Future generations will be astounded to learn that in the face of a deadly and unprecedented global pandemic, it became controversial to adopt simple and long-standing public health protocols—and that, indeed, such measures were strenuously resisted by people who were predominantly members of the Republican Party. History will record that they risked their lives and those of their loved ones out of sheer partisan pig-headedness.
It’s too easy to blame this situation entirely on Donald Trump’s stupidity, willful ignorance, and incompetence; the Republican transformation into a modern version of the nineteenth-century Know-Nothing Party has been underway for decades. When Trump denies obvious factual truths and arbitrarily rejects the views of scientists and other experts, he is playing to a party that has been doing just that for many years on a variety of issues.
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