Gov. Cuomo: The mask of good intentions
In a news conference on 24 Mar 2020, N.Y. governor Andrew Cuomo said, "My mother is not expendable, and your mother is not expendable. And our brothers and sisters are not expendable. And we're not going to accept a premise that human life is disposable. And we're not going to put a dollar figure on human life. The first order of business is save lives, period. Whatever it costs."
Does this statement seem incongruous? Hasn't putting a dollar figure on human life always been fundamental to progressive ideology?
Speaking at Berkeley in 2007, Robert Reich stated that if a Democrat presidential candidate were honest, he would say, "If you are old, we're not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you going for maybe another couple of months. It's too expensive. So we're going to let you die."
Barack Obama made a very similar statement, answering Jane Sturm's question about whether her aged mother would be given a pacemaker under the Affordable Care Act with, "Look, the first thing for all of us to understand is that we actually have some choices to make about how we want to deal with our own end-of-life care[.] ... We as a culture and as a society [must start] to make better decisions within our own families and for ourselves[.] ... At least we can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what? Maybe this isn't going to help. Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller."
Andrew Cuomo is every bit the progressive that Robert Reich and Barack Obama are. "Human life is not disposable"? These three are leaders of a political party that refuses to vote to mandate life-saving health care for infants who have survived abortion. For them, human life is disposable. No, Cuomo and his fellow progressives will wear the mask of "we're not going to put a dollar figure on human life" only until it has served its purpose. Then they'll toss it away. Because it is, after all, only a mask.
Bill Maher famously admitted that he was rooting for a recession. "Sorry if that hurts people, but it's either root for a recession or you lose your democracy," he said. Many Democrats are certain that a crippled U.S. economy will help Democrats win this November.
Andrew Cuomo's noble-sounding words are merely a mask of good intentions that he and Democrats will wear as they try to keep America shut down as long as they possibly can, hoping they can drive us into recession. But their purpose has nothing to do with our mothers, or our brothers and sisters. Their purpose is to defeat Donald Trump. They will do it by any means necessary.