This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1346820
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1346820
The reality is that nature is culling the herd. With infections and deaths set to double covid is turning into a Darwinian event. Natural Selection is at work. Natural Selection dictates that those organisms that are unable to adapt to changing conditions will be ‘naturally selected’ by said environment for extermination. This keeps the remaining herd stronger.
Stupidity leads to extermination. Wear your mask and socially distance yourselves!
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Good article by Linden and Aibinder.
About this:
COVID-19 Is The Test That Conservatism Was Built To Fail
One question: Is it “conservatism” that failed the test, or right-wing ideology, or Republicanism, or some combination thereof?
It’s not a particularly tricky question, and the authors do help with a definition of sorts:
Now, like any ideology, conservatism is not homogenous. It spans a spectrum of ideas that can roughly be grouped under a broad umbrella. But there are some important core tenets of the conservative movement that most, if not all, adherents share to some degree. First, conservatism posits that that government itself tends to cause more problems than it solves, and that free markets — unencumbered by government intervention — are always best positioned to allocate resources and improve society. Second, modern conservatism argues that the economy is primarily driven by capital and its owners, and as such, the interests of capital owners are paramount. And third, conservatives tend to see differences and disparities along racial and gender lines as either irrelevant, temporary, or — in the most pernicious form — deserved.
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It’s not just COVID-19:. Democracy is the test that conservatism was built to fail.
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I remember the halcyon days of early in this COVID disaster, when Pennsylvania hit an all-time high COVID count (commonwealth-wide) of 1,686 daily cases on April 11th. I was afraid to greet the postal carrier and the FedEx delivery person at the front door of my business.
Pennsylvania hit 8,425 daily cases on November 26th . . .
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Has any political Conservative ever worked for a private corporation? There is nothing so complicated and bureaucratic and burdensome than the paperwork involved in making even small changes in procedure in large corporations.
To say that government stands in the way of free enterprise is wholly ridiculous. Large numbers of people will always tend to gravitate toward more bureaucratic processes because that’s the only way to regulate the multitude of opposing viewpoints and efforts. Without this ‘check’, no corporation, no government, would be able to choose the best alternatives to serve the greater purpose, whether that purpose is to ensure equal rights or to reward shareholders.
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I guess conservatism could be a valid doctrine if it is an aversion to chaos. What is practiced in the US seems to embrace chaos, inconsistency and selfishness. This hyper-conservatism always fails, but it will take down a lot of innocents as it collapses.
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This whole covid event has reminded me of those National Geographic episodes where they show all the thirsty zebras drinking from the watering hole. One gets nabbed by an alligator and they all scurry off after having seen what happened to their friend. Hours later they forget, let their guard down, and return to the watering hole. The process repeats over and over. Humans aren’t much different, hence my comparison to Natural Selection above.
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There’s a weird irony about this: modern “conservatives” are almost all authoritarian in tone and many of their goals, but many authoritarian governments did quite well against the pandemic. It’s only when the authoritarians intend that laws should apply to everyone else but them that things go so horribly pear-shaped.
Also: the whole “market solutions” thing is such bullsh*t. What we have is a particular set of market conditions being propped up by government intervention on a previously unthinkable scale.
All the things modern conservatives pretend to believe, they don’t. Except “Iwannit! Iwannit! Iwannit!”. With guns.
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Conservatism is well served by the lack of follow-through on the part of the MSM. If we had a media that pointed out that we adopted conservative policies in hopes that they would achieve X, but they instead achieved something much more harmful, it might be helpful. If the MSM would point out that electing people without any experience or interest in the way government works creates havoc, it would be nice. But we don’t. Each decision point is treated as if it is totally unique and without precedent.
We have seen what a small business owner does when he is elected to the Presidency. Here in Oklahoma, we were so impressed with it that we elected a small business owner who had been banned from doing business in several states. Now we can’t figure out why he spent so much money defending a case that was brought because he tried to unilaterally change gaming compacts with the Native American groups in the state, who, as it turns out, are sovereign nations, just as they taught us in 9th grade Oklahoma history. He’s now demonstrating how much he doesn’t know about public health, since he would much rather ban hospitals from doing what he considers “elective” surgeries than craft a mask mandate. Our hospitals are not only dealing with the surge of people from the metro areas, but are also dealing with the surge of people from the rural counties that refuse mask mandates. And as it turns out, “elective” surgeries aren’t just cosmetic. They also involve actual health issues that aren’t considered emergencies.
But hey, we’re conservative, and all you have to do to get our vote is to call yourself conservative and label the other guy as “socialist”.
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And all of these distill to strongly favoring the haves while keeping everyone else at disadvantage.
The absolutely essential relationship between conservatives and government is that the latter must preserve the status of the former by creating and enforcing laws that protect but do not bind them while also binding but not protecting those unlike them.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. – Anatole France
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Coronavirus cannot fail!
You can only fail coronavirus!
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Except any sort of natural selection doesn’t take into account factors such as money and quality of insurance.
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That’s “libertardian” - you know, the ones that want to legally smoke weed, put the American economy back on the gold standard, and deny civil rights to vagina-possessors, same-sex indulgers, and anyone whose skin tone is darker than medium biege. Think “Ayn Rand Paul”, or his fuckhead Klansman father.
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To be fair, Sweden has a Social Democratic government and pursued a laissez-faire policy that is often cited by US conservatives as a model for what should be done here, despite its failure in Sweden. Australia has a conservative government and has taken tough measures and done well. Merkel is nominally on the center-right (though she wouldn’t fit there in US terms) and did very well.
It may be more the insane form that “conservatism” has taken in the US that is more to blame.
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At my hospital, “elective” means “scheduled” when referring to surgeries.
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Yet another case where we all get screwed because of one party pandering to fundies.
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Elective traditionally means non-urgent or those that can be put off or scheduled for a later date. Of course there’s a subjective element to that.
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And all is not lost, Oklahoma! Our very own governor has come up with another way to fight Covid!
A day of prayer and fasting for those impacted by Covid. Because publicly declaring how religious we are should do the trick.
https://kfor.com/news/local/gov-stitt-declares-day-of-prayer-and-fasting-for-those-impacted-by-covid-19/
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