Social Solidarity is Dead

A plane crashed, and we're already arguing over whether Democrats or Republicans are responsible.

Last night, an American Airlines regional jet carrying 64 people collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River. As families gathered at Reagan National Airport desperately waiting for news of their loved ones, and as rescue teams worked to recover bodies from the icy waters, two competing narratives about the disaster had already begun crystallizing across social media platforms. One narrative, amplified by the administration and its allies, pointed to diversity initiatives as the root cause. The other focused on how the FAA had been left without Senate-confirmed leadership after its administrator stepped down following pressure from private interests. The human tragedy was still unfolding, yet the machinery of ideological warfare was already in full motion.

What makes this moment particularly notable isn't just the tragedy itself, but how quickly these competing explanations emerged and solidified—each reflecting deeper struggles over institutional authority and political legitimacy. The fact that the FAA administrator had resigned just ten days earlier, after public pressure from a figure who would then help shape the official response to the disaster, added layers of complexity to an already volatile situation. Lives had been lost, yet the focus immediately turned to scoring political points rather than understanding what went wrong.

This pattern—where institutional failures become immediately entangled with broader battles over political narrative and control—reveals something profound about our current moment. We're witnessing not just a tragedy, but a real-time demonstration of how traditional regulatory authority gets undermined when every crisis becomes subsumed into larger ideological and power struggles. The very mechanisms meant to ensure public safety are being transformed into weapons in our ongoing culture wars.

The situation becomes particularly alarming when we examine Musk's unprecedented position within the new administration. As head of both SpaceX (a major government contractor) and the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), while simultaneously controlling X (formerly Twitter) and serving as a key presidential adviser, Musk occupies a position of influence that defies traditional categories of public and private authority. The implications for public safety are staggering: the same person who fought against safety regulations now helps oversee how those regulations are implemented.

This arrangement raised few eyebrows when first announced, perhaps because we've become accustomed to such erosions of institutional boundaries. Yet consider the sequence of events that brought us to this moment: In September 2023, the FAA proposed over $600,000 in fines against SpaceX for safety violations. Musk, using the social media platform he controlled, demanded the FAA administrator's resignation. By December, that administrator had announced his departure. Ten days before dozens of Americans would lose their lives over the Potomac, the position was vacated, leaving one of America's most crucial safety agencies without Senate-confirmed leadership during what would become one of its darkest hours.

The traditional safeguards against such conflicts of interest—ethics laws, regulatory independence, separation of public and private authority—seem almost quaint in retrospect. When the same person can pressure a regulator through social media, see that regulator step down, then help shape the official response to a disaster that occurred during the resulting leadership vacuum, while simultaneously running the company that had been fined for safety violations, we're witnessing something unprecedented in American governance. The fox isn't just guarding the henhouse; he's redesigning it while telling us the old guard was incompetent.

What makes this situation particularly revelatory isn't just the unprecedented concentration of power in private hands, but how it illuminates the transformation of our political-ideological complex. The immediate pivot to blaming DEI programs—before investigators could even reach the wreckage—represents more than just partisan point-scoring. It reflects a sophisticated understanding of how crises can be leveraged to accelerate institutional transformation. By framing the disaster as a failure of bureaucratic diversity initiatives rather than regulatory oversight, the administration and its allies are advancing a broader project of replacing traditional democratic safeguards with a new form of authority based on technical competence and private sector efficiency.

I find myself stunned by how thoroughly this moment reveals the near-total collapse of democratic solidarity—that crucial recognition among politically opposed groups that they remain, despite their differences, citizens of a shared democratic project. When a major aviation disaster becomes instant fodder for ideological warfare, with no pause for collective mourning or shared concern for institutional stability, we're witnessing something profound about our political culture's decay. The dead have not even been recovered, yet their tragedy has already been conscripted into service of competing political narratives.

The administration's pivot to attacking DEI programs—even as families wait to learn if their loved ones survived—represents more than just typical partisan messaging. It demonstrates a deliberate strategy to prevent any moment of national unity from emerging, even around tragedy. This isn't accidental. The transformation of every crisis into an ideological weapon serves to further erode whatever remaining sense of shared citizenship might exist among Americans. Each death becomes not a cause for collective grief, but ammunition in an endless political war.

Consider how different this response is from historical moments of national tragedy, when political opponents would at least temporarily set aside their differences to preserve some basic sense of national cohesion. After aviation disasters like TWA Flight 800 or the Space Shuttle Challenger, the nation paused to mourn together before beginning the careful work of investigation and reform. That such restraint now seems almost unimaginable reveals how thoroughly our political culture has been transformed. We've moved beyond normal political competition into a realm where even basic human empathy is subordinated to immediate partisan advantage.

This erosion of democratic solidarity creates a dangerous feedback loop that touches every aspect of our shared civic life. Each crisis that gets immediately weaponized for partisan gain makes the next crisis more likely to receive the same treatment, further diminishing our capacity for collective response to serious challenges. When we can't even wait for bodies to be recovered from the Potomac before launching into ideological battle, how can we possibly address more complex systemic challenges?

Perhaps most concerning is how this erosion of democratic solidarity has been normalized even among those who recognize its dangers. I've watched traditionally thoughtful friends and colleagues increasingly justify their own participation in these immediate post-crisis battles, arguing that failing to immediately counter opposition narratives amounts to unilateral disarmament. When people who deeply understand the importance of democratic restraint feel compelled to jump into these ideological knife-fights, it signals a profound shift in our political culture. The very people who should be maintaining institutional stability find themselves drawn into battles that further erode it.

This dynamic creates its own sort of path dependency. Each round of immediate politicization makes restraint seem more naive, pushing even those who understand the costs to participate in the very behaviors they recognize as destructive. I've watched colleagues who once championed measured responses and careful investigation now rush to counter emerging narratives within hours of a tragedy. The logic becomes inescapable: if every disaster will be instantly weaponized by opponents, then failing to respond in kind amounts to surrendering the narrative battlefield. This reasoning, while tactically understandable, accelerates the very institutional erosion that thoughtful citizens claim to oppose.

What makes this particularly troubling is how it represents a kind of prisoner's dilemma in our political culture. Everyone might recognize that immediate politicization of tragedy damages democratic institutions, yet each actor feels compelled to participate or risk ceding ground to ideological opponents. Scholars who understand the importance of waiting for evidence find themselves drawn into speculative battles over cause and effect. Public servants who know the value of careful investigation feel pressed to offer immediate explanations. The result is a race to the bottom that no one particularly wants but everyone feels forced to join.

This dynamic creates a Russian doll of overlapping crises, each one nested within and obscuring the others. At the surface level, we have the immediate human tragedy—dozens of lives lost in the cold waters of the Potomac. This gets quickly enveloped by the crisis of competing political narratives about its cause. That ideological battle then obscures a deeper institutional crisis about regulatory capacity and leadership at the FAA. And beneath all of these lies the fundamental crisis: the systematic erosion of state capacity to regulate and check concentrated private power.

What makes this particularly insidious is how the very forces working to diminish state regulatory capacity are using this tragedy to accelerate that project. While public attention gets diverted into battles over DEI initiatives and political messaging, the more fundamental transformation of regulatory authority continues apace. As we argue about diversity programs, we lose sight of how private interests are systematically dismantling the very mechanisms meant to keep our skies safe.

This layering of crises makes it increasingly difficult for citizens to maintain focus on the fundamental changes occurring in our governance. Each new tragedy gets immediately absorbed into partisan battles that distract from the underlying erosion of democratic institutions. Meanwhile, the project of transferring power from public regulatory frameworks to private hands proceeds with remarkably little resistance or even recognition. The dead deserve better than to become pawns in this dangerous game of institutional transformation. America deserves better.