A simple thought experiment that tells us all we need to know, about Trumpsters and right-wing thinking more broadly
(a thread)
(a thread)
So let us imagine two alternative pandemic scenarios, contrasted with the one we face now. Here's the first one:
Imagine that C19, rather than disproportionately impacting black and brown folks, lower income folks, older folks, and people with pre-existing health issues...
Imagine that C19, rather than disproportionately impacting black and brown folks, lower income folks, older folks, and people with pre-existing health issues...
...were, for some totally unexplained reason, instead disproportionately felling white, upper-middle class to affluent, prime of life, generally healthy folks...sending them to the hospital or morgue in outsized numbers...
...in that scenario, do you think we'd see this same push for mass re-opening, gambling with THESE people lives, the way we see now given the demographic reality we actually see with C19? Of course not. What does this say about the mentality of the "open it up" Trumpsters?
...1) that they place less value on lives of color (racism), low income lives (classism), elderly lives (ageism) & the lives of sick people (ableism); 2) they accept eugenicist, social Darwinism (even as they likely reject the fact of biological evolution which is hilarious)...
...and 3) that their calls for an end to lockdowns are not about the economy or their own jobs/income, but about the idea that only "those other people" will bear the cost of opening back up. Saying we have to "risk it" where the risk is someone else's, makes you an asshole...
Indeed, if the demographics were cutting opposite of how they are now, these folks would be DEMANDING government action to SUPPORT the impacted persons so they wouldn't have to risk their lives. That they don't want the same thing, in the real world, makes them assholes...
Second alternative scenario. Imagine that this virus was so aerosolized that it could float in the air for hundreds of yards, and had the lethality of a chemical weapons attack. In that scenario, would people be demanding such a re-opening...
...or cutting the president slack for not ramping up PPE production with the Defense Production Act? Of course not. We'd all accept lockdown, and understand the government HAS to do more: from producing that PPE to financially supporting us thru the crisis...
The fact that the virus isn't as deadly as this alternative scenario isn't important. The fact that we WOULD demand such financial support & receive it (we'd print and distribute money), tells us we CAN respond differently than this Hobbesian choice we're being forced to accept..
...of either "go to work and risk death" or "stay home and go broke/starve." In the above scenario we would do whatever had to be done to keep people alive and fed, bills paid, etc. We'd pause the economy the way countries like Denmark have done, until the crisis passed....
And the fact that we could do that means we could do that now too. Those opposing this only do so bc they're a) ignorant to science or reject it bc it's "elitist pointy headed academic stuff" (as is every medicine they take, none of which were made by their Uncle Cooter)...
or b) they just don't accept that it could happen to them, and so they think only others would suffer (see what that makes them, as per the first alternative scenario discussed above), or c) they are more devoted to the ideology of the market and not having govt help people...
...than they are to human life itself. They are willing to let folk die just to maintain the ideology. Not letting people die for the economy (which would be bad enough) but letting them die for an idea, which they fear would be eviscerated if the state intervened & saved us...
...And this makes them the biggest assholes of all.
Don't be an asshole...reject these people, their candidates, and everything they stand for.
Don't be an asshole...reject these people, their candidates, and everything they stand for.
