I really (and I mean, I really) don’t understand the conservative objecting to masking up and locking down. It’s utterly perfect for the primitive psychological aspects of the conservative movement.
Conservatism is notable for its psychology: conservatism can be identified by a rejection of new experiences and ideas; the whole point of the endeavor is to conserve what is, and to adopt new ideas only after several generations of experimentation hasn’t killed off the experimenters. The conservative rejection of new forms of art and theater is positively legendary, especially when those new forms come with new messages about family, faith, community, or intimacy.
Conservatism is also notable for its pietistic mouthing of individualism: the very notion that there should be an alternative, tax-funded centerpiece of community awareness and outreach, yet that’s a role filled almost entirely by public schools. With lunch programs, athletic programs, and mental health faculties, schools provide social welfare to children and families in ways few other system do; their constituted role is to assist in the development of children away from the families that bear them; they care for children and invoke higher authorities when necessary to intervene on a child’s behalf; they provide jobs and they encourage involvement in the democratic process.
The idea that any institution other than God & Family should provide any of these, or that “encouraging involvement in the democratic process” should be a benefit, is an outrage to conservatives.
Enter COVID-19.
School attendance is falling off a cliff. Children are kept at home most of the time, and parents get a constant, over-the-shoulder look at what their children are being taught. School budgets are withering as local economies evaporate and tax bases collapse.
Children and adults are being taught to fear the new. New people could bring disease. Especially new people you don’t recognize, don’t identify with, and especially don’t understand. “Stranger danger” was never as widespread a threat as people believed, yet now it’s a very real phenomenon. “Being open to new experiences” means putting yourself at risk for a deadly disease to an extent unfamiliar in the lifetime of 99% of the American people. (Modulo the gay community’s experience with AIDS, but that’s a risk with a very different profile from “just breathing the air of the guy at the table next to you in the restaurant.”)
COVID-19 is a mind-bogglingly perfect opportunity for the conservative community to enforce its standards: a rejection of the new, of the stranger, and of the foreigner; a forced reconstitution of the nuclear family and the role of at least one parent (and guess which one that will be in the common heterosexual couple) in the education of the children; the destruction of a powerful alternative center of community involvement and its competition with the church; a dissolution of the libertine intermixing of people in the anonymous settings of bars and rock concerts.
COVID-19 was a gold-plated crowbar with which the conservative community could have beat down urbanity and its concomitant civilization.
The universe has to have a sense of humor. By hitting Seattle and New York first, and by having the Democratic governors of those two states move with some speed and responsibility to manage the disease with lockdowns and universal masking, COVID-19’s utility to conservatism has been entirely blunted by the MAGA crowd’s inability to recognize a crowbar made of gold glory even when God hands it to them.
Conservatism is notable for its psychology: conservatism can be identified by a rejection of new experiences and ideas; the whole point of the endeavor is to conserve what is, and to adopt new ideas only after several generations of experimentation hasn’t killed off the experimenters. The conservative rejection of new forms of art and theater is positively legendary, especially when those new forms come with new messages about family, faith, community, or intimacy.
Conservatism is also notable for its pietistic mouthing of individualism: the very notion that there should be an alternative, tax-funded centerpiece of community awareness and outreach, yet that’s a role filled almost entirely by public schools. With lunch programs, athletic programs, and mental health faculties, schools provide social welfare to children and families in ways few other system do; their constituted role is to assist in the development of children away from the families that bear them; they care for children and invoke higher authorities when necessary to intervene on a child’s behalf; they provide jobs and they encourage involvement in the democratic process.
The idea that any institution other than God & Family should provide any of these, or that “encouraging involvement in the democratic process” should be a benefit, is an outrage to conservatives.
Enter COVID-19.
School attendance is falling off a cliff. Children are kept at home most of the time, and parents get a constant, over-the-shoulder look at what their children are being taught. School budgets are withering as local economies evaporate and tax bases collapse.
Children and adults are being taught to fear the new. New people could bring disease. Especially new people you don’t recognize, don’t identify with, and especially don’t understand. “Stranger danger” was never as widespread a threat as people believed, yet now it’s a very real phenomenon. “Being open to new experiences” means putting yourself at risk for a deadly disease to an extent unfamiliar in the lifetime of 99% of the American people. (Modulo the gay community’s experience with AIDS, but that’s a risk with a very different profile from “just breathing the air of the guy at the table next to you in the restaurant.”)
COVID-19 is a mind-bogglingly perfect opportunity for the conservative community to enforce its standards: a rejection of the new, of the stranger, and of the foreigner; a forced reconstitution of the nuclear family and the role of at least one parent (and guess which one that will be in the common heterosexual couple) in the education of the children; the destruction of a powerful alternative center of community involvement and its competition with the church; a dissolution of the libertine intermixing of people in the anonymous settings of bars and rock concerts.
COVID-19 was a gold-plated crowbar with which the conservative community could have beat down urbanity and its concomitant civilization.
The universe has to have a sense of humor. By hitting Seattle and New York first, and by having the Democratic governors of those two states move with some speed and responsibility to manage the disease with lockdowns and universal masking, COVID-19’s utility to conservatism has been entirely blunted by the MAGA crowd’s inability to recognize a crowbar made of gold glory even when God hands it to them.
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