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.
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The FIRST time I saw it in my feed, I wanted to make an obvious Simpsons-type joke: serve beer and put a sportsgame on, of course, why is that even a question?
But also, Mark Driscoll, the first person I’m aware of to popularize the theobro approach, was doing this specific thing, “trying to appeal to men” more than 10 years ago… is it working yet? Why or why not?
Something just occurred to me, as we're dealing with aging parents family stuff, is that the evangelical Church is terrible for families.
One of the reasons my family isn't closer right now is because those of us who stopped believing in church ended up drawing away from the family, and the church sets everything up so it's kind of inevitable.
I don't observe a similar dynamic in my spouse's Catholic family, but it seems really common among white evangelical Protestants, for the kids who stop believing to pull away very strongly from the family as young adults.
There are people in the replies acting like this is some kind of wacko fringe theory and I really don't understand it. Like... it's very basic market theory that companies charge the MOST they think they can get away with, right?
The only thing that ever held prices down was "nobody will buy this for that price" and also some kind of pressure to sell.
I mention "pressure to sell" because apparently real estate can just sit there, overpriced, for years on end, with nobody buying it.
I'm an ex-evangelical who frequently critiques Christianity, and I hate what the Christian fascist movement is doing in places like Texas more than I can express in words.
But I would never call "religion" (broadly speaking) evil and usually push back on such sentiments. Why?
When I was in the process of what we currently call "deconstructing" (it was the 80s & 90s) I did a lot of research and hard thinking about religion itself -- where did it come from, why did it exist, what were the different kinds?
I still remember the "mind blown" sensation when I took my first comparative religion class and realized that other religions didn't necessarily work in the same fashion as Christianity at all --
Science fiction did help me imagine potential futures in real life, I'm not going to deny that. But even the canonical classic "all time greats" of SF include plenty of dystopias, such as 1984, Brave New World, A Canticle for Liebowitz...
The whole idea of humanity as "spacefaring" depends not only on technology that doesn't even REMOTELY exist yet, it ALSO depends on the idea of what you might call a life-hospitable universe.