Feedback July 15, 2021
This was not thinking along, but counter-thinking. Don’t build, demolish.
–
Sylvana Simons submitted a fierce motion against the cabinet during the latest corona debate. She accuses Rutte and his comrades that they have chosen a strategy for ‘controlled raging’ of the virus, whereby ‘the virus should be able to spread as long as the IC capacity allows, with group immunity as a consequence and finds that the contain as much as possible and prevent infections is the aim of the policy strategy and that this strategy has seriously damaged public health, resulted in more than 30,000 deaths, potentially made hundreds of thousands of Dutch people ill for a long time and that the economy, working people, people from risk groups , young people and many others has caused enormous physical, financial and mental damage. She states that this strategy has not enabled the cabinet to contain the virus and that we have ended up in a fourth wave of contamination. All in all, with this motion, she rejects the corona strategy of letting the virus run wild, calls on the government to break with this strategy and proceeds to the order of the day.’
Rutte was furious about this motion and rightly so. Simons and her party BIJ1 are praised for their fanaticism and exposing things that people overlook or are not even aware of, such as more or less subtle forms of racism and discrimination or language that is outdated and – often unintentionally – is hurtful. With this motion, however, she finally misses the point.
Rutte rightly states that the cabinet and thousands of scientists, doctors, nurses and carers have been doing their best to cope with this coronavirus for a year and a half and that it is painful and almost rude to say that these people have 30,000 deaths on their conscience. That is also very painful. More than that. Simons has an easy time talking now. Rutte could never have done well. Probably her motion would have been even more vehement if he had chosen the strategy of Trump and Bolsonaro and now – as in the US and Brazil – there had been a multitude of victims.
It almost never goes well at all. In South Africa, the measures were relaxed by a judge after a group like Virus Truth filed a lawsuit, and the number of victims has since skyrocketed. Things went wrong in India, France and England keep fluctuating between relaxation and tightening, and countries like Russia and Belarus say they are successful, but there they are demonstrably cheating with the numbers. Simons therefore seems a bit naive to think that things could have been done much better in this country. We would be an exception in the world.
Furthermore, the motion is far from congruent. After all, Simons also accuses the cabinet of having done too little to contain the spread of the virus and that people and the economy have been harmed by the measures. I’m curious how Simons would have handled it himself. Had she thrown the country into a complete lockdown to prevent the spread? Had she kept the country open so as not to hurt the economy? Could she have come up with something that would contain the virus while allowing the economy to thrive? Could she have imagined an isolation where some people didn’t get lonely, young people didn’t get out of the picture and the theaters and catering could have remained open? And in all this, could she have resisted a growing group of people who were fed up with their shit, wanted their freedom back and didn’t want to hear about any measure?
I’m curious about the thoughts that went through Simons’ head when she drafted this motion. It now seems to be a typical document of a best mate who is ashore and who disapproves of the skipper’s every course at sea. Pretty easy. Populist too. The people will feast on all the accusations: the lockdown went wrong, the relaxations went wrong and Simons gives the impression that she could have done better without deaths, without long-term sick and without damage to the economy. In doing so, she makes herself the best prime minister we’ve never had or an athlete who won a match that was never played. All rather easy and painful and disqualifying for the people in the performance.
Simons’ motion is almost a form of utopian thinking. A belief in an approach in a world that is completely controllable. It is a technical-instrumental approach to reality. Systems thinking where we long for a focus on the living environment and the human dimension. There was no such human touch in this motion. Under no condition. This was not thinking along, but counter-thinking. Don’t build, demolish. Not in-depth, but superficially judgmental. A motion that lacks empathy. A move that is of no use to anyone.
–
