Don't Turn the Titanic Submersible Tragedy Into Fodder for Class Warfare | Opinion

The world waited with bated breath to learn the fate of the five people trapped in a submersive called the Titan near the wreckage of the Titanic after news broke that contact with their vessel had been lost. After several days where we held out hope they could be rescued, we finally learned that the Titan had imploded, and tragically, all five had died. The unique, strange, and, frankly, terrifying circumstances of these individuals' death led to outsized media and public attention on the tragedy—so activists, inevitably, have since dragged it into our political fights and ideological warfare.

Some fringe voices on the online Left actually celebrated the demise of the submersible passengers simply because they were wealthy. (Tickets to ride in the tourist vehicle cost $250,000 per passenger). Ill-wishers riddled with class envy have reviled one passenger especially, British billionaire Hamish Harding.

"A sub went missing full of people who paid 160k-200k to take a tour of the titanic wreckage," one writer tweeted, receiving millions of views. "The ocean is just eating the rich for us these days."

"Hamish Harding, one of the dipshit billionaires on that stupid submarine, is rich from running a private jet company," another person wrote in a since-deleted viral tweet. "He's literally cooking the planet alive and we are meant to feel bad his stupid head has been squashed by the righteous pressure of the ocean? Nah man."

These barbaric comments are inhumane. After all, no matter your economic philosophy, rich people are still human beings, with loved ones and families. It's ghoulish beyond belief to celebrate death simply because you're so obsessed with envy that you no longer view rich people as human beings.

Thankfully, this line of thinking was largely consigned to the fringes of the online Left, and not all that widespread. But a less openly noxious though still divisive and disingenuous narrative emerged that also tried to turn the Titan submersible tragedy into class warfare fodder, and this one got a lot more play. Echoed by the likes of former President Barack Obama, this second narrative pointed out that while the nation's attention and tremendous resources were poured into the race to rescue the Titanic tourists, hundreds of refugees were drowning at the same time on a boat in Greece in a much deadlier incident that received far less focus. Class warriors used this to argue that the world only cares about what happens to rich people, not the poor.

"Theres an economic element to our democracy that we have to pay attention to," Obama said in a CNN interview. "You think about news of the day. Right now we have 24-hour coverage, and I understand it, of this submarine, the submersible, that tragically is lost at the bottom of the sea." Obama went on: "At the same time, right here, just off the coast of Greece, we had 700 people dead. 700 migrants who were apparently being smuggled. It made news, but it's not dominating in the same way."

President Obama's words echoed a sentiment that many others floated on Twitter in side-by-side pictures of the Titan submersible and the boat carrying the migrants—pictures also viewed millions of times.

But there are factual problems with this comparison. For one, the Greek Coast Guard says that the refugees on board the vessel refused rescue, telling them to go away. If true, that complicates the narrative that they only drowned because of societal indifference. Of course, it doesn't make the loss of life any less tragic or devastating—only less politically useful for those who wish to wage class war.

But critics aren't wrong that the Titan saga received more attention than the Greece tragedy. They're just wrong about why.

It wasn't because the Titanic tourists were rich and the migrants poor. It's because the Titanic situation was novel, unique, and in some ways darkly entertaining, while the migrant tragedy was not. The tragic reality is that flimsy ships bearing refugees sink somewhat frequently, and it's not unusual in the same way that the Titanic story was.

This is of course tragic. But it's also true. Human nature perhaps isn't as noble as we'd like it to be, but neither is it as evil. We don't only care about billionaires, but we do tend to lend our attention to the unusual more than the tragically routine.

As proof, consider how many survival stories in the past received similar levels of worldwide attention to the Titanic tourists, even when the people affected were not billionaires or even affluent. Recall the famous 2018 incident where a Thai boys' soccer team went missing while exploring a cave system in Thailand's Chiang Rai province. That story similarly captivated the globe; the rescue effort in that case also received an outpouring of international assistance, including U.S. air force rescue specialists, cave divers from the U.K., Belgium, and even Australia. (Thankfully, this incident had a mostly happy ending, with the boys being rescued, although one heroic diver did die in the rescue efforts).

The way this story played out is really quite similar to the Titanic saga we've just witnessed. A strange and unique situation of people in peril garners global attention and support pours in from around the world. And it doesn't actually matter whether they're rich or poor. Because it's not, in fact, rooted in wealth, however hard that is to believe for those who seemingly can't view things through any lens other than class conflict.

Why do we pay so much more attention to a wild story like the Titanic saga while focusing less on much more deadly-yet-mundane incidents like refugee boats capsizing?

People are arbitrary. And the truth is, we only have so much attention and empathy to dole out. The world is a vast, dark, and depressing place, and while all human life has equal value, it's not surprising that we focus more on outlandish and unusual incidents.

It might not be right, but it's only human nature—and it has nothing to do with class warfare. Don't cheapen the lives lost in these tragedies by using them to score points in pursuit of a political agenda.

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is an independent journalist and co-host of the BASED Politics podcast.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.