The Republican Party’s Disdain for Its Voters

We are in the midst of the battle with Covid-19.  The number of unemployed is enormous.  The first response by Congress was to spend several trillions to protect individuals from economic calamity and provide necessary spending to keep the economy afloat.  One of the measures was to tack on an extra $600 benefit each week to unemployment benefits.  By providing this increase, the individuals would benefit, and the economy would also benefit because the recipients were sure to spend that money.  But then Republicans became aware that this extended unemployment resource meant that some people would end up with more disposable income while unemployed than they had earned when working at their last job.  This generated moral outrage because Republican politicians assumed that the unfortunates who so benefited would obviously prefer to remain on the dole rather than accept reemployment at a diminished income.  This notion was used to argue that an extension of this benefit should not be made unless it could be limited so that no one could receive more than 70% of their former income.  Even breaking even financially was too dangerous a move for the population of beneficiaries in the view of the Republicans.  At present, the extra benefit has expired, and no new benefit bill has been passed, nor is one likely in the near future.

The Republican Party seems to have a rather dim view of the people who are currently in financial need.  The data indicates it is those at the lower end of the wage spectrum who are most likely to lose their jobs in a crisis.  This means minorities are hard hit in this situation, along with whites having a high school or less education.  The Republicans clearly have disdain for black and brown people, but it seems rather reckless to extend that characterization to the whites whose votes they desperately need.

The Republican response seems reminiscent of early nineteenth century attitudes of the wealthy towards the poor.  In Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, and the Poor People of Yesterday and Today we discussed the description by David Bellos of Victor Hugo’s time and the impact of his classic novel on peoples’ attitudes toward those living in poverty.  He introduced us to the classic representation of prevalent attitudes provided by the dismal scientist Robert Malthus.

“Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population, first published in 1798 but read for many decades after that, claims that, absent the benefits of education and refinement, human beings are naturally idle and can be roused to productive labour only by a pressing need.  Its second premise is that the uneducated and unrefined always take the easiest path.  Given the opportunity, poor people steal what they need instead of working to acquire it.  In Malthus’s dim view of human nature, the poor constitute a different species.”

Although the Republicans do sound a bit like Malthus in evaluating their citizens who have fallen on hard times, let us give them credit for advancing their knowledge a bit beyond that of the early 1800s.  Unfortunately, the advance was not great, and those who would control the destiny of the party fell under the spell of another dismal philosophy that rejected all we know about human evolution, human history, and the social sciences.  The source of their inspiration would be Ayn Rand.  Rand would have been a little-known crank if she had limited herself to promoting her ideas through essays and philosophical tracts.  Having spent time in Hollywood screenwriting, she knew the power of a good story and presented her ideas in two best-selling novels: The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957).  Corey Robin provides some perspective on Rand’s influence in his book The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump.

“In 1998, readers responding to a Modern Library poll identified Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead as the two greatest novels in English of the Twentieth century…In 1991, a survey by the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month Club found that with the exception of the Bible, no book has influenced more American readers than Atlas Shrugged.”

Her stories would detail the struggles of heroes to overcome the obstacles society and lesser people put in their paths before they eventually see their greatness recognized.     Bigger-than-life heroes have always found an audience in our society—and in our politics.  In Rand’s world the battlefield is unfettered capitalism and the enemy is society with its rules, regulations, and taxes.  The masses of common folk are there to eventually recognize the greatness of the hero, but otherwise contribute nothing.

“The chief conflict in Rand’s novels then is not between the individual and the masses.  It is between the demigod creator and all those unproductive elements of society—the intellectuals, bureaucrats, and middlemen—that stand between him and the masses.  Aesthetically, this makes for kitsch; politically, it bends toward fascism.”

Rand once claimed to be “the most creative thinker alive” and stated that Aristotle was the only philosopher who influenced her.  As Robin explains, she seemed to know little about Aristotle’s writings, but developed a philosophy that seemed to be most closely aligned with those of Friedrich Nietzsche and Adolph Hitler.  Life is a continuing struggle and the strongest deserve to win—and the weak must lose.  A hero has no time for weaknesses such as altruism or religion.  It will be these heroic individuals (always men) who will drag society forward.  Inequality is a fundamental characteristic of this worldview.  All good comes from the heroic elite while the lower classes contribute nothing.  This view is summarized nicely by one of Rand’s characters. 

“The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all of those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time.  The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all their brains.  Such is the nature of the ‘competition’ between the strong and the weak of intellect.  Such is the pattern of ‘exploitation’ for which you have damned the strong.”

The political posturing of the current crop of Republican leaders, all of whom consider themselves “heroes,” is consistent with sending the message to each unemployment compensation recipient that he/she “left to himself would starve in his hopeless ineptitude.” 

Barack Obama has suggested that a Randian outlook is something that troubled adolescent boys might find attractive.  Obama, perhaps not intending it, has come up with a descriptor that quite accurately captures the Republican leadership, including Donald Trump: men frozen in a troubled adolescence.