Now, I am kinda annoyed about this: Sonoma County emergency management director disregards coronavirus shelter-in-place order, takes family to beach.
That’s not a good look, Chris.
To be fair to him, his statement on the matter is pretty good:
“I seek the understanding and mercy of my community. The opportunity to grant just a moment of freedom to my family — given that they rarely see me — is not a justification, but it’s what was going through my mind at the time.”
I can live with that. He seems sincere in saying he’ll do better in the future, so good for him.
We all make mistakes sometimes, and we all deserve a second chance if we’re sincere that we’ll try to do better.
No, it’s some of the responses that bug me.
Most specifically this one:
“Supervisor David Rabbitt defended Godley on Sunday, saying very few people can do what Godley does. He called for more lax rules for people like Godley and health care professionals.”
Damnit, Rabbitt.
That is exactly the wrong attitude.
We should expect more from people in positions of trust; we should hold them to a higher standard. That’s how you deserve a position of trust.
Hell, it’s what the “trust” in “position of trust” requires.
Relaxing the standards because the job is so dangerous, or stressful or whatever excuse you want is how you get police and soldiers being excused for committing atrocities.
Not that I’m saying that your afternoon on the beach was an atrocity, Chris.
Really.
But it’s a difference in degree not type.
In Zoo: The Graphic Novel, by James Patterson, Michael Ledwidge, and Andy Mcdonald, society has its final bell rung because elected officials refused to hold themselves to a necessary law forbidding burning hydrocarbons for two weeks (it’s an environmental catastrophe story); they just couldn’t see how they could be expected to follow the rules they set for the normal people.
I’d like to think we can be better than that, and especially that our actual political class can be better than that.
Rabbitt clearly is not better.
His attitude is exactly that: you can’t expect the rulemakers to follow the rules.
And a person with that attitude absolutely cannot be trusted anywhere near the power to make the rules.
And we certainly can’t afford that attitude right now.
