Lionel Trilling observed in 1950 that “in the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition.” Oh, conservatism was still around during the postwar period, but the conservative impulse (linked with the reactionary one) he famously described as “irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.”
The right’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic reinforces that impression. The conservative flair for messaging has always concealed the real game the way Lee Atwater said abstractions like “forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff” concealed the racist underpinnings of the GOP’s Southern Strategy.
Now, with a $2 trillion stimulus bill passed by the Republican-controlled Senate, the GOP has discarded its mask of fiscal responsibility and decided saving its donors (if not its voters) from financial ruin is something the United States can and must afford. Irritable mental gestures once made regarding balanced budgets existed to slash the country’s New Deal and Great Society safety nets. “Lazy blacks” had to be protected from the moral hazard of their slacker ways. The real agenda was freeing up more for those who already have it. With the stock market in the grip of the pandemic, handouts to business flow like the Mississippi.
“So weird how the Tea Party isn’t rising up in opposition to all this government spending,” tweeted Pod Save The World‘s Ben Rhodes. But it gets weirder.
Donald Trump’s campaign revealed there was a cultish impulse underlying smaller government, family values “and all that stuff.” And not just a cult of Trumpish personality, either. This cult believes humans exist to serve the economy, not the other way around. The Market — bless its holy name — sits on the right hand of the Father closer than Jesus, even. It must be appeased. With human blood, if necessary.
The acting president suggested Tuesday that people might come out of their COVID-19 shelters, quit social distancing, and get back to work by Easter. Presumably, so the Market can rise on the third day. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick suggested grandparents should be willing to die to save the economy for their children and grandchildren.
Glenn Beck, Stuart Varney, Brit Hume, and others, make obeisance to the notion it is better for some Americans to risk death rather than the Market suffer further harm. Beck thinks oldsters should throw themselves into the volcano to serve the Precious. Varney disagrees. He thinks stay-at-home restrictions should concentrate on older, at-risk humans. Yummy younger people should feed themselves to Moloch because “that’s what the market likes.”
Jamelle Bouie finds irony in guys like Beck who promoted supposed Obama “death panels” for older people now advocating human sacrifice “for the glory of Supreme Leader Trump.”
But it was Nicole Hemmer (“Messengers of the Right“) who noticed another irony in Beck’s recommendation. Beck “peddles gold and survival seeds,” she observes. “He’s been training his audience to be preppers for YEARS and now they have the chance to use those skills and he’s like ‘naw, back to work!'”
Irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble self-reliance.
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide election mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.