Weekend reading - the crisis reveals much BS about America

I wanted to bring up an article from Slate that appeared 2 weeks ago, but is even more relevant today. It's from Dan Kois, and is titled
"America is a sham".

Kois starts by pointing out that once coronavirus became a full-blown problem in the country, it's remarkable how quick rules could get changed regarding what you could bring onto a flight. And that's because the rule wasn't necessary in the first place.

The Transportation Security Administration announced [on March 13] that due to the coronavirus outbreak, it’s waiving the familiar 3.4-ounce limit for liquids and gels—for hand sanitizer only.* You may now bring a bottle of Purell as large as 12 ounces onto the plane to assist in your constant sanitizing of yourself, your family, your seat, your bag of peanuts, and everything else. All other liquids and gels, however, are still restricted to 3.4 ounces....

The TSA can declare this rule change because the limit was always arbitrary, just one of the countless rituals of security theater to which air passengers are subjected every day. Flights are no more dangerous today, with the hand sanitizer, than yesterday, and if the TSA allowed you to bring 12 ounces of shampoo on a flight tomorrow, flights would be no more dangerous then. The limit was bullshit. The ease with which the TSA can toss it aside makes that clear.

Kois notes that the relaxing of hand sanitizer rules is indicative of a larger issue- just how many things in America are accepted that have little to no usefulness.

All over America, the coronavirus is revealing, or at least reminding us, just how much of contemporary American life is bullshit, with power structures built on punishment and fear as opposed to our best interest. Whenever the government or a corporation benevolently withdraws some punitive threat because of the coronavirus, it’s a signal that there was never any good reason for that threat to exist in the first place.

Kois' point is that a lot of what we put up with in everyday American life is accepted without question, or even without reasons. And it often takes a disaster or other crisis to make people recognize how absurd much of these rules and customs are.

One of the items laid bare with the mass layoffs and illnesses forcing people to stay at home is the fatal flaw in having a health care system that doesn't give a baseline of coverage to all Americans regardless of where (or if) they work, and in how close to the edge so many Americans are.

I do not understand how anyone can watch thousands of people suddenly lose their jobs in the middle of a pandemic and still believe that health insurance should be tied to employment.

— Sophie Ellman-Golan (@EgSophie) March 25, 2020

You'd also hope that the events of the last month help us recognize that the fact that giving large-scale tax cuts to corporations only encouraged more reckless behavior via borrowing excessive amounts of money for stock buybacks and massive payouts to CEOs. One bad month in the economy should not have led to the need for trillions in bailout money from taxpayers and the Fed in order to keep businesses from going under.

The bipartisan bailouts and related government spending in reaction to the crisis also shows that the GOP's crocodile tears about "balanced budgets" and the ineffectiveness of direct stimulus spending in 2009-10 was BS. It was nothing more than anti-Obama posing that was used to get GOP political power, and likely limited the recovery from the Great Recession (which GOPs wanted in roder to damage Obama for the 2012 presidential election). No one should be able to argue "austerity over restoring growth" in the coming years without being laughed out of the room. Not after what we've seen in March 2020.

Kois says that while some of the COVID-19-prompted changes in the coming months and years might stick around, you can bet that some of these arbitrary rules and systems will try to be brought back. And we need to call it out if they try, now that the facade has crumbled.

So what will happen when the crisis passes? Yes, it’s worth asking yourself now, in the early days of this pandemic, how you might change your behavior, what temporary adjustments in your lifestyle you might adopt permanently in the after times—whether that’s working from home, or cutting back on airplane travel. But it’s also worth asking if we are willing to allow governments and corporations to return to business as usual. When everything’s back to normal, will we accept cities cutting off their poorest residents’ water, or evicting the sick, or throwing someone in jail because they can’t afford to pay a fine?

I want to say that once a policy is revealed as bullshit, it gets a lot harder to convince smart, engaged citizens to capitulate to it. That’s one reason why activists are agitating to end cash bail in the coronavirus crisis, or fighting to ensure that coronavirus tests and any eventual vaccine are available to all. Not only would those measures save or better countless lives during the pandemic, but in their common-sense wisdom, they expose the absurdity of the opposing view. What kind of ghoul would argue that we shouldn’t vaccinate everyone against a pandemic threatening the health of our nation? The same kind of ghoul, perhaps, who thinks that cancer treatment, or insulin, should only be available for those lucky enough to be able to pay for them.

In a time of real anxiety, maybe this optimism is just grasping for something good to come of all of this. But that’s really up to us. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to see more and more absurd, or cruel, or counterproductive practices revealed. Pay attention when they are. Notice the statements the people in charge make when they effortlessly roll back their surcharges and threats, their punishments and impediments. Remember them. And when the time comes that the danger from the virus is no longer as severe, and those people try to quietly reinstate the policies that hurt so many around you, remember that for a lot of Americans, a “return to normal” is a scary prospect. Keep your giant bottle of hand sanitizer. You’re gonna need it to deal with all the bullshit that’s coming back when the pandemic finally passes.

There's a lot in our country that is stupid and needs to change, and once this crisis passes, we can't afford to go back to the way things were. Because "the way things were" was failing BS to begin with.