Friday, May 08, 2020

Republican Cruelty


The devastation the coronavirus has wrought has come home today with the lastest unemployment statistics. The New York Times reports that, in April, Americans lost 20.5 million jobs. But Republicans refuse to help the unemployed. Senator Lindsey Graham says that extending unemployment benefits would "take over our dead bodies." Paul Krugman writes:

They apparently want to return to a situation in which most unemployed workers get no benefits at all, and even those collecting unemployment insurance get only a small fraction of their previous income.
Because most working-age Americans receive health insurance through their employers, job losses will cause a huge rise in the number of uninsured. The only mitigating factor is the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, which will allow many though by no means all of the newly uninsured to find alternative coverage.
But the Trump administration is still trying to have the Affordable Care Act ruled unconstitutional; “We want to terminate health care under Obamacare,” declared Donald Trump, even though the administration has never offered a serious alternative.

How does one explain this cruelty?

In the face of what amounts to a vast natural disaster, you might have expected conservatives to break, at least temporarily, with their traditional opposition to helping fellow citizens in need. But no; they’re as determined as ever to punish the poor and unlucky.
One answer may be that much of America’s right has effectively decided that we should simply go back to business as usual and accept the resulting death toll. Those who want to take that route may view anything that reduces hardship, and therefore makes social distancing more tolerable, as an obstacle to their plans.
Also, conservatives may worry that if we help those in distress, even temporarily, many Americans might decide that a stronger social safety net is a good thing in general. If your political strategy depends on convincing people that government is always the problem, never the solution, you don’t want voters to see the government actually doing good, even in times of dire need.

There is a third possibility -- Harry Truman's explanation. Truman called the Republicans of his day "sons of bitches."

8 comments:

Percival said...

The correct answer is, all of the above.

Anonymous said...

All three explanations are true. Cruelty is the point, as Mr Orwell outlined some 70 years ago:

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.


Cap

Owen Gray said...

All the explanations illustrate what the late senator Dan Patrick Moynihan referred to as "defining deviancy down," Percival.

Owen Gray said...

Thanks for providing that quotation, Cap. Orwell understood what humanity at its worst could accomplish.

Lorne said...

Every night I watch NBC Nightly News,Owen, and each night there are reports about the desperation felt by people because they can't seem to access unemployment benefits, and small businesses find there is no more money is the assistance pot, etc. The Republicans have clearly engineered the situation so that people demand reopening of their states and even flout lockdown orders.

Clearly, the people are a secondary consideration at best; the economy and the powers that be demand that they sacrifice everything, even their lives, for 'the greater good.'

Owen Gray said...

There was a report last night from Texas, Lorne, showing people lined up for two miles to get food from a food bank. I wonder if potential Republican candidates are tested for sadism.

Ben Burd said...

Owen
"There was a report last night from Texas, Lorne, showing people lined up for two miles to get food from a food bank. I wonder if potential Republican candidates are tested for sadism."

I wonder just how many of these people in lineups will still refuse to vote Democrat to punish the Repugs? Not too many I fear.

Owen Gray said...

They are like lemmings heading off the cliff, Ben. You can't fix stupid.