart enough to know that, and are acting as cynical manipulators to further their own campaigns, though.
I really like Sanders approach, to remind people that we have to be tough, but not stupid.
WereBear
The POINT of terrorism is that it is diffuse, blends into the background, and offers little in the way of retaliatory targets. It’s like guerilla warfare, and it took decades for America to even talk about Vietnam, much less learn any lessons from it.
Deep down in their twisted little hearts, Republicans know the Iraq War was a huge mistake, built on lies, and leading to nothing but destroyed lives and mysterious pallets of cash disappearing.
They don’t squawk at me for long, because I calmly bring that up. Then they get all red in the face, flap their arms like a drunk goose, and either stomp off or change the subject.
different-church-lady
@D58826:
Yeah, but you were all those things before ISIL and you’ll be all those things after ISIL.
PurpleGirl
@sharl:
the History Channel guy with the weird hair
Oh, that guy… He must have really had a huge man crush on Ambassador Londo Mollari from Babylon 5, thought Mollari’s hair was the shiz and has copied it ever since.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and putting a bow on the “This Year’s Ebola” (sung to the tune of the Elvis Costello song?), Harry Reid is calling for the appointment of an “ISIS Czar”
I guess as pointless Do Somethings go, this is better a full on ground war, a waste of time and some money as opposed to a massive loss of life and a couple hundred billion flushed into oblivion
sharl
@PurpleGirl: Haha, when I Googled [(“History Channel”) AND (hair)], that guy’s photo came right up, and the Wikipedia page for the actual person – Giorgio A. Tsoukalos – was the second item on the results list.
I haven’t followed Babylon 5 since its earliest year(s), but put in that name you cited, and got a LOT of hits. I’m guessing that many have noticed the same thing that you did.
Peale
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “The person who accepts this position will immediately be the number one target of the most notoriously dangerous group of murdering sociopaths in the world. I nominate Fred from payroll.”
sharl
@OzarkHillbilly: I’ve been pondering this, and I’m still thinking you might be right about Rehm; I certainly hope so, too. What surprised me was the slightly high-pitched expressions of worry – maybe even alarm (‘What are we going to do?’) – that came into her voice. It certainly wasn’t close to the calm radio voice used by easy listening radio DJs, or Rehm herself under other circumstances, though not on the level of conspiracy nut Alex Jones’ hair-on-fire shtick about government Black Helicopters or “chemtrails”.
Of course, her occasional histrionic tone doesn’t negate the possibility that she was play-acting as a panicky Jane Q. Public so Anthony Fauci could respond calmly with useful (and reassuring) information.
On a separate Diane Rehm-related note – and the dredging up of this memory may have left me ill-suited to view her favorably – there was a segment on the most recent On The Media with historian Rick Perlstein as guest, who recalled being harshly stomped down by Rehm for calling out fellow DR Show guest Grover Norquist for lying. Use of the actual “L” word in any of its variants was no-go territory for Rehm, and apparently most ‘respectable media’ by that time (whenever it was; I don’t think Perlstein or Bob Garfield ever said).
That whole segment is worth a listen – it runs just under 8 minutes, and was inspired by The Donald taking lying to the media to a whole new level. For just the discussion of the incident on Diane Rehm’s show, go to the 4m45s mark for the lead-in.
Perlstein offers sound advice as to how the media can get themselves out of the corner they’ve painted themselves into over the years, but anyone with even a passing knowledge of how our current media orgs behave won’t expect them to take Perlstein’s good advice; pity that.
Ruviana
@sharl: Charlie Pierce’s “most awesome man on television!”