The Pandemic Has Laid Bare the Moral Chaos at the Heart of Modern Conservative Politics
The Pandemic Has Laid Bare the Moral Chaos at the Heart of Modern Conservative Politics
Cruelty is the point, and the plan is to have no plan.
BY CHARLES P. PIERCE at Esquire
MAY 8, 2020
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/amp32418915/coronavirus-pandemic-iowa-nebraska-conservatives-moral-chaos/?__twitter_impression=true
"SNIP.....
Long ago, Adam Serwer defined this administration*’s approach to governing perfectly. "The cruelty," Serwer wrote, "is the point." Last week, Jay Rosen added to Serwer’s observation a codicil appropriate to our present moment. The plan, Rosen wrote, is to have no plan. If cruelty is the point, then to have no plan during a public-health crisis is very much to the point. And this astounding lack of humanity has deep roots in modern conservatism. If your political success is based on Othering one slice of the population to energize another, your basic moral ballast drains away by degrees. It is not that much of a stretch from the current administration’s lack of a plan to the Reagan administration’s unforgivably dilatory response to the AIDS epidemic. The through-line is that diseases are killing all the right people.
You saw it this week in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, when Chief Justice Patience Roggensack observed that a hot spot in Brown County was due to employees at a meat-packing plant and not “regular folks.” You saw it in the U.S. Senate on Friday, when John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, whose reputation as a wit is only half-true, waved off the appeals of people for more economic relief funding as unemployment headed in the general direction of Soup Kitchen. He said, according to The Hill:
“Well, people in hell want ice water too,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), asked about another round of checks. “I mean, everybody has an idea and a bill, usually to spend more money. It’s like a Labor Day mattress sale around here.”
What a card. Nearly 2,500 of Kennedy’s constituents have died so far.
....SNIP"
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