{"id":13924,"date":"2020-03-24T12:17:03","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T16:17:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=13924"},"modified":"2020-03-24T12:17:56","modified_gmt":"2020-03-24T16:17:56","slug":"13924","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2020\/03\/24\/13924\/","title":{"rendered":"Adam Kotsko"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Invisible Hand Wants You Dead<\/a>
Rick Santelli has apologized for suggesting the populace should be infected with coronavirus, but his sadistic worldview is still a threat.
By ADAM KOTSKO
March 6, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick Santelli is at it again. Speaking from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on Thursday, the stock trader and frequent CNBC commentator shared his views about the best way to handle the coronavirus. Dismissing the possibility of containing it through quarantines, he suggested that \u201cmaybe we\u2019d be just better off if we gave it to everybody, and then in a month it would be over.\u201d He went on to make the questionable claim that \u201cthe mortality rate of this probably isn\u2019t going to be any different if we did it that way than the long-term picture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The extreme optimism of Santelli\u2019s armchair epidemiology notwithstanding, it\u2019s clear that his real concern isn\u2019t public health at all. Compared to his brutally efficient plan of mass infection, his seeming problem with the more drawn-out containment attempts was that they \u201c[wreak] havoc on global and domestic economies.\u201d So, whoever is going to die from coronavirus had better get it over with as quickly as possible\u2014for the sake of capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would be too easy to dismiss this unforeseen outburst as the ranting of a sociopath, or even a sick attempt at humor. Santelli\u2019s ravings reflect a coherent worldview, one that has previously demonstrated its appeal by kicking off an entire social movement. I am speaking, of course, of the Tea Party, which Santelli summoned into existence in an infamous 2009 harangue that found an enthusiastic reception among conservative commentators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raging against what he saw as the Obama administration\u2019s excessive generosity, and claiming that government largesse was \u201cpromoting bad behavior,\u201d Santelli called for the tech-savvy administration to \u201cput up a website to have people vote on the internet as a referendum to see if we really want to subsidize the losers\u2019 mortgages; or, would we like to at least buy cars and buy houses in foreclosure and give \u2019em to people that might have a chance to actually prosper down the road?\u201d Exclaiming, \u201cThis is America!\u201d he built to a crescendo, ultimately calling for a \u201cChicago Tea Party\u201d to head off the nation\u2019s decline into Cuban-style collectivism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his Tea Party rant, Santelli\u2019s \u201cget it over with\u201d philosophy is not stated quite so baldly as it is in his more recent statement on the coronavirus. Santelli nevertheless makes it clear that he would prefer the undeserving to be kicked out of their homes as quickly as possible, so that they will stop draining resources that others could use more productively. Such an approach, he contended, would \u201creward people that could carry the water instead of drink the water.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What would happen to the thirsty people deprived of water? In typical fashion, Santelli didn\u2019t care enough to make it explicit. Instead, he turned his attention to the \u201csilent majority\u201d represented by the stock traders who stood in the background of CNBC\u2019s live coverage, cheering his Tea Party oration. Those colleagues, he averred, are \u201ca pretty good statistical cross-section of America,\u201d showing the same fast-and-loose approach to statistics as in his claims that intentionally infecting all Americans with coronavirus would lead to a similar death rate as attempting to contain it. Still, we should resist our impulse to dismiss Santelli as ignorant here. This is not a simple error, but a statement about who really counts\u2014namely, people like him and his fellow stewards of the market, who are never going to be underwater on their mortgage, just as they will presumably never be among the unwashed masses dying of coronavirus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capitalism has always created winners and losers, of course, and capitalist ideology has always aimed to portray those outcomes as legitimate and just. Hence we should not be surprised that a privileged person like Santelli views himself and his colleagues as uniquely deserving. What is surprising, indeed disturbing, is the element of malice toward the losers. Santelli travels far beyond the more conventional view that acknowledges the destruction wrought by the market\u2014the job losses, the failed businesses, the bad bets\u2014as a necessary evil that is outweighed by the benefits of economic growth overall. Within such a framework, even ardent pro-market theorists like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman concede that society owes something to those left behind. For Santelli, by contrast, the fact that some people are harmed by the market is a positive good, to the point where offering aid and comfort to the losers can appear as an injustice worthy of the condemnation of an enraged overclass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in 2009, many Americans among the hoi polloi were willing to be drafted into Santelli\u2019s aristocratic revolution, dressing up in Founding Fathers drag for their contemporary Tea Party. There were serious questions about the extent to which the Tea Party was an authentic grassroots movement or a corporate-sponsored \u201castroturf\u201d campaign, but it is undeniable that it was, at the time, the most effective American protest movement in this young century. The Tea Party tipped the balance of power in Congress and within the Republican Party itself, putting Obama on the defensive for the rest of his presidency. More than that, with its anti-intellectualism and its vulgar provocations (most notably on the topic of rape), it cleared the way for Trump, who has shown just as much malice toward society\u2019s \u201closers.\u201d It may not represent a numerical majority, but enough Americans are on board with a program of vengeance against society\u2019s most vulnerable to allow the anti-democratic aspects of our system to stymie any movement toward a less punitive society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How could such a cruel and seemingly irrational view gain such purchase? Once more, we need to resist purely individualistic explanations\u2014such as the idea that Tea Party or Trump supporters are simply bad people whose negative urges have finally found an outlet. Santelli\u2019s remarks do not reflect the universal facts of human nature, but a very specific historical situation: the aftermath of the global financial crisis, which produced a permanent ratcheting down of incomes and life chances for entire populations. The usual bromides about hard work and individual virtue could not make sense of such a system-wide shock. And to add insult to injury, many of the victims got into trouble by pursuing homeownership, which is supposed to be the ultimate sign of personal responsibility and prosperity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this had the potential to call the legitimacy of the system as a whole into question. In that context, Santelli\u2019s rant and its subsequent embrace by conservatives represents a desperate attempt to harness this populist rage and declare that the suffering the crisis inflicted was a feature, not a bug. We realize in retrospect that Santelli\u2019s fears were groundless, because no shift toward collectivism was on the Democrats\u2019 agenda under Obama. We are living in the aftermath of the right\u2019s cruel preemptive assault against a program of radical reform that never came.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thankfully, Santelli\u2019s novel idea of infecting the populace with the coronavirus was greeted with the opprobrium it deserved, compelling him to apologize for his suggestion Friday morning. Nevertheless, we should not let that distract us from the fact that the conservative movement has successfully taken his earlier vision to stratospheric heights. We may be spared a forced pandemic, but they will keep on doubling down and doubling down, until we do what Santelli feared the most: make the choice to improve the lives of others, whether they \u201cdeserve\u201d it or not. Until that day comes, we cannot be surprised that, with no prospect of any positive change, a vocal plurality of our fellow citizens will continue to be seduced by the consolations of sadism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adam Kotsko teaches in the Shimer Great Books School of North Central College. He is the author, most recently, of Neoliberalism\u2019s Demons: On the Political Theology of Late Capital. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Invisible Hand Wants You Dead Rick Santelli has apologized for suggesting the populace should be infected with coronavirus, but his sadistic worldview is still a threat. By ADAM KOTSKO March 6, 2020 Rick Santelli is at it again. Speaking from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on Thursday, the stock trader and frequent … Continue reading “Adam Kotsko”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class","category-ideology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13924"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13927,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13924\/revisions\/13927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}