How the far right’s political actors are behind the resurgence of COVID-19

In an opinion by The Bee’s editorial board (July 7, p. 5A, “… rushed reopening”), we encounter once more the assertion that “the irresponsible actions of a few people” are to blame for the resurgence of the coronavirus. This phrase conjures up images of men on ATVs careening through the landscape, to gather at the end of the day for the close-quarters camaraderie of BBQ and beer. We, that is to say the professional and educated classes of the country, shake our heads at this silly behavior. Selfish, certainly. Irresponsible, of course. But mostly a tad, shall we say, uninformed.

If the professional, educated middle class (what we call Bildungsbürger in German) of this country could ever find a way to explain the world in terms other than moral and intellectual high-horsemanship, they might yet do some good in it. But the problem is not just with the long-standing right-wing lament of liberal condescension, which appears highly justified in cases like this editorial. It can be summarized with the assertion that we owe the coronavirus resurgence to a combination of evil and stupidity.

The main problem is that the focus on “individual behavior” ignores the politics. Certainly the editorial mentions in passing that Gov. Newsom was “bowing … to political pressure” when reopening the state. But the discussion of politics ends there. Politics are, by definition, organized and collective, and therefore cannot be reduced to individual behavior. Hence, the focus on the latter serves to ignore the former.

Who organized the open-up rallies? Who encouraged them? What world view informed the participants? Where did they learn that world view? These are questions an approach focused on individual behavior will never ask. We might suspect that the very point of the focus on individual behavior is to avoid having to ask these much more important questions.

The rallies had financial and publicistic support from the usual suspects on the far right. Republican politicians, reactionary radio hosts, YouTubers, the president and his tweets in support of liberating states oppressed by public health bureaucrats and Democrats. The protesters were motivated by a turbid cocktail of half-truths, conspiracy theories, and Social-Darwinist callousness. They did not come up with these ideas on their own, although of course they made the decision to embrace them, on their own volition. They studied and learned them from their most trusted sources of information. So it happens that local viewership of Sean Hannity correlates with COVID-19 infection rates, as research at the University of Chicago showed.

I understand that perhaps the educated, professional classes see themselves as “guardians of the common weal” (Madison) who admonish the masses to do the right thing. The problem with the present moment in history, however, is that the far right has declared resistance to that very preponderance of expert opinion for public conduct a marker of standing up to tyranny.. When Trump blasts media and educators as the source of national decay, he means you. Your every, well intentioned raising of the wagging finger is only going to confirm that initial assumption.

It does not help that the educated, professional classes (which includes some reasonable Republicans, to be sure, for instance Mayor Brand) speak as if from the high ground, whereas in truth they are standing on intellectually fallow, morally destitute terrain in the midst of the ruins of the old republic.

No. If you want to live in a society where “doing the right thing” means following reasonable, evidence-based advice for the common good, you will have to come around to addressing and attacking the far right and their reason-destroying propaganda apparatus, head on.

You have shirked that responsibility to the common good since at least 2016, in the feeble hope that with Trump’s eventual departure from office, this will all be over. It is time to face the fact that the far right and its powerful, moneyed backers have invested too much in their political project to simply walk away from it, regardless of what happens in November.

It’ not about the guy with the ATV. It’s about the guy with the ATM.