Today, in his column, Paul Krugman aims at Ebola panic and the right-wing story that went with it: that the government cant do a damn thing to protect us but blunder around. And he uses that to explore more generally how this kind of propaganda of assertion in a mood of hysteria works (and what it covers up and ignores). Tom The great American Ebola freakout of 2014 seems to be over. The disease is still ravaging Africa, and as with any epidemic, there’s always a risk of a renewed outbreak. But there haven’t been any new U.S. cases for a while, and popular anxiety is fading fast. Before we move on, however, let’s try to learn something from the panic. When the freakout was at its peak, Ebola wasn’t just a disease — it was a political metaphor. It was, specifically, held up by America’s right wing as a symbol of government failure. The usual suspects claimed that the Obama administration was falling down on the job, but more than that, they insisted that conventional policy was incapable of dealing with the situation. Leading Republicans suggested ignoring everything we know about disease control and resorting to extreme measures like travel bans, while mocking claims that health officials knew what they were doing. Guess what: Those officials actually did know what they were doing. The real lesson of the Ebola story is that sometimes public policy is succeeding even while partisans are screaming about failure. And it’s not the only recent story along those lines. nytimes/2014/11/17/opinion/paul-krugman-when-government-succeeds.html
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 16:43:32 +0000
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