Social Darwinism Rears Its Ugly Head
Trump & Co. Look to the Cost-Benefit Analysis to Justify Leaving the Vulnerable to Battle COVID-19 on Their Own
Trump & Co. Look to the Cost-Benefit Analysis to Justify Leaving the Vulnerable to Battle COVID-19 on Their Own
Donald Trump, much of the right, many on Wall Street, and centrists like Thomas L. Friedman are ready for the economy to “return to normal” (whatever that means) at the cost of an untold number of lives.
The New York Times this morning wrote that this group has begun “questioning whether the government had gone too far and should instead lift restrictions that are already inflicting deep pain on workers and businesses.” This is despite a consensus among health officials and scientists that “the best way to defeat the virus is to order nonessential businesses to close and residents to confine themselves at home.”
The argument being made by these folks, bluntly, is that the costs to the economy outweigh the benefits of saving lives.
“We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself,” Trump said during his briefing yesterday, and while he did not say it specifically, it is clear that he has started applying a cost-benefit analysis that privileges capital and the stock market over the lives of Americans, especially those who are most vulnerable.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was far more blunt, saying most grandparents would willingly endanger themselves to protect the economy for grandchildren.
“I want them to have a shot at the American Dream but right now there’s a virus which all the experts say that 98 percent of all people will survive… is killing our country in another way,” the text continued. “It could bring about a total economic collapse and potentially a collapse of our society. So I say let’s give this a few more days or weeks but after that, let’s go back to work and go back to living. Those we want to shelter in place can still do so but we can’t live with uncertainty.” (qtd. in The Daily Beast)
This is the extreme end of this argument, and is likely off-putting and offensive to most Americans. But we are now hearing a version of it from so-called rational centrists like Friedman, who are now calling for a more “surgical approach” to the threat — the exact opposite of the approach they advocate when responding to terrorism, but that is a different argument.
Friedman says we should be “asking ourselves — just as urgently — can we more surgically minimize the threat of this virus to those most vulnerable while we maximize the chances for as many Americans as possible to safely go back to work as soon as possible.” Friedman says he is most concerned with group think, worrying that we already have created an immovable consensus on this that is not allowing for other ideas. (Again, I remind you that Friedman is the king of conventional wisdom on issues of war and terrorism. Just saying.)
This seems reasonable. Bringing in dissenting experts makes sense, because it offers fresh and unusual perspectives on the data. And, in this case, we have to be driven by the data in attempting to stem the wildfire spread of this virus, which has killed not just the aged and infirm, but others, as well.
If Friedman were just calling for a broader conversation as we continue to bunker in place, that would be fine. But his column turns an extreme focus on the arguments of two dissenting scientists, which he does not challenge in any way or balance against the current consensus. This allows him to make a very specific argument without taking responsibility for what he is proposing. He is, as he says, “just a reporter — who is afraid for his own loved ones, for his neighbors and for people everywhere as much as anyone.”
And this allows him, in his final paragraph, to pose a choice in language that makes clear what he thinks the right choice is:
Either we let many of us get the coronavirus, recover and get back to work — while doing our utmost to protect those most vulnerable to being killed by it. Or, we shut down for months to try to save everyone everywhere from this virus — no matter their risk profile — and kill many people by other means, kill our economy and maybe kill our future.
Notice the imbalance in language. One choice is about recovery and protection, while the other is about pure death — death to the economy and the future.
I’m spending a lot of words here on Friedman, because it is his voice that is most likely to move the debate among elites, and not the arguments made by madmen like Trump and Patrick. Friedman has a perch on the nation’s most influential op-ed page. He is read by the more thoughtful members of the elite and is still considered — without real cause — to be a reasonable and rational actor in the American political scene.
His words, as opposed to those of Trump, Patrick, and much of the right, are much more likely to be used by those at the top to justify a shift in policy like the one that Trump publicly contemplated yesterday. Friedman couches his argument by saying there could be safeguards,, which helps make his argument sound palatable, but ignores the actual functioning of our government, which is in the hands of old-school Social Darwinists and boot-strappers. Just witness the debacle taking place this week on Capital Hill, in which Republicans have larded up a relief bill that offers only a few dollars to most Americans with giveaways to industry.
This attitude is not new. We have a history of Social Darwinism in the United States, and as Jeet Heer, national affairs correspondent for The Nation, points out in a Twitter thread today (read the whole thread starting here), “views on medicine & economics align.”
He explains the history, which shows a direct link between the “19th century/Austrian medical school of therapeutic nihilism (which felt diseases should go untreated)” and “laissez-faire Austrian economics.” Both, he tweets, argue “against heroic interventions in medicine & economics.”
I think Trump, his Wall Street whisperers, Fox News and dingbat centrists (Friedman, Blankfein) are engaged in self-interested reasoning: they don’t want massive state intervention in economy, so they are trying to wish away the pandemic, thinking it can disappear soon.
In a column in The Nation, Heer further explains the dangers of what I’ll call the Trump-Friedman approach:
They underestimate the dangers of scuttling social distancing programs too soon; they also disregard the tools needed to return to cushion the economic shock. As evident from the examples of both China and Italy, extreme measures are needed to slow the spread of the virus or it will overwhelm the health care system, leaving a potential death toll in the United States in excess of 10 million. If the virus is slowed down, there’s a real chance that the health care system can get the medical equipment (ICU beds and ventilators) needed to keep the death count to a minimum. Giving up on social distancing too early will doom countless Americans to a painful and unnecessary death.
These deaths, of course, will not be distributed equally throughout the economic, racial, or geographic stratus. The poor and near-poor will get hit hardest, because they lack resources — a living wage, access to healthcare, etc. African Americans and Latinos will be hit hardest because many of them have been concentrated — through government action and inaction — in the poorest neighborhoods. Rural residents will find themselves in an awkward place — they have less direct contact with their neighbors, but also live farthest from hospitals and healthcare providers, meaning they are likely to suffer, as well. (I wrote about this for the April 1 issue of The Progressive Populist when it was still relatively early in the virus’ spread.)
It was inevitable, perhaps, that the powerful and the elites would start questioning these large-scale precautionary measures. It was inevitable, as well, that they would ask these questions while looking through the lens of self-benefit. And it was inevitable that some would attempt to rationalize their willingness to protect their own position in the economy in language designed to make us think they care about the rest of us. That’s what the new breed of Social Darwinists do.
And it’s why there is a special place in hell for the lot of them.