July 20th 2020

By Robert Anderson

Often when I meet people of strong Republican persuasion and they hear I live in Los Angeles, California, they roll their eyes. I know what that means from growing up in Northern Virginia with my Republican, Utah-born mother (RIP). They imagine a mass of communist, amoral, godless, hippy leftists. But this is, of course, a huge distortion of reality promoted by rightwing media. California is in fact a microcosm of the entire country, trending blue on the coast and red inland, but a political patchwork nonetheless. It gave us such “liberal” presidents as Nixon and Reagan (an opportunistic, turncoat Democrat born in Illinois). No Democratic presidents have emerged from the state, despite it being predominantly blue.

As we enter a more deadly phase of the first COVID-19 wave, this political patchwork, in the absence of any beneficial federal leadership, will have dire consequence for the citizens of the Golden State, the world’s 5th largest economy. Republicans, due to the president’s homicidal refusal to do anything to get them to be good citizens during a crisis by the simple acts of wearing masks and social distancing, live in close proximity to Democrats, who, by and large, are trying to do more to halt the spread of the virus. Unfortunately, public health and associated behaviors have been fashioned into a political issue by our mentally ill president and his cult-like followers. And, as Americans are a highly mobile society for work and leisure, the one political party will tend to infect the other. Members of both parties will therefore die in greater numbers, black, brown — and white. And this mobility, no matter what closures or other precautions one county, or city, might mandate, will effect their neighbors, across streets, counties, states, and the nation. As many of us knew from the beginning of this pandemic, we are all in this together.

There is perhaps no more stark example of how this plays out than Southern California, where Orange County has announced that it will open its schools on August 10th, despite a record number of new infections. For background, Orange County voted to secede Los Angeles County in 1889, but geographically one is just a continuation of the other, a borderless expanse of Southern California suburban sprawl. While Los Angeles has some ten million citizens ( more than 41 states), Orange County has three million. Of those three million, a slim majority are very right-wing Americans, although for the first time in many decades, the county voted narrowly democratic in the 2016 presidential election. But it used to have 38 chapters of the ultra-rightwing, John Birch Society which cast a long shadow over American politics. For those who might be interested in its darker history, I recommend this recent article from the Fullerton Observer: Remembering Nixonland: How the Modern Republican Party Was Born in Orange County by Jesse La Tour. The county is, itself, a microcosm of the country, with blue voters on the coast and red voters inland.

We all know from experience that children spread disease, as they are not as aware of the basic science of virology as some adults (with notable exceptions). And they lack the behavioral control of some adults (once again with notable exceptions). Indeed I have always referred jokingly to children as “vectors.” Now that there is a deadly pandemic it is not a joke. And we already have clear examples from various countries, like Israel, that reopening schools can lead to disastrous spreading of COVID-19.

So imagine my outrage when I saw this headline from the Los Angeles Times: Orange County education leaders want schools to reopen without masks or social distancing. Oh My God, I thought, the GOP death cult is alive and well in Southern California and is going to get a lot of people killed throughout the entire region. Apparently, the Orange County Board of Education in the now evenly split county, is packed with cool-aid-drinking Republicans. The vote was 4-1 in favor of opening with no masks or social distancing required. I could not immediately find the political orientation of the five members of the board, but I’ll bet anyone that 4 out of the five are Republicans. Mark Sumner on the Daily Kos staff, wrote a good piece on the Orange County decision as an example of what happens when there is less than zero national leadership on school reopening:  The lack of guidance from Washington is already causing school districts to make horrible decisions. I would, of course, go further and rewrite the headline to read: The homicidal instincts of Trump, Devos, and McConnell, are already causing school districts to make deadly decisions. But other than that it was well considered.

Hopefully community outrage from teachers, Democratic and Independent parents, and a smattering of sane Republican parents will reverse this murderous decision. And at least the Disney Corporation had the good sense to not reopen Orange County’s Disneyland in Anaheim as it plans to do with Disney World in Florida. It is worth noting that Orange County is sandwiched in-between two other giant public school systems in the SoCal region: Los Angeles and San Diego. Both have had the sense to not open school campuses in the fall and to do all learning online. As I have already pointed out, however, people move around a lot in Southern California. There are no boarder check points between counties. Orange County Republican science-free thinking is a dire threat to the entire region. As it is to the entire nation.