What school closure discourse is a reminder of is that there are a lot of ppl in this country, cutting across the political spectrum, who reject the very concept of tradeoffs or that there could ever be a situation where all solutions have downsides & you just gotta pick the least bad one.
"there is always an ideal solution that convieniently asks nothing of me and I will get angry if you suggest otherwise" has really been a driving ideological force in our politics since 2020.
These people collective killed hundreds of thousands of additional Americans and their big complaint was that they were inconvenienced.
It’s almost worst than that, their big complaint is they need to be mollified and soothed to make up their inconvenience in the past, and nothing appears to meet their aggrieved standards in the present (which is why Schatz is stupid to entertain this)
That there are not choices that will satisfy everyone and require no trade-offs is of course the reason politics exists.
Those 100 countries just spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere for fun
The moralized variant is especially fun: it isn’t always possible to act perfectly morally. Sometimes the best of a bad set of choices will hurt people who shouldn’t be hurt This doesn’t imply the existence of a golden path of righteousness that’s conveniently what you wanted anyway
"Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water." "Now that I'm enlightened, I'm just as miserable as ever." There's too much Christianity in our political plenum; too many people want a Millennium where everything is solved.
My Liberalism is that there is no ending, there is no fixed goal, we always can improve, we'll always need to improve, and the work never ends and neither do the dividends from the work. No gods, no masters, no teleology.
America really needs collective DBT.
Treatlerism
And I have no idea what can be done about it in the short and medium term.
Social media enabling viral amplification of this extremely lizard-brained response has been extremely bad.
Also, they were OK sending their kids to school under the belief the kids couldn’t get sick, but they were also OK with making unvaccinated teachers & staff risk their lives so kids wouldn’t have to stay at home.
And, frankly, a lot of people (some of them highly compensated pundits) who just don't want to spend time around their own kids...
I always figured the right wing gov. enthusiasm for reopening schools had half an eye on saving shitloads in future pension payments.
Sean Trende says conservatives were red pilled by Dems trying to keep people safe from an unprecedented and deadly pandemic, meanwhile he and Erickson can’t get red pilled by the Republicans removing treatment options that their family depends on. Absolute cowards.
Also, policymakers have to act under conditions of uncertainty and imperfect information. The fact that you can imagine a more optimal set of policies, later when we have better information, does not automatically give you cause to be angry at the policymakers.
Teacher here. School closures were NEVER primarily about the health of children. They were about the health of middle aged staff and preventing schools from becoming a vector for community spread. Sure, re-open your schools with no adult staff and see how well that works.