The largest newspaper in my state, the Indianapolis Star, is beside itself with outrage. Republican Governor Eric Holcomb has signaled his intent to oppose strict staffing standards for those working in the state's nursing homes. Indiana, like most states in the union, has experienced a precipitous decline in the quality of care at facilities dedicated to serving our elderly population.
That sad reality has led lawmakers around the country to author legislation designed to require minimum staffing standards that nursing homes must comply with if the state is going to permit them to operate. Republican governors are largely rejecting such laws, and the media - an obvious extension of the Democrat Party - smells blood in the water.
Hence:
For those unaware, Doyel is a sportswriter best known for being a merchant of outrage. Attention at any cost is the goal. But feigning moral indignation over this issue demonstrates that he either doesn't think very highly of the intellectual capacity of his readers and followers, or that he is willing to misrepresent reality and tell half-truths just to generate engagement. Neither option is admirable, but Doyel is far from alone.
I'm always flabbergasted when I see posts like this, no matter how common they've become. Do men like Doyel really think this poorly of their fellow countrymen simply because they hold to a different politics? Are there really people who think to themselves, "My opponents want old people to suffer and die?"
To be clear, this is a phenomenon that happens on both sides of the political aisle. Those who obsess over politics often become so myopic, so committed to a tribal approach in evaluating all things, that they instinctively believe the worst of anyone outside their community.
Of course, there are specific individuals who are callous and cruel beyond imagination. This bloodthirsty abortion doctor comes to mind:
But setting the obvious examples of demon-possessed lunatics aside, most people of any political persuasion adopt their policy preferences according to what they think best benefits humanity. Take an issue like gay adoption. Most of the people who favor it don't do so because they are committed to a morally perverse agenda intent on corrupting our youth. They believe in it because they think it is better to place a child in a home with two dads then it is to leave the child in foster care.
Meanwhile, those who oppose it don't do so because they are committed to some archaic, backwards religion that's dedicated to denying marginalized people their happiness. They oppose it because they believe that spiritual needs trump physical needs and that every child has a right to a mother and father.
Part of the reason we get nowhere in our policy debates is because we are all too stubborn to acknowledge that despite our disagreement, our opponents may truly have the best of intentions. Better to vilify, scare, and raise money, then do the hard work of love and reconciliation.
This nursing home issue is but the latest example. Clickbait journalists like Doyel may enjoy smearing political leaders as heartless, but stop and consider why Republican governors might oppose policies that set minimum staffing standards. It could be that they just don't care about elderly people. Or it could be because they know that passing such standards in the midst of an historic staffing shortage in the nursing care industry would catastrophically close hundreds upon hundreds of nursing homes.
We can all agree it is tragic that so many nursing home patients are being neglected, and not given the dignified care they deserve. But telling the offending nursing home that they must hire 20 more staff or be shut down, when they have no applicants to fill those positions, does not seem like much of a solution.
The policy may sound nice on paper, of course. It may allow politicians to pretend that they care, and media members the chance to grandstand for clicks. But if enacted, the policy would potentially create an even larger crisis, and less nursing care facilities, more nursing home patients and families without a place to turn, and drastically increased prices for the ones remaining.
We have problems in this country, but for the most part, they are not unsolvable. The real crisis we face may be how few people are left in our politics that want to solve them for humanity's gain, rather than exploit them for their own.
