It’s Power, Not People

Byron York, chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner, a conservative news website and magazine, asks why Democrats aren’t as passionate about investigating the source of the virus that causes COVID-19 as they were about investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. He states that the answer to that question is Donald

Trump. He says “Trump Derangement Syndrome” drove our country over the edge.

I don’t know about “syndromes,” but I will support the notion that politics is for the deranged. Just being on the board of directors of my neighborhood’s HOA made that clear to me. But back to York’s point, and to my own explanation for the lack of leftist passion. It’s not about people. It’s about power.

People die every single day, about 164,000 to be more precise. Both the Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organization have global stats on how many people die every day and every year, categorized by age, gender and by cause. About 60 million human beings die each and every year, and there’s more passion about who wins Sunday’s game than about why those people died. We could literally be consumed by disease and death if we allowed ourselves, but at some level it really is an incidentally aspect of life itself.

Politics, on the other hand, is not incidental — it’s a game. Things like COVID-19 and death can be used as markers in that game, but only insofar as they are useful to the player. The COVID-19 marker has already been played, and it did its job.

But please don’t get me wrong, the left is not playing solitaire. No, this is more like poker. The left simply played its hand better than the right, and Mr. York probably knows it. What’s really ticking Mr. York off, I think, is that the right has been on a losing streak and he’s lost money betting on them.

Arthur Saginian

Santa Clarita