Andy King asked:
By this he meant call from the Right Wing that people should be willing to die for the economy.
If you missed it, here’s the clip of Trump saying that health care worker are “warriors” who are “running into death, just like soldiers run into bullets . . . incredible to see, it’s a beautiful thing to see.”
A death cult, of course, is a group that glorifies death.
3 strands come together to create the GOP’s death-cult response to Covid-19:
- Economic policies that kill people
- A base of voters conditioned to believe lies, which creates a leadership cult
- The Leader’s decision that people must die
These three strands entwine and compliment each other. President Hoover provides an example of what we might call death policies.
Industry in the 1920s was basically unregulated. This is known as “Laissez-faire economics:
Notice the part about how laissez-faire economics assumes a “natural economic order.” Laissez-faire is justified based on a hierarchy theory of government: There is a natural order, and the government shouldn’t interfere.
Slavery and women-belong-in-the home had the same justification.
In the 1920s there was no minimum wage or limits on the work week. Factory conditions were unsafe, and injured workers were left to starve. Laissez-faire economics ruled the day.
Caveat emptor, a concept that goes hand-in-hand with Laissez-faire economics, means “buyer beware.” The idea is that if people are duped, it’s their own fault for not being wiser.
In the old days, you could lie about what you were selling, and it was the buyer’s responsibility to inspect the goods. If you lied and he bought, he was stuck.
Yup, Trump, pushing hydroxychloroquine as a cure for Covid-19, appears to be a believer in caveat emptor.
The Supreme Court got in on the act. In 1923, the Supreme Court ruled minimum wage unconstitutional. The argument was that people had the right to enter contracts. If a person was willing to work for poverty wages, that wasn’t the government business.
You could even pollute rivers if you wanted to because, well, laissez-faire.
Notice that the last part of the definition I cited of laissez-faire economics says that even though government should (mostly) stay out everything, it should enforce contracts.
See how it all fits together? Take advantage of a person, get that person to enter a contract, and you “win.”
You can see how Trump fits into this. MAGA = Bring back the good old days! People were free! They could cheat! They could manipulate markets and fix prices! Those were the days!
In the 1920s during Herbert Hoover’s presidency, business tycoons got rich manipulating markets, fixing prices, artificially inflating the value of stocks, and other tricks.
After the Stock Market Crash of 1929, President Hoover did nothing. He believed that government interference would make things worse. The Great Depression worsened. There was starvation, pain, death. Hoover still did nothing because, well, laissez-faire.
Probably the closest historical similarity to Trump doing nothing in a pandemic was Hoover doing nothing in the Great Depression.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt defeated Hoover in 1932, and radically changed the nature of our government. He gave us the New Deal, minimum wage, a limited work week, protections in the work place, social security and more. The GI Bill, which educated returning soldiers and allowed them to improve their lives, thereby bringing us our first real middle class.
Notice that blacks were left out. Save that. I’ll get to it later.
Someone will come along and tell me the economy boomed because of WWII, not FDR. No. The economy steadily improved after the New Deal. After the 1938 midterms, Republicans could hamper FDR. FDR couldn’t resume his programs until the war forced his critics to back down.
FDR (a “fairness” as opposed to “hierarchy” president) also gave us host of agencies to regulate business and prevent the cheating.
Now we have regulations that prevent things like polluting rivers and forcing people to work in unsafe conditions. Hierarchy people hate these regulatory agencies and the regulations they promulgate.
So you see, policies that kill people are not new. Doing nothing in a Great Depression is a Death Policy. Letting business cheat people and drive them into poverty and turn them out of their homes is a Death Policy. Letting people pollute rivers is a Death Policy.
Taking away health care and forcing people to go to work in a pandemic without protective gear is a Death Policy. Telling people in a pandemic to expose themselves to the virus (to get ‘herd immunity) is a Death Policy.
Notice that people who suffer pain and/or die tend to be lower in the hierarchy. That’s how it works.
Trump makes sure anyone who comes near him get a test for Covid-19, but that doesn’t mean the masses get such protections. They are lower in the hierarchy.
The weasel words would be: Free market economy.
People advocating Death Policies (free market economy) have a problem: Persuading the people lower in the hierarchy to accept policies that kill them.
This brings us to #2: Condition people to believe a lie so they accept death policies. The three strands, recall, were:
- Economic policies that kill people
- A base of voters conditioned to believe lies, which creates a leadership cult
- The Leader’s decision that people must die
This post is already too long, so Part II will have to come in my next blog post.
Keep reading here.
