Earlier this week several prominent American conservatives said that the health of the economy mattered more to them than the health of the elderly. Taking their cue from the president’s Twitter feed (WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF”) the same people who, for decades, have insisted that abortion is murder, offered a show-must-go-on rationale that aged Americans should – for the greater good of Wall Street – accept an increased likelihood of death during the covid-19 pandemic.
In other circumstances, Trump’s base likes to argue that “all lives matter” but now it seems as though shutting down the US economy to save a few thousand seniors would be selfish, irresponsible, an unconscionable blow to future generations – not to mention their leader’s re-election prospects. A few days later, despite their professed hatred of socialism, many of the same people cheered as tens of billions were set aside for bailouts of the airline, cruise ship and hotel industries. One of the few sticking points on the proposed stimulus, at least in the Senate, was that a US$600 unemployment benefit might make low-paid workers too comfortable to seek reemployment when the economy recovered.
Trump’s response to covid-19 has been entirely on brand. Having dismantled the US pandemic taskforce and ignored intelligence briefings he has chosen to downplay the threat, misinform the public, and blame the media for exposing his broken promises, mistakes and lies. Now that the full measure of his incompetence can be measured in lives needlessly lost, he has laboured to recast himself as a wartime leader. But even this act falters under scrutiny. Asked why he might ease social-distancing guidelines in mid-April, Trump could only tell a television interviewer: “I just thought it was a beautiful time.”
Although the US now has more cases than any other country and its state hospitals are bracing for an onslaught of new cases that few can handle, Trump continues to insist that everything is in under control. Having, in the understated words of one CNN report “minimized the looming impact of the crisis” it has become increasingly clear that his current “assessments conflict with the reality of its deadly march”, arguably to a pathological degree.
Among other acts of petty vindictiveness, Trump has quibbled over the number of ventilators requested by New York governor Andrew Cuomo, dismissed Washington’s governor as a “failed presidential candidate” (for daring to denounce the slipshod federal response), and said of Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer that “all she does is sit there and blame the federal government.” While he settles these scores, Americans are dying due to a lack of resources, or funds, that federal assistance could have easily provided. In Los Angeles, for example, a 17-year-old boy became the first American teenager to die of covid-19 complications after being denied treatment because he had no health insurance.
Trump’s British counterpart has fared no better. Having bungled every aspect of the UK response, Prime Minister Boris Johnson now finds himself – confined to working from home after being diagnosed with the virus – boosting the very healthcare service that his party has long undermined. He has tried the same hypocritical pivot as Trump but in doing so both men have further depleted whatever confidence their leadership ever inspired. Neither can generate sufficient trust, at home or abroad, for their stated policies, nor do their updates and re-assessments carry any credibility. Meanwhile, despite the EU and the UN recognizing the need for common action, France, Italy, Spain and Iran continue their battle against the virus largely alone.
A pandemic, as its name suggests, threatens everyone. It is reprehensible to argue that any group, or nation, should be sacrificed for the collective good. What is clear, however, as these self-serving rationales surface in rightwing circles is that neoliberalism, or what remains of it in many parts of the world, is no longer capable of mounting a humane response to such crises. And, as exemplars of that culture, leaders who whistle past the graveyard are ultimately far more damaging, to the body politic, than any political sickness they were meant to cure.