Thread. This is what boggles my mind about the moneyed conservatives demanding that we start things back up right now: *it won’t even work* and you don’t need to be an economist to see that.
They want to kill people to save their portfolio but their portfolio will go down too.
They want to kill people to save their portfolio but their portfolio will go down too.
What they’re calling for will not benefit them. It will tank everything, and it won’t even take that long. This isn’t a situation where they benefit short term and trust that they can insulate themselves against long term fallout. The destruction will be almost immediate.
This virus kills slowly in relative terms but it still kills in three weeks or so. They’re trying to induce a situation where hospitals are crushed under the weight of dying people... within about a month.
That is absolutely bonkers mcnuttypants.
That is absolutely bonkers mcnuttypants.
This isn’t the wealthy and powerful looking at a situation with cold rationality and deciding to act in their own selfish interest while condemning others to death. This is them blasting a cannonball through the bottom of the boat because they think only the poors can sink.
Will their power guarantee them protection from the fallout and access to better care? I mean... Maybe? I don’t know, though, because we’ve basically never seen economic and social destruction on the scale they’re trying to create.
If I were them, and I was banking on my wealth to save me here, I wouldn’t be doing things that might decimate that wealth.
These people are utterly detached from reality and they’re lethally dangerous.
These people are utterly detached from reality and they’re lethally dangerous.
I’ve seen multiple people now respond with “they just think their wealth will protect them!” and like... I know. We all know. You’re not wrong. But my point is that *they* are very likely wrong.
See again re: detached from reality.
See again re: detached from reality.
They’ve indoctrinated *themselves* with the notion that money and influence make them bulletproof. Not just us. Themselves. And mostly that’s been the case. But like I keep saying, they’ve never faced anything like this before.
Like Poe’s Red Death, COVID19 doesn’t care about their wealth or their influence.
Their vision of the world is that level of distorted at this point.
These people shouldn’t be allowed to run anything.
Their vision of the world is that level of distorted at this point.
These people shouldn’t be allowed to run anything.
And I think this is also key.
They *do* recognize that what they’re calling for means a lot of destruction. They just see that as less of an existential threat than the alternative.
They *do* recognize that what they’re calling for means a lot of destruction. They just see that as less of an existential threat than the alternative.
There’s that line at the end of The Matrix: “I’m going to show them a world without you”. That’s what they’re scared of probably more than anything else. Everyone who isn’t them realizing who and what they truly are, and that we can choose a world without them.
And you know, I’m not sure they’ve thought it through with *quite* this level of clarity, but I do think they might not be wrong about that calculation.
I think their individual chances of making it through without their own massive damage are slim. But they see the world of an apocalyptically failed state, and they see a world where they still have a shot at making it.
Whereas a world with the sort of structural change we need—a world where that happens *even on an ostensibly temporary basis* is a world where they see their days numbered and that number dropping fast.
But let’s stop and think about that for a sec. Reflect.
A failed state with millions dead is less frightening to them than a world where the systems that currently maintain their power no longer do so—or even no longer do so quite as reliably.
A failed state with millions dead is less frightening to them than a world where the systems that currently maintain their power no longer do so—or even no longer do so quite as reliably.
Stop letting these monsters dictate policy.
