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.