Written by: Daniel Xie

In a interview on Fox News hosted by Tucker Carlson, Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick advocated opposing social distancing guidelines established in response to the Coronavirus outbreak. His rationale being that lockdowns and closing down businesses weren’t “worth it” because the elderly would willingly sacrifice themselves in his eyes for the economy; essentially prioritizing economic gain over the livelihoods of thousands, if not millions that he deems to be “less important” than economic gain. This was not the first time Dan Patrick has advocated for prioritizing economic gain and efficiency over human lives. Just last month, in an earlier interview with Carlson, Patrick also suggested that seniors should be willing to “sacrifice” themselves to maintain the economy, which he considered to be “more important” than living. This time, his rationale was that because death toll and infection rates are supposedly lower than what they were a month ago, the Coronavirus was consequently not as dangerous as it’s supposedly spun as.

This is despite the fact that the reason that these rates were lower than what they were projected to be a month ago was because of efforts being made to ensure social distancing and close things down, not in spite of it; had social distancing been discouraged then the death toll would have been worse. It should be noted of course that the current measures encouraging social distancing aren’t sufficient enough to be truly successful. This is because measures that could have better encouraged social distancing and thus had the potential to end the crisis much earlier such as medicare for all, temporary universal basic income, rent and tuition freezes, easy employment insurance application for all are being ignored by many governments around the world in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Instead, these governments have implemented half-measures leaving many of the most vulnerable and marginalized in the cold, or have used the Coronavirus as a pretext to expand corporate powerand wealth inequality instead of considering at all any progressive legislation that could be used to successfully promote social isolation.

Dan Patrick’s insensitive claims must not be viewed in a vacuum, but as just one effort in multiple attempts by various political figures in the United States to challenge the need for social distancing on the basis that economic efficiency is more important than any prospective lives lost as a result of the Coronavirus. On April 23, Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman proposed reopening casinos in an interview on Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN, despite not specifying any guidelines on ensuring safety for visitors and casino employees once casinos reopen.

When asked about this exact issue, Goodman stated that assuming that casinos reopen, she is willing to defer to businesses to determine how to reopen and how to; claiming that “competition” will destroy any businesses that have a high infection rate. Thankfully, the rest of the state of Nevada was not in lockstep with her insane plan to open casinos without a safety plan. Nevada governor Steve Sisolak told Anderson Cooper on Wednesday that Nevada is clearly not ready to reopen, noting the growing death toll and infection rate there. In addition, Nevada's largest union, the Culinary Workers Union, condemned Goodman’s statement as outrageous considering how frontline workers are at the most risk of being infected; the CWU itself having lost 11 of it’s members to the spread of COVID-19.

Other Governors, such as Republican governors in Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina however, are already making plans to end social distancing despite warnings by health officials that it may be simply too early to do so. If these plans move forward, people who refuse to return to work due to fear of infection will likely no longer qualify for whatever meager unemployment benefits the government cobbled together in response to the outbreak. According to the Department of Labor’s website, “voluntarily deciding to quit your job out of a general concern about exposure to COVID-19 does not make you eligible for [Pandemic Unemployment Assistance]”, with Department of Labor spokesperson confirming to VICE that employees cannot continue to collect pandemic unemployment insurance if they refuse to return to work due to health concerns. This puts many workers at risk as they are faced with the choice of either returning to potentially unsafe work, or resisting calls to return to unsafe work and being unable to collect any unemployment insurance as a result.

The prospect of opening up even before infection and death rates subside, without a safety plan in place, has also been entertained by the US government. In response to anti-lockdown protests, Trump made tweets calling for the “liberation” of Virginia, Michigan, and Minnesota. This signifies that Trump is expressing support for anti-lockdown and anti-social distancing protestors despite the fact that these protests, if they were to succeed, would put many seniors and frontline workers at risk as a result of lockdowns being lifted. Trump’s cabinet has also approved of anti-lockdown protests, with Trump advisor Stephen Moore comparing the protestors to Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks.

This is despite the fact that instead of fighting for racial equality or any sort of socioeconomic justice, many of the anti-social distancing protestors; a large chunk of whom sprouse right wing and outright far-right political views, are putting many people at risk in pushing for an end to quarantines without any safety measures in place simply so they can get a haircut. In fact, ultraconservative groups in the US have been behind some of the anti-lockdown protests such as Operation Gridlock, which was organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition and the Michigan Freedom Fund, a group backed by Trump administration education secretary, Betsy DeVos.

With further regards to the far-right social distancing protests currently championed by both the Trump administration and libertarians, there is strong evidence that this movement is currently being astroturfed by a vocal minority, according to a news poll on CBS News, most Americans (62%) prioritize staying home and are actually concerned that lockdown measures might be lifted too early. While a sizable minority are concerned that lockdown measures are being lifted too slowly at the expense of the economy(37%), in another poll by CBS, only 13% of the respondents said they would return to public spaces in the next few weeks even if their cities and states encouraged them to by ordering restaurants and other businesses to reopen, while a third poll found that an overwhelming number of respondents plan to continue social distancing on their own if given the opportunity to attend a large event, eat at restaurants, or get on airplanes. These statistics show that the majority of Americans would prefer for social distancing over opening up society as quickly as possible.

Ultimately, what the efforts of politicians such as Patrick and Goodman, along with the Republican governors of Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina to end social distancing in favor of economic gain even before a safety plan is in place(or in some extreme cases, even before the curve could be considered to have peaked), along with the support given by the Trump administration and the astroturfed anti-social distancing protestors to said initiatives demonstrates that capitalism is a death cult encouraging sociopathic behavior such as prioritizing economic gain and “efficiency” over human lives, whom are sacrificed as fuel to empower economic growth if it is deemed a “necessary” sacrifice to ensuring the continuation of profit.

During the COVID-19 outbreak, politicians such as Goodman and Patrick have prioritized economic gain as more important than saving lives that they deem to be necessary human sacrifices at the altar of profit; when social distancing measures are working, these politicians would claim that it is in spite of social distancing instead of because of it, despite overwhelming evidence to suggest that it is because of social distancing. All of this demonstrates that capitalism is a death cult promoting sociopathic behavior prioritizing economic gain above all else and the social murder of the population in favor of profit. And the ideals promoted by the death cult of capitalism must be fought against at all cost.

Of course, it should be stressed that any resistance to capitalism must be organized outside the current two party system in the US. While the Republicans are egging on American society to open as soon as possible despite the toll in human lives that would result, the democrats are little better, having voted in favor of the CARES act, nominated a reactionary with credible rape allegations (Biden) as their presumptive nominee through rigging the primaries against Bernie’s social democratic insurgency, and having done little to push for measures such as medicare for all or rent freezes to make social distancing much more bearable and effective. Even the social democrats within the democratic party represented by Bernie Sanders and “the squad” are ultimately limited by their efforts on reforming, rather than challenging the democratic party, and their focus on using respectability and compromise politics to achieve change rather than more radical and transformative politics; these limitations being exemplified by the weak resistance put up by Bernie and house progressives against both the DNC and the CARES act.

Consequently, any social democratic or electoralism-based progressive movement within the democratic party would be ultimately self-limiting rather than function as effective resistance to the growing powers of oligarchy despite the initial success of politicians such as Bernie and AOC in making socialism popular among American youth. As a result, to effectively oppose capitalism and the continued consolidation of oligarchy in American society, it is vital that we build a mass socialist movement independent from the two-party duopoly and not rely on electoralism, particularly electoralism revolving around progressive democrats, as a way to challenge the capitalist establishment in the United States.