Ethan Grey on the pandemic through a caste lens

 

You’ve no doubt mused at some point why the logic of “If we all just got vaccinated, the pandemic would be over. We wouldn’t have to wear masks anymore!” didn’t work with Trump’s base. For starters, you’re projecting your rational desire to see the pandemic end onto them.

The most important thing to Trump’s base is not ending the pandemic. The most important thing is ensuring the pandemic cannot be used as a pretext to alter the rules of society, and this is based on an awareness of who COVID-19 significantly affects. The moment that it was understood that COVID-19 disproportionately affects communities of color, the immunocompromised, and other vulnerable populations, Donald Trump’s base decided that the viral pandemic was acceptable.

Donald Trump himself best channeled how his base views the pandemic when he said this: “if you take the blue states out, we’re at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at.” From Adam Serwer’s book “The Cruelty is the Point.”

Donald Trump did not see himself as being under an obligation to act as a President for all Americans, and his base was with him that regard. In him, they saw their own desire to ignore the issue if they perceived it was just Democrats being significantly impacted.

Obviously, wanting to conceive of the pandemic as a Democratic problem is not rational. But this calculation to not take the pandemic seriously was not being made with rational considerations in mind. It was made with notions of caste in mind.

The reality: Donald Trump’s base has a sense of occupying the dominant caste, they want to think of COVID-19 as a lower caste issue, and the dominant caste being forced to go out of its way to protect people perceived as lower in caste is a supreme violation of caste rules.

All subsequent discussion of how caste intersects with the pandemic will be based on this summary of the temperament of dominant caste behavior from Isabel Wilkerson’s book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.”

These two paragraphs make no mention of the viral pandemic, and yet I contend that they contain everything you need to explain the behavior of Donald Trump’s base throughout the viral pandemic.

Bear in mind the priorities of the dominant caste as you read ahead: to see itself as most correct. To refuse instruction from people outside of it. To ensure it has the power to put people in their places. To deny shared basic human experiences with anyone perceived as lower.

When the pandemic started taking off, the most heated debate was over having to wear masks. Why was there a debate? See this through the lens of caste: the dominant caste was being told to wear masks to protect themselves and potentially people outside of their caste. But according to caste rules, the dominant caste does not get told what to do. Not when it comes to protecting themselves, and most *definitely* not when it comes to protecting people perceived as beneath their station.

You’ve been rationally approaching the pandemic as a threat to your health & to the health of the people you care about. Trump’s base has approached the pandemic with a paranoid suspicion that the pandemic will be used as a pretext to upset a caste order that privileges them. For if those perceived as occupying the dominant caste are forced to go out of their way to protect people perceived as being outside of it, then their sense of dominance is a lie and their humiliation as seen through the lens of caste is complete.

We’ve also had debates over social distancing measures, suspending large indoor events, temporarily closing down indoor dining, etc. to control the spread of the virus. Why did Donald Trump’s base freak out when these were proposed?

See this through the lens of caste: the dominant caste, viewing itself as the zenith of society, is the one endowed with the power to put people in their places. To decide where people can go. Nobody is allowed to usurp this power from the dominant caste for any reason. What you see as rational measures to control the spread of the virus, they see as people outside the dominant caste attempting to seize their sense of power with respect to being able to put other people in their place.

Donald Trump recklessly holding rallies throughout the viral pandemic was precisely what they wanted. Because it was about reasserting the power that comes with being in the dominant caste: you can go where you want, do what you want, and behave how you want without consequences.

Their sense of identity is tied to being able to impose upon others and celebrating invulnerability from being imposed upon. That is why they view everyone who is laser-focused on following measures to reduce the spread of the virus as beneath their station.

When they speak of “freedom”, they speak of the “freedom” to not bear any responsibility in controlling the spread of the virus. Any responsibility to act better. The virus is beneath them. Therefore, the people who care about the virus are automatically viewed as beneath them. …

Furthermore, the dominant caste will immediately find the idea that people among other castes have the correct strategy for dealing with COVID-19 to be absurd. To view yourself as a member of the dominant caste is to view yourself as unassailable in knowing what should be done. …

Not acknowledging shared human experiences is the entire point of caste. Not acknowledging shared vulnerabilities is the entire point of caste. Because shared vulnerability ruins the entire point of feeling invincible, unassailable, compared to other human beings.

So let’s name the precise reason the pandemic has played out as it has: it’s because a society that responds to the viral pandemic with an earnest desire to protect the most vulnerable is a threat to caste, and that alarmed Trump’s base way more than the threat of the virus.

That’s the calculation Trump supporters made, and you know what it ultimately means: they chose caste over their own lives. They chose caste over the lives of their own children. They chose caste over your lives and the lives of your own children.

So that’s it. No more wondering what’s ultimately driving the behavior of Trump’s base during the viral pandemic. Their behavior during the pandemic is completely synonymous with their behavior before the pandemic. They are upholding America's caste system: white male supremacy.

Why I've Lost Respect For My Republican Friends by John Pavlovitz

 Why I’ve Lost Respect For My Republican Friends

John Pavlovitz

I’ve spent much of my life pastoring in predominately white churches in the South. Before that, I was raised in a family with many Conservatives. I’ve always been surrounded by Republican voters, and until very recently I could respect their positions, even when I disagreed with them. Despite our differences, I still saw them as inherently well-intentioned people.

That is becoming nearly impossible, because I now realize something about them that grieves me.

I used to think this was all about education. I’ve spent the last few years trying to make them aware of the ugliness they are tethered to, the criminality of the politicians they support, the irreparable damage they are doing to our nation’s sacred systems. I operated under the false assumption that if I could only make them aware of the malevolence of their party, that their better angels would certainly move them to fully reject it.

It’s only very recently that I realized that they already are aware:

They know their party tried to violently overthrow the Government and overturn an election, and is still actively perpetuating the big lie.

They know they are willfully prolonging the pandemic by shunning safeguards and opposing vaccines and peddling disinformation.

They know they’re gerrymandering and suppressing votes and installing corrupt electors because they can’t win elections any other way.

They know their party is fully infected with Proud Boy, KKK white supremacist domestic terrorism.

They know it is filled with unqualified, unstable sociopaths like Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Madison Cawthorn, and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

They know Donald Trump is a lying, vile, incompetent, traitorous monster who hasn’t had a noble instinct in his lifetime.

They know that their party is on balance, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-LGBT, anti-Semitic, and anti-women.

They know all these things.

They just don’t care.

Worse than that, they’re happy about it.

They are “winning,” in whatever way they define that, and so the intoxicating ends justifies the sickening, violent, shameful means.

They no longer have a need to weigh the morality of the people they are in bed with, no longer worry about abiding the teachings of Jesus, no longer have to do the uncomfortable work of examining their own hearts.

The victory trumps decency.

Over the past five years, they have seen the absolutely unfathomable criminality of Donald Trump and the Republicans—and despite knowing the depths of their misdeeds and the human collateral damage and the economic toll and the national disfigurement—they will vote Republican again without a moment’s deliberation. I can’t get over that.

I try to imagine how I’d have responded if the roles were reversed, I wonder if I too might be able to set aside my convictions if offered such a political bounty—but I know the answer.

I’d never have voted for a traitorous ignoramus like Donald Trump had he been the Democratic nominee.

If my party was populated by such open hostility to Science and diversity and equity, I’d have left it long ago.

If a Democratic president had dehumanized them the way Trump has dehumanized so many, I’d have defended them.

If Joe Biden and the Democrats tried to engineer a violent coup, I’d never consent to it and I damn sure wouldn’t defend it afterward.

And that’s the simple difference: I would not be capable of embracing the horrible things they have been able to, and that is now a barrier to us that may be insurmountable.

Most of our once passionate exchanges and spirited debates have been replaced by cold, surface conversations or uneasy silence. I no longer have the desire to give them more information or help them understand the urgency of these days or wake them from some slumber so that they comprehend the inhumanity of their public servants—because I know that won’t make a difference.

Worst of all, I no longer see them as people I can truly respect, because that is saved for those who can admit their mistakes given evidence of them, people who can be swayed by facts and data, people who are willing to change in order to do what is right, even if it means them losing something.

This isn’t about comparing differing political ideologies or debating the merits of particular legislation, and it isn’t about theological dissonance or arguing over what benefits the common good. All those things I am able and willing to participate in.

This is simply a matter of them seeing the way to accrue power, becoming hopelessly addicted to it, and being fully resistant to relinquish it.

I still interact with many of these people on social media, I run into them at the grocery store, I see them at family reunions. Yet, I’ve lost the energy to argue with them and so I simply share space with them, doing my best to be decent and to have our time together be as short as possible.

I still love these people, I still affirm their humanity, I still fight for their civil and human rights—I just no longer respect them in the way I once did.

Defending Democracy

 

For all the news stories that seem to tug us in one direction or another, there is just one overarching story in the news for Americans today. We are in an existential fight to defend our democracy from those who would destroy it. People seem to hark back to films from the 1930s and 1940s and think that so long as we don’t have tanks in our streets, our government is secure. But in this era, democracies die more often through the ballot box than at gunpoint. You can see this in Russia, where Vladimir Putin gradually concentrated power into his own hands. You can see it in Brazil, where Jair Bolsanaro, whose approval rating in late August was 23%, claims that the country’s elections are fraudulent and that “[e]ither we’ll have clean elections, or we won’t have elections.” You can see it in Hungary, where Viktor Orbán has quite deliberately dismantled liberal democracy and replaced it with what he calls “illiberal democracy.” On paper, Hungary is a democracy in that it still holds elections, but it is, in fact, a one-party state overseen by one man. Orbán has been open about his determination to overthrow the concept of western democracy, replacing it with what he has, on different occasions, called “illiberal democracy,” or “Christian democracy.” He wants to replace the multiculturalism at the heart of democracy with Christian culture, stop the immigration that he believes undermines Hungarian culture, and reject “adaptable family models” with “the Christian family model.” No matter what he calls it, Orbán’s model is not democracy at all. As soon as he retook office in 2010, he began to establish control over the media, cracking down on those critical of his party, Fidesz, and rewarding those who toed the party line. In 2012 his supporters rewrote the country’s constitution to strengthen his hand, and extreme gerrymandering gave his party more power while changes to election rules benefited his campaigns. Increasingly, he used the power of the state to concentrate wealth among his cronies, and he reworked the country’s judicial system and civil service system to stack it with his loyalists. While Hungary still has elections, state control of the media and the apparatus of voting means that it is impossible for Orbán’s opponents to win an election. Hungary is in the news in the United States because Americans on the right have long admired Orbán’s nationalism and centering of Christianity, while the fact that Hungary continues to hold elections enables them to pretend that the country remains a democracy. In 2019, Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson endorsed Hungary’s anti-abortion and anti-immigration policies; in that year, according to investigative researcher Anna Massoglia of Open Secrets, Hungary paid a D.C. lobbying firm $265,000, in part to arrange an interview on Carlson’s show. Recently, former vice president Mike Pence spoke in Budapest at a forum denouncing immigration and urging traditional social values, where he told the audience he hoped that the U.S. Supreme Court would soon outlaw abortion thanks to the three justices Trump put on the court. Further indicating the drift of today’s right wing, the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) will be held in Budapest. In their embrace of the illiberal democracy of Hungary, those on the right argue that they are defending traditional American values. Like Orbán, they focus relentlessly on immigration; “caravans” of immigrants have once again made the right-wing news, as they always do before an election. They worry that traditional families are under attack, hence Texas’s S.B. 8, which outlaws the constitutional right of abortion by empowering vigilantes. They insist that “real” America is being destroyed by multiculturalism; hence the hysteria over Critical Race Theory, an obscure legal theory from the 1970s that is not taught in K–12 schools, and the calls for “patriotic education.” And, crucially, those on the right are openly embracing voter restrictions and the replacement of nonpartisan election officials with partisans. Astonishingly, John Eastman, the founding director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence and a member of the powerful Federalist Society, wrote a six-point plan for overturning the will of the voters in the 2020 election. Although he went to the reputable National Review to cover his tracks by saying his plan was just a thought experiment, just tonight a video appeared in which he told an apparent supporter that his ideas were right, and that it was Pence’s establishment biases that made him unwilling to implement them. His plan to overturn the election barely failed. The 33 new election laws in 19 states will not fail. They are designed to replace the idea of democracy with a hierarchy in which a minority will determine our fate. If it seems odd that a group of people who claim to be trying to “Make America Great Again” are taking their cues from a central European country of about 10 million people, it is worth noting that they are not simply talking about Critical Race Theory or Texas’s so-called heartbeat bill. We are in a larger struggle over the nature of human governments. And when American thinkers are praising Hungary, they are tapping into a long history of our own. When the Founders declared it “self-evident, that all men are created equal,” they were making a bold declaration about the nature of governments that flew in the face of western tradition and thought. They denied that some individuals were better than others and had an inherent right to rule the rest. Governments, the Founders said, derived legitimacy not from religion, or heritage, but instead were legitimate only to the degree that those who lived under them consented to them. “[T]o secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” the Founders said. This was a revolutionary argument. It rejected not just King George III, but all kings, claiming for the people the right to rule themselves. For all its limitations—the Founders could conceive of this idea in part because they excluded from their vision women, Black people, and all people of color—it was an astonishing declaration. And yet, the idea that all men are created equal and that governments derive legitimacy from the consent of the governed began to fall apart in the late 1820s. Southern Democrats wanted to take control of Indigenous peoples’ lands in the Southeast in order to spread the wildly lucrative system of plantation agriculture. Then, when they had displaced the tribes, they spread across those lands their economic system based on human enslavement. But because southern leaders were outnumbered by Americans in the North who objected to their economic system, within a decade they were arguing that true democracy meant not that government depended upon the consent of the governed as a whole, but rather that local or state governments could choose how everyone, including enslaved people, women, Indigenous, and Mexican people, would live. And, of course, they limited voting to a few white men, who voted to keep themselves in power. In 1860, southern white elites declared the American concept of democracy based in equality, government based in the consent of the people, to be obsolete. They declared they were going to start a new country, based in a hierarchy of gender and race, that they believed reflected God’s will. In a speech in March 1861, Alexander Stephens of Georgia, who would soon be the vice president of the Confederate States of America, explained to an audience that Jefferson’s belief that all men are created equal was “an error” and that anyone who still adhered to that idea was an insane “fanatic.” Stephens told listeners: “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.” And there it was: the replacement of the idea that all people are created equal with the idea that some people are better than others, and that those people, who truly understand God’s laws, should rule. It is not an accident that the insurrectionists of January 6, 2021, carried the Confederate battle flag. We are today in a struggle no less dangerous to our democracy than that of the 1860s, for all that it is fought with Facebook memes and cable television rather than artillery. And when our leaders talk fondly about Viktor Orbán, or Jair Bolsonaro— former president Trump endorsed his reelection today—we would do well to listen.”

 Heather Cox Richardson, October 26, 2021

Snagged from tumblr: 24-hour News

 So the other day I said a thing about how I felt like a line could be drawn between antis, and the rise of 24-hour news networks. I’ve given that thought some time to bubble to see what, exactly, my brain meant by that statement, and here’s what I’ve got:

When I was a kid (back in Ye Olde 1990s), we had three major news stations in my town: Channel 12, Channel 24, and Channel 35. These corresponded to NBC, ABC, and CBS, but I don’t remember which one was which so don’t ask me. Anyway–you had a half hour of news at 8 or 9 am (depending on which station you watched), an hourlong program at noon in which half the program was stuff like “here are today’s beach closures and some recipes and also if you’re looking for stuff to do with the kids this weekend here are local promotions,” and half an hour at either 5, 5:30, or 6 (again, depending on which channel you watched). One of the three stations also did a half-hour capper at 10pm. So unless you were watching all three stations, and picking the news every single time, the max amount of news you were going to get was like an hour and a half. If you wanted more news than that, you read the newspaper. When my mom was a kid (back in Ye Olde 1960s), this would have seemed like an inordinate amount of news–for her, it was half an hour at 6pm and ten minutes at 10pm and then the station (there was only one station that did the news) played the National Anthem and went off the air until 6am, at which time you might get like … the weather and a traffic report.

For anything else, you read the newspaper.

Now with only half an hour to present a whole lot of news, what are you going to do? You are going to stick to the facts. You don’t have a choice. You have a very short time to fit a whole lot of information. “Notre Dame cathedral caught on fire today. French firefighters are working to get the flames under control, and authorities in charge of the cathedral are doing their best to remove relics, paintings, and other holy objects while it’s still possible. French President Mr. Somebody addressed the nation and stated every attempt to save the building, and to rebuild the damage, will be made. In local news … “ And that’s it! If you want more information, you’ve got to wait for the newspaper in the morning, and you’re going to have to get a copy of the New York Times or USA Today, because the local paper will only have a blurb, and that blurb will mostly cover what you just heard!

But then the news changed.

By the time I was a teenager, the non-cable news looked like this: All three channels had a morning show that started at 5 or 6 am (depending on your station) and ran until 8 or 9 (depending on your station). The station that ended at 8am then had a half-hour morning news show. The mid-day news at 11 or 12 was still an hour. Channel 35 did a half-hour news segment at 5 and another at 5:30, back to back. The other two stations simply did an hourlong segment. And then one station did half an hour at 10:30, and the other two did hourlong segments at 10pm.

What do you do with that much time? Well, you expand. Yes, you can fit more news, but you can also fit more about the news. “Notre Dame cathedral in Paris went up in flames today. The fire began in the famous historic bell tower, and spread to the roof. At this time, portions of the roof appear to have caved in, and there are concerns about the integrity of the medieval stonework in the cathedral walls. French firefighters have been working since 8am Paris time to get the flames under control, and authorities in charge of the cathedral are doing their best to remove relics, paintings, and other holy objects while it’s still possible. Some firefighters are also helping with this project, as portions of the building have become too unsafe to enter. French President Mr. Somebody addressed the nation late this evening and stated every attempt to save the building, and to rebuild the damage, will be made. Of the cathedral itself, Somebody said, ‘Our Lady has weathered worse troubles than this. Paris as a city, and France as a nation, will overcome.’ In local news … ”

Still facts, but a few more facts. At this point the internet as a public thing is just past its infancy, and in theory you could go look up some stuff on, like, AOL, maybe, about what was happening.

(Nina, you were talking about antis … ?)

(Yes, I was. Bear with me.)

But at this point you also saw the rise of Fox News and CNN.

Now up to this point, I could trust the news. That is important to know. “Nina, American news is full of propaganda–” Listen, you’re not wrong, but the point is, if Scott Brennan told me Notre Dame cathedral was on fire and priests were trying to remove the holy relics, I could safely assume Notre Dame cathedral was on fire and priests were trying to remove the holy relics. If Channel 24 told me “the blizzard of the century” had occurred the night before, I could look out the window of my snowed-in house and go “yeah, that seems legit.”

I grew up, in other words, in a world in which facts were facts. We didn’t waffle or wring our hands over whether or not Notre Dame was on fire. And this allowed me to take a similar approach to fiction: it is a fact that murder is wrong, and knowing this, I can read a book in which someone commits murder for very good reasons, but still know they did something wrong.

But now you have 24 hours of news to fill.

No matter how you pad it, no matter how many voice clips you play or retrospectives you do, you cannot find enough news in the world to fill 24 hours, seven days a week, 365 days a year. You just can’t.

So they started adding “opinion pieces.”

Notre Dame is on fire–is it worth saving? Notre Dame is on fire–but is it as big a catastrophe as it’s made out to be? Notre Dame is on fire–but France has been steadily calling themselves a secular nation, so is this the punishment of G-d? Notre Dame is on fire–

–wait, what was that?

Yep. You saw it, I saw it, we all saw it. But as the “opinion pieces” slowly took over the regular news and stopped being called “opinion pieces” and started being called “programs,” it became less and less clear what was and wasn’t fact.

Now obviously Notre Dame is on fire. But now we have to ask ourselves: is it worth it to save it or not? Is the financial cost outweighed by the history? Will those answers change depending on how bad the damage becomes? And you, lonely elderly person in your chair whose predominant socialization these days is at church, how does this make you feel about French people? These are questions that once would have been asked of the church caretakers and the French government. Now every single person is being asked to think about them, without being provided all of the context that is available to the church caretakers and the French government. And along the way, you get these nice, nasty little bits of prejudice and slanted thinking and bias sneaked in.

I told you I’d come back to antis. And here we are.

The vast majority of antis are very young. They grew up in a world where those “programs” were the norm. They were not provided with a cultural basis of “these are the facts.” They were provided a basis of “here is what I think about the facts.” They were provided a basis of, as Mr. Banks said in Mary Poppins, “kindly do not cloud the matter with facts.”

There are no facts! Who fucking cares! An anti who’s 15 years old today was eleven years old when we were introduced to “alternative facts”! Is it wrong for a 27-year-old man to pursue a relationship with a 13-year-old girl? Depends on which news channel, and which presenter, you ask!

They literally grew up in a world in which critical thinking was discouraged. Once upon a time, you would have seen on TV that Notre Dame was on fire, and at dinner–or whatever your family did for together time–you might say things like “going to be expensive to fix that, I wonder what they’ll do,” but you wouldn’t have been hit with six presenters telling you exactly why Notre Dame should/shouldn’t be rebuilt. And don’t forget–even if you, personally, do not watch the news (or read it on the internet, which is just as bad, because everybody’s after those elusive advertising clicks, everybody needs the “scoop” two seconds before it happens), you know people who do. You hear their opinions and their hot takes and their retellings all around you. And those  opinions and hot takes and retellings will be colored by which “program” that person saw first.

Watch the first thirty seconds of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn2RjahTi3M

Walter Cronkite, a legendary news anchor, giving his opinion on Vietnam. You will notice that he states, very clearly: “it seems very clear to this reporter.” This is Cronkite’s opinion, nothing more, and he makes it clear that he is speaking only for himself.

Now skip to approximately 1:05, and watch him report the Kennedy assassination. You can see he’s emotional, but also keeping it under wraps as best he can because he has An Important Job To Do, and that job is twofold: to deliver the news accurately and concisely, and to keep the American public calm (you can see this when he hurriedly says Johnson is probably taking the oath to become President; a missing VP would be a crisis at this moment). This is a man who’s just found out the most beloved president in modern times is dead. And not just dead–murdered. It’s not like Kennedy had a heart attack, his damn head was blown off. This news is still coming in so quickly that you can see him glancing off the screen to get fresh reports. He’s one of the first to receive this absolute blow–and he’s still holding it together, barely wavering. (When I was a kid, this role would go to Dan Rather. He was no Cronkite, but he tried.)

Where is that kind of rock for today’s teens? Imagine–heaven forbid, in the state our country’s in right now–that tomorrow we get the news Biden was shot.

How would we get that message?

Would it be delivered by an even-keeled, just-the-facts reporter like Cronkite? Or would we get it from a bunch of half-hysterical articles and crisismongering “programs”? And would it be delivered to us straight, like Cronkite did, or would it be buried in three days’ worth of opinions on his “legacy” and policies and What This Means For America?

Now: how are you supposed to build any kind of strong convictions and moral compass on a world like that? Where anything can be true if enough people have an “opinion” on it? Where the facts get immediately buried in a wave of bullshit?

Antis are reacting to a world of “opinions” and “programs” being thrown at them 24/7 by trying to create a world they can control, where there are in fact things that are true, in a world that has actively refused them the opportunity to learn how to parse and process facts. And so what they’ve come up with is this grossly distorted version of facts, because gross distortions of facts are all they know. It’s all they’ve ever seen. They’re perpetuating a system they don’t even realize they’re part of, because they never experienced life before it existed.

They’re not lying when they say they were heavily influenced by fiction because the bounds between fact and fiction have been actively erased. On purpose. And it’s difficult to grok that, if you grew up in a world where you didn’t have to go seek out photographic evidence to be absolutely certain that Notre Dame was, indeed, on fire.

So what we need to be doing, first and foremost, is rebuilding that wall of facts, that line of truth. Otherwise, what we’re going to see is more of this, but getting worse daily.

We set them up for this, and now we’re paying the price for it.

--prismatic-bell on tumblr