When things go south, everyone wants a government check

President Donald Trump signs a $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill. (C-SPAN)

It’s funny how much change can happen in a few months. About two months ago, President Donald Trump, Sen. Mitch McConnell and the entire Republican Party were screaming “America will never be a socialist country.” But this week they signed off on a $2 trillion relief package that literally gives government checks to millions of Americans. This confirms something I’ve always said, everyone’s a socialist in a disaster.

As I stated in a previous article, even though America fought the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the United States has never been a purely capitalist country. If you look back on American history, the government has frequently bailed out businesses and given lavish benefits to its citizens.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was said to have used socialism to save capitalism during the Great Depression. (He just called it the New Deal.) Yes, welfare benefits and government-supported jobs are socialism, but that’s what helped save the country, and it’s similar to the Trump administration’s relief program.

There’s a long history of the government bailing out the business world after their reckless policies manage to tank the economy. It happened in the 1930s, in the 1980s and about 10 years ago, during the mortgage crash. Most recently farmers, conservative small business owners who overwhelmingly voted for Trump, received $28 billion in federal aid over two years, according to NPR.

For decades leftists have used the phrase “socialism for the rich, rugged capitalism for the poor.” That’s a pretty accurate summation of the situation. When big businesses screw up they can rely on government bailouts, including cash infusions and low-interest loans. But when the average working joes ask for universal healthcare, the people on the right scream socialism.

Government intervening in business is the very definition of socialism, but it didn’t seem to bother farmers.

“‘Trump money’ is what we call it,” said Robert Henry, a farmer. “It helped a lot. And it’s my understanding, they’re going to do it again.”

This is an indictment of American capitalism. One of the tenets of being an entrepreneur is taking on the financial risk of your venture. By doing that you also reap the larger share of the financial windfall than a worker. But how much risk do American capitalists take on, when they know that if it all goes sour, they can always rely on Uncle Sam to bail them out?

For decades leftists have used the phrase “socialism for the rich, rugged capitalism for the poor.” That’s a pretty accurate summation of the situation. When big businesses screw up they can rely on government bailouts, including cash infusions and low-interest loans. But when average working joes ask for universal healthcare, the people on the right scream socialism.

It seems people on the right like a little socialism now and then, they just don’t want the unwashed masses to have it. Although President Ronald Reagan said government was the problem, Republicans love the government when it’s handing them cheques.

And unfortunately, because this is America where race plays a significant role in everything, there is a racial factor in this situation. Reagan was aware of it too. He knew what he was doing when he used the buzz word “welfare queens.” That was a racialized code word that implied the government was spending too much money on black and brown people on social welfare programs. Of course, the defense contractors who were getting large government contracts were okay.

However, it goes deeper than that. Reagan’s strategy was a form of racialized divide and conquer. He convinced working-class whites to fight against social welfare programs that could even benefit them, by convincing them that non-whites would abuse them.

And more than 40 years later, that attitude is still prevalent. This issue was explored in Jonathan Wetzl’s book “Dying of Whiteness,” where he explores why many poor white people vote against their interests. Wetzl investigated how many Southern states, where the people often have numerous health issues, refused to implement Medicaid expansions included in President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

According to Wetzl, it’s rooted in racial resentment.

“I certainly found many people who told me they support these policies because, as one person said, ‘It might hurt us but at least our tax dollars aren’t going to Mexicans and welfare queens,’” said Wetzl in an interview with Vox.

It seems many Americans are okay with huge corporations getting government money, but they’ll vote against their interests, as long as it stops a Person of Color also getting a check from Uncle Sam.