The only positive—if it can be called that—in this entire tragic pandemic is that it has laid bare the inadequacies of our infrastructure, our economic structure, and the conservative political philosophy of running the government like a Ponzi scheme. When Trump’s pick to chair the FCC, Ajit Pai, helped roll back net neutrality consumer protections, he did so by arguing that the FCC had no right to enforce any regulations on big telecommunications companies. The argument was that the internet is not the same level of essential utility that phones or the telegraph is. It was bullshit, and Pai’s subsequent contradictory moves and statements have proven that.
A couple of weeks ago, Pai, now heading a toothless regulatory body, scrambled to make it look like his Republican-led agency’s gutting of consumer protections was not going to pose an enormous problem. Pai and the Republicans on the FCC had given away their powers to force telecommunications to do right by the American people. To that end, Pai was able to get most of the internet service providers like Verizon and Comcast to sign a thing called the “Keep Americans Connected” pledge that said they would be super awesome during the COVID-19 pandemic. Well, since they don’t actually have to, it turns out that telecoms aren’t keeping that pledge.