Live Free or Die
A picture is worth a thousand words, and this one of a ‘re-open’ protester facing a counter-protesting medical professional in Denver is the latest image that describes the tension that is sturring in the country as collective cabin fever sets in. A combination of economic devastation, misinformation, and lack of an adequate response from the federal government has sparked a new wave of protests against the life-saving stay-at-home orders.
Donald Trump, in a sense, set a deadline and an expectation with his audience that he would be able to ‘open up the economy’ by Easter. Like clockwork after Easter the supporters who trust Trump as their leader and protector tried to resume their lives as if we weren’t in the middle of a historic pandemic. There have been reports linking these protests to right-wing non-profit groups who were involved in organizing tea-party rallies in the past, as well as state chairs in Trump’s campaign, a Koch-backed PR firm, and even a group linked to the DeVos family. Trump also made sure his base heard the call as he supported the ‘Liberate’ messaging on social media, so there is certainly a political element to this, and we need to be vigilant about that and how Trump is using his demagoguery in a way that could literally be killing people.
The first instinct to anyone who is listening to medical professionals and epidemiologists is to call these people dumb and ignorant, and at first, I was going to come on the show and call out the ridiculousness of these people who in some cases want to buy ‘fertilizer’ and ‘go to the hairdresser.’ These things are clearly not essential and I would expect these people to simply listen to scientists and doctors and the CDC to help us avoid outbreaks that would overwhelm our medical systems. It even seems like the objective in some cases, like in Michigan, that the demonstrations were designed to block the roads and ways to get to the hospitals. This is all definitely destructive, illogical, and most certainly is endangering people’s lives. In fact, Kentucky seems to now have seen a new spike in cases after the wave of protests in their state.
Despite all of this, I don’t simply want to be dismissing all of these protestors and this dynamic is worth unpacking to learn about the kind of clashes we can expect in America in the next few years.
First and foremost there is the religious element. This is the one that I personally am the least sympathetic to; I am an aggressively secular person and don’t believe at all in a higher power. But this is an overwhelmingly Christian country (and actually a very evangelical administration with figures like Mike Pence in power), so God and faith in myths over scientists and researchers are a part of our culture and it will take years to work through that cultural conversation. Even those people who seem to ‘believe in’ this pandemic cite the higher power watching over them as an ally vs coronavirus. I don’t really understand it and think those myths belong in museums already, but for now, we don’t need to force the argument, as much as I may want to (I certainly am someone who warns that faith in these myths gives an easy out for anyone who doesn’t want to believe scientists and their findings, and in this case medical professionals).
As crazy as they seem I’m going to do my best to understand the situation and the flawed logic and approach them with empathy. The most important dynamic is a legitimate backlash against the government. Their conservative argument seems to be tied to their liberty not just to continue buying things and getting together in public, but in many cases just to continue making a living; not all of them are ‘too-far-gone’ in blind support for Trump and unwillingness to recognize the reality of the health emergency.
Oh yeah I believe it’s real. We still have a right I think to, like, work […] We want to work.
State governments are enforcing these lockdowns which are closing down many people’s businesses and disrupting their livelihoods while there is no adequate response from the federal government to provide them with a safety net. We already saw that the last stimulus package was focused on benefitting large corporations and Wall St and did not meet the moment. Last week we saw another new proposal from the Senate which calls to allocate more money for small businesses because of the Paycheck Protection Program has, get this, already run out of money and of course a $1,200 one-time payment that in many cases barely covered the rent was not enough for families who are struggling to put food on the table. Not only that, but only those lucky enough to have direct deposit info logged with the IRS got their checks, and another rent payment will be due in the coming weeks.
What are they supposed to do?
These people don’t actually have the power to influence the coordinated response that could re-open their communities. If they want to go back to work and not take a handout, there is gonna need to be extensive testing and contact tracing and aggressive enforcement of social distancing for the foreseeable future, and these working people do not have control over that. Those people who are suffering are not the ones we should be pointing fingers at; we should be aiming our criticism at the people who have the power to legislate and negotiate the response who have already given trillions of dollars to large corporations and Wall St and are continuing to respond with measures that are too meager. In this kind of crisis, every day where we don’t get definitive action we lose serious ground as we are not stopping the outbreak, workers continue to lose their jobs and many in the majority of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck now likely behind on their bills. Meanwhile, we have congress taking breaks in between their corporate bailout bill negotiations.
Even that new $484 billion bill signed by the Senate that I mentioned, still has not addressed a rent or mortgage freeze, getting hazard pay for workers, funding for cities and states, or for food stamps, and of course no additional stimulus checks. Our leaders should be the ones under fire for not fighting for a comprehensive response for working people in the first place. Their first bill, that even well-intentioned politicians were peer-pressured into voting through, basically only had hospital money which should be a given, two allocations of funds for working people (the small business funds and checks) which have barely lasted two weeks which were both dwarfed by the money that went to big business and their financiers.
Embarrassing.
How are they expecting the local barber, or storekeeper, restauranteur to continue to feed their families? It is their American right to protest. Once again it seems like we need a comedian to crystalize the truth of the moment, and Vic DiBitetto made a clip that has been making the rounds, and it really speaks for itself.
Our energy is better spent shaming our corporate managers instead of those powerless protesters.
Obviously I would not agree with the protesters who don’t seem to accept the gravity of the pandemic and the necessity of staying at home, and I would want to have a conversation with them specifically about the pandemic and why it requires this kind of aggressive government intervention, but I want to empathize with their desire to feed their families. I want to recognize her mistrust in the institutions and politicians that have already proved they would rather bail out corporations than to provide them with direct relief and widespread testing so we can move forward with a sensible re-opening timeline.
Approaching these people with empathy is also probably the best way to win politically; I would not be likening them to Nazis as one MSNBC commentator did. Why create another ‘deplorable’ moment? I haven’t heard any politician trying to address the genuine concerns, it seems like we have relegated them all to a ‘crazy’ category and instead of having leaders listen to their constituents, its Joy Reid’s job to chastise them on TV.
One thing we know for sure is that Trump intends to use this as a flashpoint between his movement and Democratic leaders (the protests in Michigan definitely seem to be directed at Gov. Gretchen Whitmer who, rumor has it, is being considered to be VP on Joe Biden’s ticket). If we recognize the uncertainty many of these working people are going through, the right-wing won’t be able to say we are there to disrupt people’s lives and tread on their liberties. If we reflexively call them idiots and demonize them, we are walking into Trump’s political trap and we will be pitted against each other just like he wants us to be.
The last important theme that we should pay close attention to is the misinformation that feeds this protesting wave. Donald Trump and people in his administration and party have been downplaying this crisis from the beginning and it has played a massive factor in our languid response. We already have felt that we are in a post-truth era as our president is a pathological liar, but now we have an actual crisis where that false information, whether it be about drugs and treatments that don’t actually treat the virus, or even just how safe it is to continue to operate normally in your community, actually could get people killed.
Donald Trump has created a movement that will immediately dismiss statistics, scientific evidence, or any arguments that don’t suit their narrative; they can write things off as hoaxes perpetuated by the media or ‘fake news’ and operate as if whatever they believe it true. They ultimately trust Trump. They think that he has things under control and that if he said they could continue their lives after Easter, he’s right and they will know that he has their back. Demagogues throughout history have understood the need to discredit existing institutions and ‘experts’ so they can maintain their position as the most trusted person with power and credibility. The Republican party and conservative think tanks have done their best to misinform people with Fox News, PragerU, and Turning Point USA, but now there is a demagogue taking advantage of this and mobilizing people around this misinformation.
If we allow this to continue we will have a very hard time getting any expert or scientist to be heard during this pandemic and during our fights for climate legislation. We are going to have to find those people that are not fully entrenched in the cult and show them empathy so that they will start to give our arguments and ideas a chance, and listen to medical professionals again, for their own sake as well as everyone else’s. Ultimately this is all about trust; we have to prove to all working people, even those we deem crazy, that we are fighting for their best interests and that our institutions, professionals, and experts have credibility and can be trusted. The people our society has chosen to trust with power, certainly Trump but also Democratic and Republican Party corporatists who have dominated politics for 40 years, have abdicated their responsibility and should no longer be trusted.
If we want to survive, its time to fight back.
Trust
Solving problems as a collective society of human beings inherently requires trust. Generally, we have to trust our and public and private institutions. American society is inherently based on the trust we have that each of us abide by the rules, laws, and mandates set forth by our constitution and the amendments to that constitution. Democracy itself requires that we trust that all of us will participate and are involved in civic activities and that we trust the representatives that we ultimately elect and hand power to. We have to trust our free press to actually hold those powerful people to account. We need to trust one another.
It has been fascinating to watch how the pandemic has exposed our true nature and the true nature of the owners of our society. While we all grapple with our own empathy and yearning for connection and normalcy again, the powerful people in our society seem to have remained as selfish as the system they created and uphold today. If you have listened to my podcast at all, you’ll know that there are very few people with political power today, if any at all, that I really trust to fight for a response that will meet the gravity of this pandemic or to put their bodies on the line for the policies most relevant to my survival like Medicare for All and a Green New Deal.
For years we have known that the Republicans offer no one we can trust to structurally change our society; the modern Republican party was built on corporate corruption and financial deregulation. But what has become clear since Obama left office when elements of the Democratic party woke up from their stupor, is that we on the left, have been pushed into trusting wolves in sheep’s clothing. The people we were expecting to fight against draconian conservative tax cuts and policies that benefit corporate executives instead of workers have in large part sold out to the same monied interests. They have chosen to pay lip service to populist and social democratic goals while taking bribes in the open from corporations and financial elites while gaslighting those who aspire for a new America; there’s always a monster on the red-team that is worse than them. We have nowhere else to go, so we are forced into trusting them to avoid a hellscape.
The troubling thing that has resurfaced again as we deal with the aftermath of a primary where progressives got their clocks cleaned, is that beating the monster is taking precedence over a sustained fight for long term solutions that meet the moment. Many of us voters and even representatives have caved to the calls for “unity” with corporatists democrats instead of using our leverage. The most obvious example is the concession to former Vice President Joe Biden. We are being asked by people like Bernie Sanders and even AOC to join Joe so that we can be united in defeating Trump, but Joe Biden is also not someone we can trust. Unfortunately, I think that we basically already gave away all of the leverage we had to get him to actually give us some concessions, but nevertheless, on some level, we are being asked to trust Joe Biden and Democratic elites.
I was under no illusion that he was going to make any concessions to us to unite the party. His record speaks for itself; it’s chocked full of votes to deregulate Wall St and benefit credit card issuers, fighting for more draconian criminal justice legislation even support for the Iraq War. In the past, he was caught in a plagiarism scandal in this primary he was constantly lying about his record on issues like social security, an arrest in South Africa with Mandela, and he even about a fabricated role he had as a professor at Penn. In this cycle, he also has already gone on record telling a room of wealthy donors that “nothing will fundamentally change” for them and said he would veto Medicare for All if it made it through Congress and to his desk. He has not offered any personnel appointment promises for his cabinet or this alleged ‘task forces’ or definitive policy commitments; but we should give some trust and credit to Bernie, Jeff Weaver, and Faz Shakir now who are doing their best to push through negotiations, but even so, we know people like Nina Turner, who actually spoke truth to Biden’s power, are going to be nowhere near this administration.
It’s worth noting the Axios report from about a month ago detailing the potential cabinet where names like Mike Bloomberg and Jamie Dimon were floated and new reporting from this week revealed that Biden is now taking economic advice from Larry Summers who is famous for architecting major financial deregulation under Clinton and fighting vehemently for the interests of banks, and of course, he moonlights at a major hedge fund. So not only is he not embracing the left of the party who wants Wall Street reform, but he brings them a slap in the face and gives his ear to one of Wall Street’s poster boys even before getting in power. Elizabeth Warren famously blocked Summers’ appointment to become secretary of the Treasury under Obama and yet now she joined Bernie in endorsing Uncle Joe without a fight.
Biden’s actions speak louder than his words; he cannot and should not be trusted.
The other group of people we have to try to trust are the current members of congress. Admittedly there are a few who I do trust to make sound policy decisions, like the members of the squad, Ro Khana, Pramila Jayapal, and Liz Warren and Bernie. In fact, there are a few policy proposals that came out in the last few weeks that didn’t get enough praise or attention: the Essential Workers Bill of Rights brought forward by Ro and Liz as well as the Emergency Money for the People Act also brought forward by Rep. Khana which borrows some of the ideas proposed by Bernie Sanders for an adequate response like recurring $2000 payments to all Americans. But proposals are only as good as the fight behind them and obviously the overwhelmingly conservative congress is not going to pass these bills without aggressive negotiation with both Democrats and Republicans who mostly fight for corporate bailouts.
Only AOC came out to say she was not going to vote No’ on the latest stimulus bill that is also too meager to deal with the economic devastation, and still no one has united a coalition to oppose the bill and actually try to fight for provisions of their own. Noone, not even AOC, has called out Nancy Pelosi. She not only prevented the house from vote remotely for or against the first stimulus package, which let Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnel control the negotiations but didn’t even try to produce a house bill to counter the Senate’s bailout; what was the point of winning the house if we weren’t going to use it as leverage, especially in an emergency like this? She wasted all of our political capital with a meager impeachment case that didn’t scratch the surface of all the crimes Trump committed and handed him a political victory while pretending to resist him by ripping a piece of paper on TV. She was perfectly fine signing his trade deals, allowing a bloated military budget to be passed again and didn’t effectively resist the ridiculous tax cut for the wealthy which handed 80% of its benefits to the top 1%. Nancy Pelosi has a history of deriding progressive proposals like Medicare for All and the “Green Dream” as she mockingly called the Green New Deal. She never had any intention of fighting for bold proposals. Under her leadership, democrats lost 1000+ seats across the country at different levels of governments and she presided over an economic response to the 2008 recession that was so bad it left thousands without homes while Wall Street socialized their losses and paid bonuses to their executives. She even prides herself as being the best corporate fundraiser in the party; how did we ever trust someone who basically brags about how good they are at corruption and taking bribes? Honestly, I’m not surprised at all that there is such vitriol against her and that so many Americans ended up trusting a demagogue instead, the alternative is simply a feckless party who represents the same corporate interests as the Republicans while being disingenuous about it.
Her actions speak louder than her words, and she too cannot be trusted.
What disappoints me is that none of the congresspeople that I trust, who are actually using the media to talk about their good proposals, are putting any public pressure on their own party. AOC on Rachel Maddow only had harsh words for Republicans, and even Ro Khanna couldn’t directly call her out despite acknowledging the complete lack of trust people have in the current congress, and Nancy Pelosi is a massive part of that. To earn my complete trust, these progressive politicians have to show me they are committed enough to policy and principles that they will oppose powers in their own party to get change; AOC’s ‘No’ vote on the coming bill is a start, but we need more aggression and coordination with other progressives and populists in congress.
I believe that by giving our trust and power to those untrustworthy corporatist politicians despite their abysmal records, we have given the green light for our society to trust Wall St and the capitalist class to run the show once again. We shouldn’t at all be surprised that corporate and banking interests were taken care of first in these bi-partisan relief bills, and we should not be surprised when leaders like Joe Biden, choose to continue giving their ear to the architects of the system that is failing before our very eyes despite the fervor amongst the future generations to start trusting someone else. Bernie gave me some hope but his capitulation makes me question how much trust I had in him to fight; he always said he didn’t want to give in to Trump’s efforts to ‘divide us up,’ but at the same time, he placated and didn’t dare to challenge leaders like Biden, Obama, and Nancy Pelosi who crafted economic policies that further divided us up on the basis of monetary wealth, political power, and class. #NotMeUs was an agreement; we trusted Bernie to give power to us; instead, we’re being pushed to hold our nose and hand power back to his friend Joe.
We have to be careful who we trust or we could end up like little red riding hood; when we work with these corporatists on their terms, we are inadvertently handing them political capital to undermine our project, leading the wolf directly to our home. We continually are unable to see that the people currently in our house are not the loving grandmother we were expecting, but actually the wolves who continue to protect the capitalist class at our expense.
“Oh my, what big political donations you received!”
“The better to sell you out with, my dear!”
In the original story, there was no huntsman to save little red; in the end she was eaten by the wolf. It seems like we don’t have a huntsman either, noone wants to call out our misleading wolves.
I hope that going forward we will question and remain skeptical of those that we have entrusted with power. Actions certainly speak louder than words and we should not be falling for rhetorical pandering from anyone.
Time is of the essence, and its time to stop trusting the wolves.