I recently got in a silly argument where the crux of my argument was that the reason the US is mishandling the situation is because the pandemic was politicized since day 1. The response I was met with was: "no, it's all Trump's fault".
> The USA is being hobbled by a strange belief that the only options are "masks, hand-washing and bunkering down must be done forever and are sufficient", or "ignore it and just let as many people get infected as will under business as usual." With one of those seen as a "left" position and the other as a "right" position.
In practice, what does this look like? You have Fox reporting on Nancy Pelosi's haircut everyday on the week. You have 1 op-ed from CNN. Both sides think the each other are bad actors. Funding that needs to go out to the people are held up for election purposes.
Your political affiliation should have no bearing on your thoughts on how to handle a pandemic. It leads to people, who might otherwise be rational people, doubling down to support their side. Whether or not they agree with it. Because both sides are polar opposites, there is no compromise for a middle ground solution.
You're going to call this more "politicization" but the reality is the US government ignored and downplayed the pandemic until it was too late. This isn't really a debatable or left/right viewpoint. After that, criticism of the response was inevitable, leading to the claim that the pandemic was "politicized".
The only way it would have been not "politicized" was if the initial response had been even halfway competent.
No I'm not going to call your comment "politicization". Here is the government trying to act [1].
Both sides include poison pills that they know that the other side won't pass. Why is a new $2B FBI headquarter or SALT reform even in a COVID bill? They both agree to at least $300B directly to the people, just pass that. Now is the time to have unanimous agreement on things that will help, not include provisions to help your constituents.
Included by the White House, according to the article you posted. Which also mismanaged the initial response, so hardly surprising.
> SALT reform
According to the article, it was a temporary elimination on the SALT cap, not wholesale reform. Temporary tax relief during a recession should hardly be considered a poison pill.
Do you not see your own bias? I'm criticizing both sides for using a pandemic for political gain while you openly shun one side and trivialize the same behavior of the opposite.
Sure, I shouldn't have said reform. But are you seriously going to pretend that it isn't a political move by the Democrats when they were so vocal in 2018 in their opposition? [1]
Money quote:
"""
Cuomo said New York will challenge a provision of the law that limits how much Americans can deduct from their federal taxes for payments made to state and local governments. Many of the people most affected by that provision live in states run by Democrats, which tend to have higher state and local tax rates.
"""
The irony in all of this is that I'm not a US person. I can't vote and am not on the path to residency. I have no dog in this fight. This is a literal replay of the silly argument that I got into recently that started this thread.
Oh don't get me wrong, I'm aware I'm biased. You just picked a bad example. Just because lifting the SALT cap temporarily is politically advantageous, doesn't mean it doesn't help lots of people. All kinds of tax relief are on the table[1][2][3] as part of the Covid response, so why call just this one "political"?
If you live and work in the US, you probably pay US taxes, so you do have a dog in this fight whether you like it or not.
> Your political affiliation should have no bearing on your thoughts on how to handle a pandemic.
On the flip side, one would think one’s opinion on how government handles things would have a rather large impact on one’s political affiliation, and the more significant those things are the stronger a factor it would be.
