[2006alum]

What I fear is that we as a society have created a social and governmental structure that is all about appearances and therapy dogs, not actual competence. 

This, times 1,000. It's why Cuomo got so much credit when very, very few of the discretionary decisions he made as governor could actually be associated with a reduction in harm. He mostly just looked good standing strong and stern on TV. And it's why Trump is flailing so wildly in the midst of two national crises (COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter uprisings): appearances and therapy dogs (and their Trumpian Bible-bearing equivalents) don't put food on anyone's table, don't prevent anyone's grandmother from contracting COVID-19, and don't ensure that every individual suspected and stopped by the police is treated in a similar manner. The work of governance is hard, and I increasingly think Americans aren't willing to do hard work, even the hard work of carefully assessing whether their elected politicians are doing it. And this inattention virus, too, seems to be spreading: Newsom is saying movie theaters in SoCal can open this weekend even as LA County has the second largest number of active cases of any county in the nation (and higher than all five counties that constitute the five boroughs of NYC). I can't at the moment find case counts by county over time, but it's almost surely the case that SoCal has more active cases now than it did two, four, or six weeks ago. Unless and until Newsom can demonstrate that there's an army of contact tracers in place and law enforcement personnel to enforce strong quarantine requirements, there is zero reason to think these decisions are being made on the basis of public health. 

Indeed, for the life of me, there seems to be almost zero correlation between the public health data and the decisions being made by those in charge nearly everywhere. 90% of America is in worse shape w/r/t COVID-19 than it was a month ago, and yet 90% of America seems to be ready to act like the virus has magically disappeared.

[2006alum]

What I fear is that we as a society have created a social and governmental structure that is all about appearances and therapy dogs, not actual competence. 

This, times 1,000. It's why Cuomo got so much credit when very, very few of the discretionary decisions he made as governor could actually be associated with a reduction in harm. He mostly just looked good standing strong and stern on TV. And it's why Trump is flailing so wildly in the midst of two national crises (COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter uprisings): appearances and therapy dogs (and their Trumpian Bible-bearing equivalents) don't put food on anyone's table, don't prevent anyone's grandmother from contracting COVID-19, and don't ensure that every individual suspected and stopped by the police is treated in a similar manner. The work of governance is hard, and I increasingly think Americans aren't willing to do hard work, even the hard work of carefully assessing whether their elected politicians are doing it. And this inattention virus, too, seems to be spreading: Newsom is saying movie theaters in SoCal can open this weekend even as LA County has the second largest number of active cases of any county in the nation (and higher than all five counties that constitute the five boroughs of NYC). I can't at the moment find case counts by county over time, but it's almost surely the case that SoCal has more active cases now than it did two, four, or six weeks ago. Unless and until Newsom can demonstrate that there's an army of contact tracers in place and law enforcement personnel to enforce strong quarantine requirements, there is zero reason to think these decisions are being made on the basis of public health. 

Indeed, for the life of me, there seems to be almost zero correlation between the public health data and the decisions being made by those in charge nearly everywhere. 90% of America is in worse shape w/r/t COVID-19 than it was a month ago, and yet 90% of America seems to be ready to act like the virus has magically disappeared.