So far it doesn’t appear that mistakes by air traffic controllers or anybody else can be blamed for the airplane crash that happened in Canada. Everything now points to it being an unavoidable accident. I am not an expert, but I think it’s possible that failure for air traffic controllers to close the airport and reroute planes due to the danger of ground level wind sheer could be considered to have been a factor.
Even if Canadian investigators from their version of our FAA, Canadian Transport determine it was an unavoidable accident it increases focusing more attention on air traffic safety and the Trump/Musk firing of probationary employees of the Federal Aviation Administration.
Trump and his GOP minions have always blamed everything that has gone wrong in the country on President Biden, and before him on President Obama. Whether it’s a single incident of an illegal immigrant murdering someone or the rise in Fentanyl overdoses and deaths, it is blamed on Joe Biden. You name it, if it is or was bad in the last four years they blamed Biden.
It’s an old trope that airplane crashes come in groups, often in groups of three (see article). With so many planes flying there are bound to be accidents. Some will be minor and some will be more serious. A very few may be catastrophic.
It doesn’t matter whether or not the causes of any of them can be blamed on the cuts to the FAA. They will be a reminder that Trump and Musk have no regard for the safety of, not just the flying public, but the public in general.
There are other things besides airplane crashes that they can’t control. For example, if outbreaks of the bird flu and measles make the news, Trump’s pick of RFK Jr. to head HHS will be criticized no matter whether or not anything he did was a causative factor.
If there’s a life threatening outbreak of a food borne disease we’ll see stories about cuts to the USDA and FDA. If a drug rushed through the approval process turns out to have fatal side effects look for the blame to be put on FDA cuts.
If ICE agents inadvertently shoot a child, Trump, with his selection of the macho posturing Tom Homan, will be blamed by the progressive media.
If there’s a radiation leak at the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington state, which is 248 mile north from where I live in Portland, it may have nothing to do with the firings of their expert employees and, when they realized their mistake, their inablity to reach them to tell them to come back to work. As unlikey as this is to happen, if it does Trump will be forced by our side to take ownership of this.
If there are even worse wildfires in California, or in states Trump doesn’t hate, the DOGE firing of fire fighters will be blamed. There could be other natural disasters, some devastiing to red states, where understaffed agencies will cause more death and disruption because of cuts to FEMA.
We’re a Willie Horton - George Floyd - Luigi Mangione society. All it sometimes takes is something done by or that happens to one person to move public opinion, for good or bad.
I doubt somebody who couldn’t get service at the VA or who had their Social Security benefit cut will self-immolate themselves in front of a federal building, but it could happen.
The elimination of USAID funding for most of their life saving programs is the most egregious and heartless exmaple of DOGE deaths. Unfortunately these are faraway consequences easily ignored by those who don’t want to have their Christian values challenged. The results of Trump’s cruelty has to hit close to home for it to lead to a signficant number his supporters to turn against him. In fact, close to home probably isn’t enough. It has to be literally in the homes of these people whether on TV or better yet, in their own lives.
It may be unsavory, it may be wrong at some levels, because just because somebody did something unfair to you, you can say that this doesn’t morally justify doing it back to them when you have the chance. It may break Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high” dictum. Even so, I think there’s a case to be made for, in some cases, you can apply the tenets of situation ethics. This leads me to sayng that turnabout is fair play.
Addendum:
There’s another cliche that applies to this:
This is a follow-up to yesterday’s Substack:
