Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Everyone is Losing the Coronavirus Culture War


I had a very enlightening conversation a couple of weeks ago with a friend of mine, someone who is significantly to my left politically. We were talking about the same topics everyone is talking about these days: the coronavirus pandemic, our government’s response to it, and the ever-present specter of a reopening economy. But what made the conversation so enlightening was not that either of us learned anything new about public health or macroeconomics, or even that the two of us agreed that having to choose between the two was a false dichotomy. What was enlightening was that we, as two politically distinct individuals, could agree on anything at all when discussing these things.

As I struggle to take in the news each day (as I’m sure all of you do too), what worries me most is not the fact that the coronavirus has already killed more Americans than the flu did all of last year or that we still don’t fully understand how the virus operates on the human body. Rather, I am most frightened by the fact that America’s toxic political culture—in which we as a people are divided sharply along partisan lines, with each camp existing in a contained, parallel universe that operates with a different baseline of truth and reality than the other camp’s—has extended its cancer-like spread beyond purely political matters and now dictates how the American public is processing a literal global pandemic. This is, for painful lack of a better word, dangerously unhealthy.

We are not going to be able to recover easily—or perhaps ever—if we as a nation cannot agree on whether the virus is real, if it is dangerous, if the experts have our best interests at heart, and if we should want to minimize the loss of life from this worldwide threat. As a person who leans strongly libertarian in my politics, I sympathize with the reaction of many on the political right to the strict and pervasive lockdown orders issued by governors all over the country. It all happened so swiftly and with such rhetorical force, accompanied by constantly shifting projections, goals, and deadlines, with very little in the way of satisfying explanations. Such abrupt and heavy-handed state action is galling and offends basic conservative notions of autonomy, deliberation, and the consent of the governed. But none of that automatically means it was wrong, or that it is in our best interest to ignore it. Just because you have a philosophical objection to your governor using emergency powers to keep you out of restaurants and hair salons doesn’t mean you are doing what’s best for you, your children, and your neighbors by disobeying it. In fact, it might mean that there is an actual emergency—one so novel and unexpected that even people who are in the best position to understand it didn’t immediately know how to properly respond to it. And if that’s the case, then we as laypeople certainly don’t know what’s best.

And therein lies the dangerous assumption underlying so much of the anti-lockdown rhetoric. Those who want to rush to reopen America’s economy seem to think that medical experts (especially those working for the government) don’t really know what’s best for us or, if they do, that they don’t have the best interests of ordinary citizens at heart. Again, I am not devoid of sympathy with this view. Our “expert class” has betrayed us time and time again: they told us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; they told us that the housing market was healthy in 2007; they told us Donald Trump could never be president. But when they’re telling you that by leaving your homes and assembling in crowded places you are increasing the spread of a deadly disease, do you want to take that risk and assume they’re wrong? Do you really want to believe that medical doctors have suddenly abandoned their oaths to do no harm? Are you truly willing to believe that our government has elected to ravage our nation’s economy to serve some elaborate hoax? Are you blind enough to dismiss as coincidence the fact that the only people downplaying the effects of the virus are those with a political incentive to do so?

But I’m not writing this post just to wag my finger at the discontents who want haircuts. I also take umbrage at my more liberal friends who dismiss concerns over the economic effects of the pandemic as a “conservative” talking point. This couldn’t be farther from the truth and only exacerbates our country’s destructive political divide. Gun-toting protesting man-children aside, voicing concern about the economy doesn’t mean you’re a domestic terrorist and certainly doesn’t mean you want to sacrifice grandma to the stock market. Indeed, as so many of my liberal friends were fond of pointing out before this crisis came around (but are notably silent on now), the economy is more than the stock market. (Indeed, we don't even need to send people back to work for stocks to rise.)The economy is your friend who drives for Uber to pay rent and your neighbor who works at a nail salon and your cousin who prefers to buy her gluten-free flour at Kroger instead of Whole Foods. Our economy is fueled by everyday Americans who work hard and spend their money at ballparks, movie theaters, and restaurants.

And these well-meaning government lockdowns have the mortifying potential to make all of those things disappear forever. Every day, I am filled with existential dread over the plight of the world-class restaurant scene in my adopted hometown. It is not an exaggeration for me to say that I very well may have already eaten at each of my favorite restaurants in Richmond for the last time. Businesses that rely on mass gatherings of people to generate paper-thin profit margins—live theatre and restaurants especially—simply cannot survive even a few more weeks of our current status quo. The Nordstrom where I used to work has already closed permanently. J. Crew filed for bankruptcy last week. All of these closures (and I assure you, there are a staggering amount yet to come) will mean lost jobs, lost tax revenue, and ruined livelihoods. Twenty million Americans lost their jobs in April. The jobless rate is approaching Great Depression levels. And we’re still in the early stages. The long-term effects will be catastrophic, and no sector of our economy will be spared. Smaller and less prestigious colleges and universities will close, movie viewing will become an exclusively home-based activity, and millions of jobs will simply never come back.

The worst part is that I don’t think enough people who are making policy decisions (and those who are so quick to condemn concerns about our economy) understand just how bad this will get if our current state of affairs continues for much longer. There will come a time when we must ask ourselves the coldly utilitarian question of which option will cause fewer deaths: keeping everyone in quarantine or opening things back up. This isn’t as simple as the train-track problem from your freshman ethics class; there are millions of people on both sides of the fork. And regardless of the answer, our government has a responsibility to spend whatever amount of money is necessary to minimize the number of shuttered businesses and lost jobs. Because no lockdown is worth it if there isn’t an economy to reopen once it’s over.

And so we find ourselves in a uniquely dangerous moment, facing disease, death, and worldwide economic depression at a time when we have no faith in the institutions that must help us through this crisis and no faith in our fellow Americans who must get through it with us. If we can’t find some way to step back, take a hard look around us, and realize that we really are in the same boat, that we really are at our best when we care about one another, and that we have to pull together and act as one nation to survive this, then we’re doomed. For some time now, the American people have been teetering on the edge of a cliff, inching ever closer to the status of a failed body politic. Turns out it might just be an invisible virus that gives us that last nudge into oblivion.

Why do we do this to ourselves?

Why do we do this to ourselves?