Thread by @mcjulie

It only sort of makes sense viewed through the lens of Reaganism. I can explain --

To reiterate, under the political philosophy of Reaganism, the federal government is allowed *only* these three purposes: maintain a military, siphon money and power to rich people, and prevent, by any means necessary, effective opposition to Reaganism.

Reaganism as I've defined it pertains specifically to the federal government, but as a governing philosophy it applies to states, counties, cities -- all the way down. So, Republican governors operate according to the principles of Reaganism.

Under Reaganism, no government at any level has an obligation to protect the health & well-being of any individual. Not even the wealthy! Only their wealth has to be protected, not their persons.

This is pretty straightforward under regular (non-pandemic) conditions. Wealthier people have access to health care in a "free market" sense, while the poor die, and wealthier people generally think that's fine.

Health care under Reaganism is unevenly distributed and EXTREMELY expensive, with most of that money siphoning upwards to, for example, CEOs of health insurance behemoths. All fine, according to Reaganism.

Your purpose, as a serf under Reaganism, is to generate wealth that can be extracted. Economic activity is required for this to happen. So, Reaganism wants you to have a job, spend all your money, get saddled in debt... as long as the money keeps flowing upwards.

So under the pandemic, the very extremely super rich have gotten WAY richer, which you would think would satisfy the requirements of Reaganism... vox.com/recode/2020/7/…

But, one thing, if you're one of the many jobless people staying home, you're not doing your part to *generate* wealth for the wealthy. Also, something else --

Even though you and I might see very clearly that the end point of Reaganism is "five guys on the entire planet have literally all the money," I think there are a lot of lower-tier rich people who still think the goal is to put money in THEIR pockets.

You know, the kind of low-key rich people who always dominate your local Chamber of Commerce & inevitably vote Republican.

I think it's that level of rich person who is really pushing against the anti-pandemic restrictions. That guy who owns five steakhouses and a golf course.

From their perspective, anti-covid restrictions are wrong and bad because they diminish economic activity in order to protect people's health.

Under Reaganism, "protecting people's health" is not a good reason to do ANYTHING, let alone violate rule 2 of Reaganism.

So, with that as the conclusion, they argue backwards. The virus is a hoax, it isn't that bad, only people who aren't like you will suffer from it, we fixed the virus already, you should get to make an individual choice about personal level of risk, etc.

But it's all driven by the underlying philosophy that protecting the health of human beings is actually a bad and incorrect thing for government to do.