From the New Deal to Now: Individual Exceptionalism in the Face of Covid-19
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| In memorium: Francesca Amendo, 12 January 1925-7 May 2020 and for those who have survived or are currently battling Covid-19 |
Before I launch into the main point, I want to acknowledge the
phenomenal work of Heather Cox Richardson, Professor of History at Boston
College. Her work “How the South Won the Civil War”, her Facebook Live videos,
and her Letters from an American, have proven invaluable and thought provoking.
I recommend getting her book and following her on Facebook and even subscribing
to her email; it’s a subscription that’s worth signing up for.
To be clear, most of what I write is spit-balling and ruminating
on our current collective moments. I’m not interested in making definitive
statements, but I also think it’s healthy to interrogate the moment (as well as
blow off a little steam) and see where the riffs lead. This started out as a
rumination on two different news stories that stem from a distinct ideology; that
the individual’s rights are being trampled on by the government. How these stories
have and are playing out is instructive, so much so, that I found them
dovetailing nicely with what Professor Richardson has discussed the past couple
of weeks. And yes, I ripped her off for both articulation and resources.
I don’t think that the tension between the individual and
the greater community has to be antagonistic. Sometimes, the individual should
take precedence but I don’t think the current moment justifies that stance. In
what follows, I admittedly take a ham-handed approach, and may well be off the
mark on some facts (again, spit-balling and often calling on a hazy memory) but
the gist is that we need to question the actions of those who don’t seem to grasp
the aggressive nature of this virus and its communal assault.
In terms of solution(s), well, I admit I’m half-assing that but
I offer what I can in good faith.
It might be a waste of time...
This is a long ass post and I hope it’s not a total wash. I
don’t want to waste anyone’s time and if you feel it wasted yours, remember:
you were warned!
Enough. Let’s begin.
For the most part, I can’t say that I find lockdown problematic.
Of course, I’m remarkably lucky; I’ve got a steady income that covers my necessities
and I’m living with my sister, the easiest person in the world to live with. The
flip side of this is the awareness that not everyone has it so cushy and that there
are those who find lockdown not merely inconvenient, but an assault on their
liberty, on their preconceived notion that they have the right to do whatever
they want.
I have nothing but sympathy for the people who are suffering
under this moment in humanity’s history; the people who have nothing and are
now faced with having even less, vast swathes of individuals and families on the
cusp of poverty and beset by darker spectres on the horizon, and those with
sick or dying friends and family, afflicted by this virus.
However, I have little to no sympathy with the often white
crybabies who rail against an unjust government that seeks to curtail their
freedom of movement. Actually, let me emend that: I have no sympathy at all for
them.
The hubris and selfishness of these people stresses
credulity (and admittedly, my patience) and for those of you who live in other
parts of the U.S. and the world, the apotheosis of this can be found in the
armed “Protesters” that have occupied or tried to occupy the state of Michigan’s
capitol and Shelley Luther, a Dallas woman who has gained traction of being the
face of the victimized business owner whose livelihood and that of her staff is
at stake. There are severe issues with how this case was reported and I highly
recommend perusing the additional reading after the end of this post.
Both are examples of a strain of individualism that
privileges the self above and over and against the well-being of the community.
Letting alone that if you feel a need to visit your state’s capitol heavily
armed to voice your concerns there may be other issues there and for the moment,
setting aside the very real issue of how to manage economic necessity while
preserving the health and well-being of our fellow citizens, these people are
representative of a Randian selfishness that demonstrates the barrenness of Randian
philosophy and “me-first” ideologies.
The main case is that we have a health crisis. Not just “we”
as in municipality, county, or state. I very much mean “we” as in humanity. We
have a virus that is capable of mutating and adapting to a degree that
increases its communicability. At present, it doesn’t seem to be any more or
less virulent in its various mutations, but that may be moot; we’re discovering
that the effects of the virus are more far-reaching than respiratory distress.
It can cause neurological damage, as well, and seems to have osteopathic
effects. We know that it often results in permanent damage to the lungs. These
are the results that await many who survive. As for the death toll, these
metrics speak for themselves.
Let’s circle back to the communicable aspects of Covid-19.
It’s extremely passable from one host to another and the principle approach to
mitigation is social distancing. This is something anyone can do. There are, of
course, situations that might not make this easy for everyone. There are those
trapped with abusers in damaging relationship, there are essential workers who
need to be on the front lines, and there are those who may be infected but
cannot get tested because they may be asymptomatic or as likely if not more so:
there aren’t enough available tests.
There are also the incarcerated; prisons and ICE detainment
centers in this country are petri dishes of infection taking down guards and
prisoners alike. And of course, nursing homes and senior communities that vary
in quality and level of care. Essentially, and not to put this in too stark terms,
we’re looking at potential death sentences for very many people.
Yet, there seem to be many people who either don’t know or
don’t care about the numbers – perhaps the statistics just seem too abstract
for them – or don’t understand how this virus works – no surprising since very
many Americans are almost anti-science (unless it supports their arguments…often
poorly researched, I’ve found). But they show something else; they don’t care
about their community or people outside their circle, and this is an issue.
As an aside, it’s intriguing to me that the armed “protesters”
and the business owners who want to open full bore are railing against an
unjust government. In Michigan’s case, my supposition is that much of this is
rooted in party politics against a Democrat (and yes, a woman; we can assume
that gender has a part in this, too) governor and in Texas, well, it’s just
weird. I know this is an aside, but this requires some explanation:
Governor Abbott, a Trump supporter, and laissez-faire
Republican until he needs to bend to business interests, instigated the stay-at-home
orders to be left up to the county and/or municipality. So much for leadership;
however, he later decreed a rolling reopening of business. The re-opening would
be on the order of cinemas and restaurants carrying only 25% capacity, retail
would provide curbside service, and then – according to Abbott, based on
recommendations from doctors and medical research – there would be more
stepped-up reopening.
Thus, it strikes one as a little odd that this beauty parlor
owner decides to buck the system and open up fully prior to the reopening, claiming
she’s fighting an unjust government (that, apparently, she supports and that,
apparently, sigh, supports her with Lieutenant Governor of Texas Dan Patrick
posting her bail!) Obviously, there’s more to the story and there’s a link here
and down below, as well.
My point with Ms. Luther’s story is not whether she is what
she appears to be but that there is enough of a backing group that does
represent this prioritizing of individual desire over and against community
necessity. All of which leads us back to the sickness that is the United States
of America that is not Coronavirus.
As a society, we have at different times been one – more or
less – community. The Depression of the 1930s was no one’s idea of a good time,
but there were many groups across the country that banded together to look
after each other and with the inauguration of the Roosevelt administration, a
coordinated series of efforts were in place to lift the population out of
poverty caused by the rampant speculation that led to the Stockmarket Crash of
1929.
Between the New Deal and the ascendancy of the unions as voices
for labor, it is not unreasonable to say that most Americans were more likely
to feel a communality (excluded from this would be people of color and women).
This takes a more concerted turn with the arrival of World War Two and at the end
of the war, the U.S. saw an unprecedented period of growth. But this did not
come about because of oligarchy or class privilege. The New Deal proved
extremely popular with the voting populace and provided the National Highways
Act which opened up transit and a more mobile population (of course, this depleted
cities and the flight to the suburbs meant the poorest Americans were left
behind) and the G.I. Bill which provided for service members and their families
to be able to purchase homes, attend higher education, and build businesses
among other benefits.
Of course, there were issues; exclusivity based on race,
class, and gender were still present although it is worth noting that the
genesis of the Civil Rights Movement and the push for gender equality were gaining
traction even in the fifties. The price paid by black Americans was steep, and continues
to be, but the point is that even with a relatively unified United States, there
was its legacy of racism to be met.
Also of course, there were those in government who wanted to
return America to pre-New Deal norms. Hoover style politicians wanted to see a
return to the concept of running government like a business and began to
conflate taxes which were scaled at the time so that the wealthy paid a more reasonable
share, with a “redistribution of wealth” – the well-known term from Marx and
Engels as a cure for the exploitation of the workers under capitalism. In other
words, with this conflation, taxes and the social programs they supported (see
the aforementioned Highway Act, GI Bill, and others) equaled communism.
Coming out of the second world war, the next big enemy was more
ideological than military. Communism spelled the end of all that Americans held
dear, or so it was presented, and the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of
China would stop at nothing to crush the U.S. and all she (yes, the feminine…the
old gender bias at play, feminine = weak and most be protected) represents.
We know what happened then; Senator Joe McCarthy begins his
anti-Communist hunt and William F. Buckley, Jr. begins publishing The National
Review, both birthed by Movement Conservatism. It’s important to point out here
that this happened on the watch of a Republican president, but not supported by
that president. Eisenhower regarded the isolationism and fear-baiting with
disdain. He was also concerned with what he saw as Congressional malfeasance in
terms of securing military and manufacturing contracts for certain areas and
not others. Indeed, his original formulation wasn’t only the Military-Industrial
Complex, but he Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex. He saw the interrelated
dependencies of all three in promoting a queasy alliance between expansion of
power and personal gain.
It was around this time that we begin to see the rise of the
narrative of the little guy who gears up to fight against the oppressive government
in a way that hadn’t been quite seen before. Heather Cox Richardson points to
the popularity of the cowboy/western genre in popular culture during the fifties
and I take her point; the cowboy often rises up to challenge the corrupt
sheriff/outlaws that enslave a community/governor, and so on, to fight for the
oppressed and how that trope gained currency with the conservatives culminating
in the ascendency of Ronald Reagan in 1981.
That said, and in the interest of fairness, popular culture
also presented as many counter examples. Science fiction that warned of the
dangers of conformism, films that pointedly addressed racial inequality, and of
course, rock and roll. Just sayin’.
Still, the Movement Conservatives (their term) did well in
promoting the primacy of the individual. So much so, that we see the first
change in the tide with the rise of the Silent Majority in the mid-sixties. Here
is where I usually pinpoint the general shift. The Civil Rights Act had been
passed, but we had escalation of hostilities in Vietnam. Tensions grew across
the country across all manner of fault lines: race, gender, gay rights, the
antiwar movement. It could be argued that the U.S. was never more divided.
But here’s the rub, to my mind. Despite the unity we’ve seen
exhibited at different times throughout the nation’s history, we have always
been divided – often strongly, sometimes violently – on issues. In my lifetime,
I’ve seen how insane we get and much of it can be traced to this idea that I
want what’s mine and I don’t care what it costs others to get it. This is where
the throughline between the mid-sixties to the full formation of overriding
self-interest in the 80s can be seen.
Nixon and the Republicans knew how to frame an opponent as
weak and un-American. He and the party had learned from his scathing defeat by
Kennedy years before that people are swayed by emotion (often fear) and the
promise of a better society (for them, of course, not for those Others who are
dangerous). To be sure, there were hiccups along the way, but by 1980, the
G.O.P. had learned its lesson well and positioned a man of outstanding
mediocrity to be the face of the party that spouted bullshit, got elected and
began the dismantling of government that we live with today.
It couldn’t have been done, though, without a compelling narrative.
That story is that “they’re” after you, “they” want to take advantage of the
system, and “they” will ruin the country. “They” quickly became the “crack mom”
– a Republican manifested demon of a Black woman with a ton of kids illegally
on welfare living off food stamps and representative of a Welfare State that
threatens the livelihood of every true, hard-working American (most likely white
and living in the ‘burbs). This metastasized to include every non-WASP lifestyle
(and when AIDS began, how little did the Reagan Administration move until it
started to show that it also infected – gasp – heterosexuals, as well).
Did this abate with a Democratic president? I’m not sure.
Anecdotally, I felt that we as a society hung together better. And it’s telling
that in the wake of the Rodney King slaying, racial tension seemed to lessen
but as I pull back from the anecdotal, I’m not so sure. The economy had
rebounded, the national budget was being balanced (and would end the era with a
surplus), and as much as there might not have been the visual antagonism and anti-immigration
stances we see today, this might well be because the U.S. was still carrying on
operations to destabilize regions in Latin America and control oil prices with
its usual aplomb. In other words.
The main issue I’d point to was passing the Violent Crime
Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. For sure, incarceration rates were trending
higher but the crime bill exacerbated them after its passing. Think of “the
three strikes” rulings that came with it and the disproportionately black
populations that were affected by this and similar legislation at state and
local levels in ensuing years. Admittedly, Clinton tried to walk about its
passage but frankly, that’s too little too late and while some might argue that
its effects are overstated, I would argue to the contrary; the mere passage of
the bill speaks to the racial divide in the U.S. – institutionalized and systemic.
I don’t know how much of this feeds into the theme of the
rise of individualism against the good of all, but it’s a moment for reflection
because it’s obvious that black people more than any other minority population
is discriminated against in this country. I don’t wish to downplay the indignities
and outrages that Latinx and people of Asian descent and extraction have
suffered, but incarceration rates and studies show that the broader (white and
frankly, other people of other ethnic origins) community stigmatizes Black people
out of proportion.
In any case, as we enter the twenty-first century, we seen
increasing Us-Versus-Them levels of rhetoric and behavior. In the wake of 9/11,
Arab Americans were the first casualty, but it wouldn’t be putting to fine a
point on it to say that this is where backlash against immigrants began to take
flight. I remember a friend of mine at work at the time was – frankly – shit
scared. Before we were released from work, she told me she already felt unsafe;
“what is this going to do brown people?” I opined nothing good.
What I didn’t foresee was just how much divides would widen
across other lines, as well. To say we don’t have class divisions in the United
States is to be willfully benighted, but it seems that’s one type of ignorance
that is capitalized on regularly (and has been). The chasm between the rich and
the poor is massive and it’s perplexing that the very not-rich continue to
throw in behind the wealthy and the very wealthy unthinkingly.
That in itself is perplexing but as a strategy for continuing
to keep classes separate and “in their places”, works like a charm. It also
effectively empowers the comfortable with a greater sense of entitlement over
the working class and working poor (let alone the more marginalized). This strategy
is a subtler divide and conquer and less intensive to manage than outright
suppression, though there’s certainly that.
In the earlier parts of the millennium, it was also difficult
to ignore – “difficult”? I’ve got to stop with the understatement – impossible to
ignore the rise of the Tea Party and its welcoming into the Republican Party. I
don’t think the old guard imagined how quickly they would be replaced by this
incendiary movement of reactionaries. (I so wanted to use other adjectives like
“slavering band of ill-educated miscreants” but I’m trying to keep my repressed
Hunter S. Thompsonisms in check.)
That movement became more pronounced with the Obama
administration; it’s been said that the Obama administration exacerbated racial
tension but if so, I think it has more to do with prevailing perceptions of the
white majority and the very real bases for fear of that majority by many black
people across the country. It is also with the Obama administration that we
notice upticks in hate groups and general violence against all minorities.
It’s probably not too much to suggest that this has to do with
the militant factions of the conservative movement that this is their logical
reaction to the recognition of a shift in the balance of racial relations. It’s
a given that the country will be a minority-majority population within a
generation or two. What this spells for racial purists, I don’t know; but I don’t
think it means we’ll all be hugging one another and singing “Kumbaya” (though
that would be lovely). Much depends on how we survive the current moment.
Surviving this moment is calling on clear-sightedness, understanding,
and good planning based on medical science and data and solid deployment at a
central (read: federal) level. As much as my Libertarian friends would decry
the value of the Federal Government and its uselessness in the best of times
(views I’ve never understood and do not share), we have no such central or
steady planning or deployment. Consequently, we have an uninformed and often skeptical
populace and one driven by the sense that the “government” is lying to them,
that they are being denied their rights to work and assembly, and that they can
do whatever they want without the nanny state’s say-so.
The pity is that if it was only they who were to be affected
by their actions, I might be less concerned (I hate to write that; even if it were
only they who were affected by their actions, it would still be tragic), but it
is the case that this is not so. It is saddening that there are very many
people who feel so entitled to “buck the system” in their eyes, in order to
shore themselves up economically. They are not martyrs to a cause, though. If
anything, they are principle players in continuing to ensure that this virus
grows.
Any other time and I’d be inclined to say education is the
answer, but it’s going to take far more than that. Absent any meaningful
leadership, we have blocs of states organizing to move through this pandemic as
best they can with others going it alone, inviting more infection, if not
disaster. There was floated a utopian solution of simply halting the economy, initiating
a temporary universal base income and then reopening markets with an all-clear
down the line. Sounds good but a) I can’t imagine the slimmest chance of that
happening in this country and b) I’m at a loss to find the source I got that
from I dismissed it so quickly. And I love utopian solutions!
All I can come up with concretely is that now is a good time
for people to support one another in doing the right thing and helping each
other out. I have friends who buy groceries for their elderly neighbors, there
are neighborhood groups who deliver food to those in poor neighborhoods and
restaurants that have repurposed themselves to distribute meals to the
homeless.
I would also suggest keeping in touch with your state and
local representatives. My congresswoman has regular virtual town halls and is
readily available and accessible (this may not be the case for everyone). The
point is that even in isolation, we can make our voices heard and there are plenty
of ways to organize in virtual environments.
How much of this would or can translate into meaningful
action or serve as helping quell the passion that comes with feeling threatened
by “the government” (I’m not even sure that that’s the concern they think the
proponents of this argument have…the baseline just seems too childish for any
kind of world view, policy, or mission statement)? For extremists, nothing will
calm their agitated breasts. However, maybe – just maybe, for others, it may
point to other alternatives they (and myself, for that matter) hadn’t
considered.
Sources/Further Reading
These are all easily accessible no-paywall resources and not
all have a part to play in this essay. However, I like to leave the reader with
points of departure and the ability to traverse their own path. Admittedly,
blog posts are not necessarily essays that require bibliographical references.
Mine tend to be polemical and purely my responses to specific moments in time.
From there, there’s a lot of free association. Lots. I hope that if anyone does
read this, that it provides more than mere bellyaching or rolling my eyes. If
there are issues to be addressed, I like to think I offer possible routes to
solutions or at least, temporary relief.
Lansing Occupation:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/30/michigan-protests-coronavirus-lockdown-armed-capitol
Other states (good summary, but refer to citations for more
thorough information):
Shelley Luther:
The New Deal:
of additional interest is Roosevelt’s “Second Bill of Rights”:
Post-War America
Rise of the Movement Conservatives:
As a prime example of both ideology and rhetoric, Reagan’s “A
Time for Choosing” is emblematic:
The Civil Rights Movement:
The Civil Rights Digital Library
Narrative of the Civil Rights Act
http://www.dirksencenter.org/print_basics_histmats_civilrights64_contents.htm
http://www.dirksencenter.org/print_basics_histmats_civilrights64_contents.htm
Heather Cox Richardson (relevant videos):
The American Paradox (Part 7)
The American Paradox (Part 8)
Economic present and future; the cost of lives versus the
economy:
H.R.3355 - Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of
1994
For a quick overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_Crime_Control_and_Law_Enforcement_Act#Federal_Death_Penalty_Act
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