The Governor of Arizona Is Pretty Weird
Doug Ducey's handling of this pandemic is regarded as terrible by Arizonans. I wonder how he thinks he's doing
(Doug Ducey, photo by Gage Skidmore)
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Very quick story: Recently, a person close to me who is under 30 traveled from out of state to visit another person close to me, who is elderly, in Arizona. The elderly person greeted the young person by saying, “Why’d you come to the belly of the beast?” I’m trying to illustrate the fact that Arizona’s institutional profligacy as regards COVID-19 is not somehow a distillation of the will of the people of Arizona. Arizonans don’t all have a death wish. And yet, their state’s policies are most assuredly causing deaths.
Back in April, Microsoft Research conducted a pretty ambitious poll, asking Americans in all 50 states how they felt about their respective governors’ COVID-19 response. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that Arizona’s Doug Ducey was at the very bottom of the list.
Incidentally, on Wednesday, Ducey acted, for the first time ever, as if the virus is a serious problem.
Even when he gave a statewide lockdown order back in March, he spoke about it like his hand was being forced—talking about the letters he’s received from mayors, and the advisors he was trying to placate. “The idea is not to shut down businesses—there are essential businesses out there. The idea is to socially distance,” he said at the time. Nail salons were initially allowed to stay open, though they got shut down a few days later. Throughout the pandemic, Ducey has been seen chatting without a mask, probably taking his cues from Trump who—correct me if I’m wrong—has only worn a mask that one time at the Ford plant.
But Wednesday, we got a different Ducey altogether. He showed up at a press conference wearing a mask—as did Cara Christ, his state health director. And both of them performed a little synchronized hand sanitizer routine just after they sat down. Ducey was there to announce, well, very little change in policy really. He was basically rescinding measures aimed at preventing mayors from taking their own actions to stop the spread of COVID-19, so Ducey was going from doing less than nothing, to nothing. The idea behind the mask thing seems to be that Ducey is leading by example rather than actually using power, which would be a violation of Arizona’s government norms; i.e. having a state government that doesn’t do anything.
Howie Fischer, a journalist for the Arizona Capitol Times asked Ducey the following:
Last week when I asked you about face masks you sort of poo-pooed it and said ‘well, I’ve got one in my pocket when I go to Walgreens.’ Today you walked in with a face mask as did your health director. There’s hand sanitizer on the table. There’s a napkin to put it on. What changed in the last six days to make you go from, ‘I’m not gonna mandate it. I don’t believe in local options on this,’ to this?
Ducey’s answer was just a long denial, and he never explained what had changed. Here’s a short excerpt: “There’ve been over a hundred days where we have been able to make statewide directives that would improve the condition in the state; it would slow the spread; it would reduce confusion and complication in the state on this issue. We needed more flexibility. And the flexibility is going to be given to the mayors.” Blah blah blah.
But that’s OK because I feel like Ducey had already answered the question earlier in the press conference, during his main speech, when he said this:
For months and months I did not know anyone personally that had contracted COVID-19. Of course I had heard from hundreds if not thousands of people that had contracted it and written letters and sent emails. But just recently I know a lot of people that have contracted this, and I want to tell you where they contracted it: at graduation parties, at private gatherings in homes.
What amazes me is that he’s willing to admit this. I would be mortified, and probably forced to do some deep introspection if this were my experience, and yet Ducey said this without being prompted.
My friend Peter Miller once wrote an essay about how Republican elected officials have this amazing ability to change their view on something only when it affects them personally—acknowledging that guns, say, are a problem only when they have a relative who gets shot, or they’ll change their stance on gay marriage when their own kid comes out of the closet. It’s wild to watch this process play out again and again, because these officials are completely unashamed, and show no signs of embarrassment. Never mind the fact that their view was being put into action before as well, and causing many many people to suffer; they’ve changed and that’s that. It’s a new day. This is how I feel now, and I’m governing based on that. “There is no point of view that is on equal footing with their own,” Peter wrote. “They’ll believe it when they think it. In other words, the right is more than halfway to solipsism.”
(BTW, Ducey used to be CEO of that ice cream chain where the underpaid employees are forced to sing songs if a customer tips them.)
You might have heard a few stats out of Arizona about the exploding number of cases, and seen a graph that looked a bit like what was happening in New York in March and April. It’s worth noting that a rise in positive tests doesn’t tell us much about the scope of the problem, and fortunately, deaths haven’t spiked much in Arizona over the last couple of weeks. Unfortunately, they might soon:
Here are a few other things that got my attention this past week.
LOOK AT MY FRIEND JAMIE’S PHOTOS:
Do you follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Instagram? You really should:
THE UNITED STATES HAS GIVEN UP
Here is a quote from a story in The Washington Post by Rick Noack:
“It really does feel like the U.S. has given up,” said Siouxsie Wiles, an infectious-diseases specialist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand — a country that has confirmed only three new cases over the past three weeks and where citizens have now largely returned to their pre-coronavirus routines.
“I can’t imagine what it must be like having to go to work knowing it’s unsafe,” Wiles said of the U.S.-wide economic reopening. “It’s hard to see how this ends. There are just going to be more and more people infected, and more and more deaths. It’s heartbreaking.”
COVID WILL BE AN ENVIRONMENTAL NIGHTMARE BECAUSE WE WANT IT TO BE…
Below is a bit of Beth Gardiner’s story in National Geographic about how COVID-19 is going to indirectly devastate Earth ecologically speaking. The basic idea is, of course, that carbon emissions, which are slightly down right now, are about to do what they’ve done in the past and surge back. But this time, the fossil fuel industry has been the recipient of a ton of government help, which will enable it to pollute like never before.
But the financial support comes on top of the aggressive regulatory rollbacks the Trump Administration has continued to push forward during the pandemic. Among many other moves, the administration has effectively suspended enforcement of air and water pollution regulations, curtailed states' ability to block energy projects, and suspended a requirement for environmental review and public input on new mines, pipelines, highways, and other projects.
“Throughout April, honestly, it became almost a full-time job" to keep up with all the giveaways to industry, says Amy Westervelt, a journalist and host of the podcast Drilled, who has been tracking them.
…AND WE HAVE SIX MONTHS TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT
The International Energy Agency (IEA) released a report urging global cooperation to make the COVID-19 recovery ecologically sustainable so as not to exacerbate climate change (you know the drill). This is one of those anodyne reports that probably gets earnestly touted by heads of state in Scandinavia, and meanwhile in the US, gets lit on fire by Republicans and eco-socialists alike. It’s worth noting that the voices of the bland international neoliberal consensus are, um, basically screaming themselves hoarse lately. Fatih Birol, head of the IEA, said to The Guardian: “This year is the last time we have, if we are not to see carbon rebound.” The Guardian’s headline for the piece was “World has six months to avert climate crisis, says energy expert,” which, fair enough.
…AND THE ZOOMERS ARE BLACKPILLED
Vice UK ran this piece where Gen-Z people were obliged to trash millennials—probably because of a recent viral tweet about the same topic. Ostensibly all people 23 and younger hate people who are 24-40, which is an implausible claim, but I don’t really care, because there are some good points in the piece. Heba, a 23-year-old in Nottingham submitted this:
Millennials moan a lot and don’t do anything. You find 16-17 year olds on TikTok selling their creativity, whereas I feel millennials are obsessed with a traditional nine to five job because that's the only way to get job security. They’re obsessed with job security. They’re always annoyed at the fact they knew they're going to be renting forever, whereas Gen Zs know we’re just not going to be able to buy a house.
We’re a lot more political than millennials were at our age. I think it’s because things are affecting us more.
On Instagram all millennials do is post pictures of their coffee and like perfect little setups and stuff? This younger generation, we don’t put glitter over things. Unlike the millennials, we’re not in denial.
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