On January 30th, around 9pm, an American Airlines plane (flight 5342) collided mid-air into an incoming Sikorsky Black Hawk army helicopter before its scheduled arrival at the Ronald Reagan airport, located five miles off Washington D.C. The catastrophe claimed the lives of all 67 people aboard both aircrafts, leaving no survivors and only panic in its wake. The chaos would only intensify when only a day later, the crashing of the Learjet 55 in Philadelphia would take the lives of an additional seven victims.
Plane crashes, however, are not a new phenomenon. In 2023 alone, the National Transportation Safety Board recorded over 1,216 aviation accidents, 199 of them fatal, across more than 48 million flight hours. Just last month, South Korea witnessed a devastating jet crash that claimed 179 lives, a small South Sudanese aircraft took 20, and an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash in Kazakhstan added 38 more.
The fact is, plane crashes are a devastating reality. For the United States, however, it is a political one.
Headlines such as “The Potomac crash highlights the flaws of Trump’s ‘government as a business’ playbook,” “Trump Blames D.E.I. and Biden for Crash Under His Watch,” and “Trump’s disaster playbook: Blame Democrats and politicize tragedy” have soared on various news sources. In reference to the D.C. crash, Democratic Representative Eugene Vindman of Virginia publicly stated, “It’s on him. It’s on his shoulders,” pointing the blame to President Trump and his administration. Other critics pointed to the hiring freeze Trump initiated on January 20th.
The President has not made things any easier. In the first press conference after the D.C. crash, Trump suggested that diversity initiatives led by Obama and Biden are to blame for the hiring of inadequate individuals, and are potentially responsible for the catastrophe. This has merely fueled current controversy, with Trump recently moving to dismantle Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives in both the federal and private sector. Other government officials such as Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri have taken this chance as well to politically campaign for its elimination rather than console the public; in relation to the president’s comments, Schmitt retained, “DEI is poison.”
Neither of these political sides are supported by critical evidence, with the causes of these plane crashes still under investigation. Guy Gratton, an associate professor of aviation and the environment at Cranfield University, says that these crashes are merely “symbolic of a changing aviation landscape, with more congested skies and expanding war zones.” But for Congress, he says, it’s a “blame game now.”
It is very easy, however, to blame everything on the big guys in government, while overlooking the role the American public has also had in fueling unfounded accusations. Prominent users of X, Tiktok, and Instagram have used these current events as breeding grounds to divide the American nation even further. A resurfaced tweet of Elon Musk, Trump’s appointee to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, has fueled baseless speculations: “It will take an airplane crashing and killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy of DEI,” Musk wrote on January 9th, 2024. Other social media users have floated accusations of Russian foul play and terrorist operation, with some calling the D.C. crash a “1970s-style assassination.”
Amid these contentious reactions, the global response to recent airplane crashes offer varied reactions, some of which are breaths of fresh air. After the Azerbaijani airliner crashed in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev refrained from blaming Russia, despite obvious suspicions, until evidence of Moscow interference was confirmed. Similarly, despite heightened political tensions surrounding now-detained South Korean President Yoon Suk-Yeol, the South Korean public did not immediately direct their blame to his administration. Instead, rival parties organized a joint task force to uncover the truth behind the tragic event.
In the face of tragedies, nations are to band together—and the U.S. has once been an example of that. From its formation as a state to its response to Pearl Harbor to the collective unity after the tragedy of 9/11, the country has proven its ability to be resilient in the wake of calamity. While polarization has its upsides in creating an engaged and better-informed society, it loses value when even mourning losing victims becomes a battleground for policy campaigns.
Just two weeks into a new administration, the American reality remains: where disasters are to unite, the United States divides, torn apart by politics, conspiracy theories, and its own citizens.
