Contrary to the way we discuss politics most of the time, the first job of any functioning government is actually quite straight-forward: Protect people from easily preventable deaths. At the basic level, this means keeping the power on so that people don’t freeze to death in winter. It means keeping our water and food free of things that make us sick. It means disposing of our sewage and our trash responsibly to keep cities free of disease. If we think through what a government does, at any level really, a surprisingly large amount comes down to the simple job of protecting people from dying in ways that could be avoided.
There are dozens of reasons why this is not the way we talk about government most of the time. For one, it’s pretty boring and most of our news industry is in the business of keeping our attention. It’s not surprising that talking about big political personalities and explosive cultural controversies is better TV than an hour on how sanitation works or the importance of updating the electrical grid.
That’s not to say that news organizations don’t cover these issues, they absolutely do! Generally, that coverage is about when systems break down, like the coverage today about power outages in Texas or the coverage of the water crisis in Flint, but there are always reporters, especially local and industry-specific reporters, who cover the latest in waste management or water treatment.
Our own philosophical relationship to government is another major reason we don’t talk about this basic protective role. As individual citizens, our relationship to government is largely built on our understanding of our own rights. This makes sense because it’s pretty foundational to how the country was founded. The first ten amendments to the Constitution are literally called the Bill of Rights and they’re almost entirely about what the government can’t do. The government can’t make laws prohibiting our freedom of speech, it can’t force us to house soldiers, it can’t take our stuff without a reason, it can’t lock us up without due process or punish us in cruel and unusual ways. Whether or not the government keeps up its end of the bargain on these promises is up for further discussion, but this does set the template for how we think about official power. For the most part, we think about the government as something that is separate from us. It is something we choose in our elections and then it either acts on us in ways that it is allowed or avoids acting on us in ways that it is not allowed. This is where, I’d argue, we situate most of our conversations about government.
The problem, however, is that this view of government is fundamentally wrong. Government isn’t separate from us, it is us. It’s made up of people, including our literal neighbors. Some of these people are very good at their jobs and some are…not so great. This is important to point out because I believe we need a reminder that this basic function of government, the task of keeping people from dying in easily avoidable ways, is our collective task. I think we all realize that these are important jobs and that someone should do them. Someone should make sure that the water is clean. Someone should make sure that the food isn’t poison. Someone should make sure that the lights turn on and that the heat works. Someone should make sure that things are working the way they’re supposed to be working. Someone should do that. Someone else should do that.
And most of the time, honestly, someone does. Some person, or some group of people, in the Department of Somebody Else makes sure that all the things we take for granted in public life keep happening. Somebody Else makes sure the electricity flows, the water runs, the trash is picked up, and that the streets aren’t running with sewage. We’ve actually created a pretty good system when you think about it. Several of the most dangerous things in our lives, things that could have literally killed people 200 years ago, are things we don’t really have to think about…because Somebody Else does.
But there’s another problem. In recent years, a lot of us have become so convinced that the Real Politics are something else. Some of us have become convinced that the real work of government can be found in those big political personalities and explosive cultural controversies that entertain us on the news. Others have become convinced that the real work of government is about getting out of the way so that so we can all get rich, or at least so that some of us can get rich. Neither of these is necessarily bad. It’s nice to be entertained. Cultural controversies are important. All things considered I’d rather be rich than not rich. But none of those things are as important as helping people avoid easily preventable deaths, and unfortunately, we’ve been systematically kneecapping the Department of Somebody Else.
Perhaps the best look at the Department of Somebody Else is Michael Lewis’ book The Fifth Risk. The title comes from a former risk officer at the Department of Energy. When Lewis asks him for the five biggest risks involved with his job the officer replies with the following:
A broken arrow (a lost or damaged nuclear missile/bomb) (Note: The Department of Energy is in charge of America’s nuclear weapons.)
North Korean nuclear aggression
Iranian nuclear aggression
The vulnerability of the electrical grid
Bad project management.
Number five might not seem like it fits in with the other items on the list, but it’s exactly what I’m talking about when I talk about the Department of Somebody Else. My biggest concern about the Trump Administration wasn’t President Trump’s own criminality, it wasn’t that he might start a war, it wasn’t the tweets or the insults or any of the bravado. My biggest concern was the litany of small things that wouldn’t get done because no one cared enough to do them. My biggest concern was that nobody would be working in the Department of Somebody Else, or at least nobody who cared.
When COVID-19 started making headlines in December, my first thought was, “That sounds a lot like SARS.” As a result, I assumed that my experience of it would be similar to my experience of SARS. It would be in the news, I would be aware that it existed, nothing would really change in my life. Somebody Else would make sure that it didn’t affect me. That’s what happened with SARS. It’s what happened with MERS. It’s what happened with Ebola and H1N1 and Zika. Somebody Else came through.
But not this time.
Do you remember Y2K? I was only 12 in 1999 so I wasn’t really paying attention to the news that much, but I heard a lot about it. When nothing happened on January 1, 2000, I assumed that it had all been hype and that nothing really happened. However, in recent years, I’ve learned that I was very wrong about that. It’s not that nothing happened, it’s that billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of unnamed people did a ton of work to make sure that nothing happened. Somebody Else did their job and I got to go on my way thinking nothing of it.
As of today, 491,000 people in the United States have died from COVID-19. That’s 1 out of every 650 people in the country. Worldwide, the total is 2.5 million. Contrary to what many of us may see on Facebook, these totals are likely undercounts, not exaggerations. A lot of those deaths were avoidable. Easily avoidable. That’s what happens when you gut the Department of Somebody Else because you think politics is all about what you see on TV.
Today, more than 4 million people are without power in Texas in freezing temperatures. While the proximate cause is a winter storm, the deeper cause is that years of deregulation and underinvestment in the electrical grid left the people of Texas vulnerable. That’s what happens when you gut the Department of Somebody Else because you think it’s more important to get rich.
I know it can be boring, but we’re the only people who can make sure the Department of Somebody Else stays open. We’re the only people who can make sure that the first job of government keeps getting done. This time, there is nobody else.