Republican Senators Suggest Americans Hurting During Pandemic Should Look To China For Help
A few of my most despised senators have teamed up again, but this time, they’re not trying to destroy strong encryption so that the government can spy on us, they’re just peddling some xenophobic bullshit clearly designed to pander to their base.
Senators Thom Tillis, Marsha Blackburn, and Tom Cotton (all from my despised senator list) have joined forces again, this time with Senators Martha McSally and Josh Hawley to introduce legislation that provides an avenue for U.S. citizens to sue the Chinese government for the loss of life and financial hardships they’ve endured as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Not only do they blame China for the pandemic’s disastrous (yet preventable) effects on the U.S., but the press release on Tillis’s website goes so far as to compare the COVID-19 pandemic to 9/11, as if it was somehow an instance of state sponsored terrorism (which won’t help to tamp down preposterous, idiotic, completely unproven conspiracy theories that the coronavirus was designed as a weapon in a Chinese lab). They purport that their bill “is closely modeled after the 2016 Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), that gave more legal remedies to victims of terrorism, particularly those of 9/11 victims”. Again, obvious pandering, this time packaged with a pathetically weak comparison.
These senators have a remarkable ability to talk out of both sides of their mouth. They’re simultaneously downplaying the severity of the pandemic to make the Trump administration’s inadequate response seem acceptable (god forbid they piss off the Trump klan), and hyping up the death toll and financial costs to rile up their base against a common (and more or less manufactured) enemy.
The bill doesn’t provide any directive or course of action for citizens seeking to hold the United States government responsible for the ongoing, reckless negligence that they’ve branded as a “response” to the disease.
🇺🇸 United States: 0
🦠 COVID-19: 21