9 months into this crisis, and things are worse than ever.

It would easy to blame this only on Trump. But the failure here is broader than that. It is a failure of an entire worldview, an entire way of thinking. "Conservatism" has failed.

Thread.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/not-just-trump-conservative-ideology-wouldve-failed-pandemic https://twitter.com/COVID19Tracking/status/1334289955376390144

Modern conservatism is built on a bunch of ideas, but maybe none more central than the argument that government itself is "the problem."

But that's a disastrous way of thinking when you face a collective problem like a pandemic.

The only way to address a pandemic is with government intervention, something countries like South Korea and New Zealand figured out early on.

Even in hard-hit European countries, they are responding to the fall wave with more government intervention and it's working.

But here in the U.S. conservative leaders refused to marshal the resources of government to actually combat the spread of the disease. Instead, in keeping with their ideology, they wanted to leave it to individuals and the "free market."

When pressed by governors struggling with shortages of PPE, Jared Kushner famously replied, "The free market will solve it."

Republican state legislators in Texas declared that it was each “individual Texan’s responsibility” to keep themselves safe, not the government's.

When faced with a crisis in which collective action, public resources and public intervention was absolutely necessary, of course an ideology that assumes government will aways fail ended up failing.

But the failure of conservatism is not just about its conception of the role of government. Conservatism's conception of the economy has also proven to be a major stumbling block to addressing this crisis.

Conservatives venerate capital and the owners of capital above all other elements of an economy.

It's not really much of a caricature to say that conservatives believe that what's good for the rich is good for everyone.

That ideology leads to a conflation of the stock market and the real economy.

So when the stock market was in trouble, back in March, conservative lawmakers were amenable to economic aid and supported the CARES Act.

But since then, the stock market has recovered, even though a lot of people and small businesses are still really struggling. But because the stock market is fine, conservative lawmakers are no longer interested in providing more economic assistance.

Conservative veneration of capital-owners has also lead them into an ongoing conflict with scientific expertise.

Over the last several decades, corporate interests have quite often come up against scientific experts (tobacco, climate change, etc.).

Over time, this has calcified into a permanent suspicion of science and expertise, especially in cases when the perceived interests of capital owners are threatened.

As soon as conservatives got it in their heads that this crisis was "economy" vs. "public health experts," the experts were going to be ignored.

We saw this everywhere over the last 9 months, with doctors and public health experts being sidelined or outright mocked.

Lastly, conservative ideology has a lot of trouble with race and gender. This is no secret.

In its more "benign" form, conservatism claims to be colorblind, preferring to believe that racial disparities are temporary or irrelevant.

A more pernicious form of right-wing conservatism thrives on racial disparities and claims that they are deserved or inherent.

In either case, it's not hard to see why conservatism was unable or unwilling to grapple with a crisis that underlined the reality of structural racism.

Black people and people of color generally have been more likely to catch COVID, to be hospitalized for COVID and to die from COVID.

And it's not because, as one state legislator suggested, "They don't wash their hands enough."

This disparity is quite obviously the product of underlying systemic disparities, such as proximity to environmental pollution and less access to quality health care. Black people are also disproportionately in jobs that were deemed "essential" or weren't "work from home."

Again, it's not hard to understand conservatives were not quick to jump on a public health crisis that disproportionately affects people of color and puts a spotlight on the very structural barriers that conservatives insist do not exist.

To sum up...

A worldview that says:

1. Government is a problem and the "free market" is best left alone
2. Capital is all that matters to an economy
3. Racial disparities aren't real (or if they are they are deserved)

...is a worldview built to fail the test of COVID.