COVID-19 has laid bare the last ragged breath of the experiment begun by Ronald Reagan and then amplified to absurd lengths by subsequent generations of the Republican Party. The Reagan critique of “government not being the solution but the problem”, may have had some validity back in 1981. I don’t doubt there was significant inefficiencies in the various wings of the Federal Government at the time.
All large organizations have the potential to create sclerotic practices that our antithetical to the needs of the clients they were founded to serve. This is not specific to the public sector, but is also found in spades in the private sector, well evidenced by corporate bankruptcy proceedings. Think Enron, Bear Stearns, Kodak and PG&E of recent memory .
The Republican solution to the Federal bureaucracy however was not to improve management practices or to prune away wasteful activity, rather the party opted to eliminate chunks of the government and their associated services. This had the salutary effect, of being consistent with the simplistic ideological notion of the private sector always being the solution to the problems faced by American voters. Additionally, there was the attendant benefits of a decrease in Federal taxes along with the removal of regulatory oversight which encouraged unscrupulous business operators to skirt the law in the pursuit of bigger profits.
With each political cycle, the Republican donar class, flush with monetary success, endowed the Republican Party war chest with the understanding that their patronage would receive an ever increasing discount on their tax obligations. While the cuts in government services in the 80s may have eliminated fat, recent efforts not only eliminated muscle but have also resulted in piecemeal amputation of vital government limbs
Forty years on, American’s have not arrived at the Nirvana predicted by free market ideology and justified by the voodoo mathematics of the Laffer Curve. Vital public services had been gutted and are ruled by craven political appointees charged with the overt destruction of their departments. These chickens have sadly come home to roost with the COVID crisis and bewildered American voters/minions are feeling the pain as they blunder blindly through this disaster without any consistent guidance. Most are so poorly educated, that they are unable to diagnose the cause of their pain. Indeed a central plank of the perverted Republican Party plan for non-government is to invest in ignorance through the removal of investment in public education. Add a layer of old time bread and circuses in the guise of mass media and you soon have a populace that is distracted by vapid entertainment and due to their superficial understanding of the world, persuaded to vote against their own interest.
Federal public health services likely would have mitigated the COVID pandemic were it not for the cynical distortion of the smaller government program kicked off by Reagan all those years ago. A significant portion of the 40k+ body count can be attributed to the failure of political hacks clueless in leveraging the CDC and FDA response to the crisis, however generations of under investment in these key services also crippled the ability to respond in a timely manner.
The failed experiment of governmenticide, has resulted in the creation of deeply unequal banana republic, managed by a highly concentrated monied aristocracy who own the Republican Party and are effective in defanging the more equitable inclinations of the Democratic Party. This new oligarchy maintains it’s power by financing political lackies who play the increasingly unhappy underclass off against each other. The real danger for this new royalty, who don’t seem to realize that they are wearing powdered wigs, is that menial, unimportant American’s may unite and start building guillotines. No doubt many will flee successfully on their private jets and mega yachts to extravagant bolt holes, but that’s a dangerous game and some will pay a severe price for failing to read the tea leaves in a timely fashion
