[WSMDiscuss] [Debate-List] US : Armed protesters demand end to Michigan coronavirus lockdown

[Toussaint Losier]

Here is some useful analysis of what is transpiring here

https://newrepublic.com/article/157505/morbid-ideology-behind-drive-reopen-america
The Morbid Ideology Behind the Drive to Reopen AmericaThe right has
mobilized a small army of true believers willing to die in the defense of a
less just world.
By JOE LOWNDES <https://newrepublic.com/authors/joe-lowndes>
April 30, 2020Add to Pocket
<https://getpocket.com/edit?url=https://newrepublic.com/article/157505/morbid-ideology-behind-drive-reopen-america>

Photos of the small “reopen America” protests, which have made the rounds
on social media over the past week, have revealed a spectacle as cartoonish
as it is macabre: a rogue’s gallery of right-wing groups coming together to
share in the spirit of defiance and, presumably, tiny droplets of mucus and
saliva. The protests (and their backing by deep-pocketed funders) invited
many comparisons to the Tea Party movement of a decade ago. Unlike that
movement, these small protests are likely to die out soon. Nevertheless,
they have captured something vitally important about how the right is
responding to this fraught moment in our recent history.
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As jobless claims have soared past an astonishing 26 million with no end in
sight, the Covid-19 pandemic may well push the United States into a
profound and long-lasting economic crisis. The countless indices of human
misery will put enormous pressure on political institutions that are
ill-equipped to respond adequately. The onset of this immiseration has
begun to propel bold ideas and movements from the left to demand a
reorganization of the economy and a fundamental shift in political power.
But the right is swiftly establishing its own morbid template for how to
interpret and respond to both the pandemic and its economic effects.

Republican politicians and right-wing pundits endlessly echo a central
claim: “The cure is worse than the disease.” In other words, you can either
risk dying from the virus or face certain economic ruin, as if there are no
other choices. Their hope is that people already conditioned by an ideology
centered on the marketplace, the individual, and the nation will be more
likely to believe that their lives and livelihoods are under greater threat
from state-ordered economic shutdowns and coercive social measures than
they are from the disease. For them, the idea that Covid-19 could
ultimately be overcome–even if at great human cost–by working and shopping
is more appealing, and even more imaginable, than a new politics of
mutuality that might redistribute power and resources in an egalitarian
way.

The Covid-19 pandemic amplifies political feelings around health care,
race, and class that have been growing on the right over the last decade.
Recall the Tea Party’s origins during the Great Recession. The movement
emerged and quickly grew in response to first the election of a black
president and then that president’s proposed health care plan, as
protesters mobbed town halls across the summer of 2009, loudly declaiming
against any form of socialized medical coverage. Those two animating
features of the movement—anti-black racism and opposition to the Affordable
Care Act—defined a movement that in essence chose investments in whiteness
over the assurance of at least some semblance of health care.

This was followed in the 2016 election by a Republican candidate who surged
among voters who had high levels of racial resentment, strong feelings of
political powerlessness, and growing economic anxiety (regardless of income
level). Donald Trump, who titled his campaign memoir Crippled America, reveled
in such terms as “disgust,” “weakness,” “losing,” and “pathetic” to
describe the country. He poked at the vulnerability of whites like a finger
in a wound all while demonizing Latinos, immigrants, Muslims, black
protesters, and foreign rivals. All of this set the stage for how the right
would come to respond to the current pandemic.

The rhetorical oppositions of work to welfare, self-reliance to dependence,
individual to state, citizen to foreigner—oppositions animated by race,
gender, and class—run deep in American political culture. All are reflected
in the politics of the pandemic right now, making for a grim political
vision of American freedom.
TNR Newsletters. Must reads. 5 days a week.
Sign Up Now <https://mailchi.mp/61665a30a33b/tnrdaily>

In a basic way, this vision of freedom is conveyed by the defiance of
guidelines to stop the spread of the virus. It isn’t just the protesters.
The dozen or so Republicans in the House of Representatives refusing to
wear masks
<https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/23/coronavirus-congress-feuding-205773>
when
called to vote on the latest coronavirus relief bill performed precisely
that kind of political theater for their constituents. It is meant as a
tough-guy taunt, to show their own robustness and the weakness of their
opponents. But it also reveals something more pathological. The risky
behavior demonstrates vitality precisely because it tempts fate, suggestive
of Freud’s death drive, which he described as a force “whose function is to
assure that the organism shall follow its own path to death.”

There is now a well-documented relationship between whiteness, status, and
morbidity. As Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have demonstrated
in their research
<https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190785/deaths-of-despair-and-the-future-of-capitalism>over
the last few years, there have been long-term increases in “deaths of
despair”—overdoses, suicides, alcohol-related fatalities—among middle-aged
whites without college degrees. There is much yet to be understood about
reasons for this phenomenon, but a sense of the declining status of
whiteness appears tightly connected to collective self-harm. It is
difficult not to think about this while watching mostly middle-aged white
protesters demand the right to sacrifice their lives instead of joining
others to demand greater protections for frontline workers, increased
payments to keep workers at home, rent and mortgage moratoria, debt
cancellation, federal money for states and municipalities, and more.

Demands to reopen states provide great cover for the Trump administration,
the Republican Party in Congress, red state governors, and the Federal
Reserve, who are working to keep current wealth stratifications in place
and protect the rich from economic harm—and doing so without much pushback
from Democrats. As conditions become more dire, the right will do all it
can to enlist the loyalty of middle- and working-class victims of the
crisis. Here, the logics of race and nation will become increasingly
important.

Many of the demonstrators at the recent protests, repeating Fox News
talking points, focused their ire on urban America, claiming that
communities in less densely populated states and regions were being made to
suffer for the problems of big cities. This kind of rhetoric maps easily
onto the growing political divides between rural and urban America—and
beneath it, the racial demonization of black and brown denizens of cities.
It is this sentiment that gives cover to Republican resistance to federal
spending when couched in language like Mitch McConnell’s opposition to
“blue state bailouts.”

Within the Trump administration, the nationalist tide continues to rise.
Two weeks ago, Attorney General William Barr told Laura Ingraham that he
had “felt for a long time—as much as people talk about global warming—that
the real threat to human beings is microbes and being able to control
disease, and that starts with controlling your border,” he said. “So, I
think people will be attuned to more protective measures.” Not long after,
the Trump administration moved from the threat of foreign microbes to the
threat of foreign workers by issuing an executive order suspending the
issuance of new green cards. Meanwhile, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos set
down policy guidelines to exempt undocumented students from Covid-19 relief
aid.

Defenders of the current political order will continue to do whatever is
necessary to protect wealth and privilege. They understand that to address
the enormity of the economic crisis would upend the neoliberal consensus of
this second Gilded Age, which has greatly enriched a few while
systematically dismantling public goods, disempowering workers, and
diminishing democratic rule. Their hope is that enough Americans go along
with this resistance, even if it kills them.

Joe Lowndes is a professor of political science at the University of
Oregon. His most recent book, with Daniel Martinez HoSang, is Producers,
Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity
<https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/producers-parasites-patriots>
(2019).
He blogs at JoeLowndes.org <https://www.joelowndes.org/>.
@joelow <https://twitter.com/joelowndes>

On Thursday, April 30, 2020, Jai Sen <jai.sen at cacim.net> wrote:

> Thursday, April 30, 2020
>
> *Viruses in movement…, The US in movement…*
>
> [This is history in the making….  Is there anywhere else in the world
> where this happening ?  Let us not turn our eyes and minds away from what
> is happening in the US, mind numbing though it is; let us also recognise
> that the corona virus is not the only virus around – but that its raw power
> has indeed in turn unleashed others… :
>
> *US : Armed protesters demand end to Michigan coronavirus lockdown*
>
> Dozens of protesters, some with rifles slung around their chests, enter
> the Capitol and demand to be heard
>
> al-Jazeera
>
> https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/armed-protesters-
> michigan-demand-coronavirus-lockdown-200430193810902.html
>
> 2-3 hours ago
> [image: A protester at the State Capitol in Lansing, Michigan on Thursday
> [Paul Sancya/AP Photo]]
>
> A protester at the State Capitol in Lansing, Michigan on Thursday [Paul
> Sancya/AP Photo]
>
> Hundreds of angry protesters, some carrying firearms, gathered at
> Michigan’s State Capitol in Lansing on Thursday to protest against Governor
> Gretchen Whitmer’s request to extend the state of emergency to combat the
> coronavirus pandemic.
>
> The protests came as state legislators debated a measure refusing the
> governor's request and voted to authorise a lawsuit challenging her
> authority and actions to combat the pandemic.
> More:
>
>    - US doctors go online to reveal 'bold, loud' coronavirus truths
>    <https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/doctors-online-reveal-bold-loud-coronavirus-truths-200401130420720.html?utm_source=website&utm_medium=article_page&utm_campaign=read_more_links>
>    - What and who is behind the US anti-lockdown protests?
>    <https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/anti-lockdown-protests-200420180415064.html?utm_source=website&utm_medium=article_page&utm_campaign=read_more_links>
>    - US medical workers stand up to anti-lockdown protesters
>    <https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/medical-workers-stand-anti-lockdown-protesters-200420145258308.html?utm_source=website&utm_medium=article_page&utm_campaign=read_more_links>
>
> At one point during the legislative deliberations, dozens of protesters -
> many without face coverings and some with rifles slung around their chests
> - entered the Capitol and demanded to be let into the House chamber, which
> was closed to the public to allow room for representatives and reporters to
> spread apart. The crowd shouted, "Let us in" while mask-wearing sergeants
> and state police blocked them.
>
> Demonstrators were allowed in the state Senate, which has fewer members
> and remained in session to also authorise legal action.
>
> Firearms have been legally allowed in the Michigan state Capitol building
> for some time.
>
> Directly above me, men with rifles yelling at us. Some of my colleagues
> who own bullet proof vests are wearing them. I have never appreciated our
> Sergeants-at-Arms more than today. #mileg
> <https://twitter.com/hashtag/mileg?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
> pic.twitter.com/voOZpPYWOs <https://t.co/voOZpPYWOs>
> — Senator Dayna Polehanki (@SenPolehanki) April 30, 2020
> <https://twitter.com/SenPolehanki/status/1255899318210314241?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
>
>
> The protest appeared to be the largest in the state since April 15, when
> supporters and allies of President Donald Trump organised thousands of
> people for "Operation Gridlock", jamming the streets of Lansing with their
> cars to call out what they said was the overreach of Whitmer’s strict
> stay-at-home order.
>
> It was one of the country’s first major anti-lockdown rallies and helped
> sparked a wave of similar events nationwide.
>
> The slow reopening of state economies around the country has taken on
> political overtones, as Republican politicians and individuals affiliated
> with Trump’s re-election promoted protests in electoral battleground states
> such as Michigan.
>
> "Governor Whitmer, and our state legislature, it’s over with. Open this
> state," Mike Detmer, a Republican candidate for US Congress told the crowd.
> "Let’s get businesses back open again. Let’s make sure there are jobs to go
> back to."
>
> At the MI Capitol pic.twitter.com/IuYoBhstIg <https://t.co/IuYoBhstIg>
> — Anna Liz Nichols (@annaliznichols) April 30, 2020
> <https://twitter.com/annaliznichols/status/1255899730888011777?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
>
> Other speakers at the "American Patriot Rally," which had different
> organisers to the mid-April protest, questioned the deadliness of COVID-19,
> the disease caused by the coronavirus. They also said Whitmer’s
> stay-at-home order violated constitutional rights, and urged people to open
> their businesses on May 1 in disregard of her order.
>
> Protesters, many from more rural parts of Michigan, have argued it has
> crippled the economy statewide even though the majority of deaths from the
> virus are centred on the southeastern Detroit metro area.
>
> Protest moves inside Michigan Capitol. Crowd attempts to get onto Hoise
> floor. Lots of Michigan State Police and House sergeants at arms blocking
> door. pic.twitter.com/4FNQpimP4W <https://t.co/4FNQpimP4W>
> — Rod Meloni (@RodMeloni) April 30, 2020
> <https://twitter.com/RodMeloni/status/1255901755474403328?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
>
> Whitmer's stay-at-home order, the strictest in the US, is in effect
> through May 15. House Republicans wanted changes, such as allowing elective
> medical and dental procedures again and certainty on the date she plans to
> reopen the economy on a regional basis. Meanwhile, the governor has allowed
> some businesses, such as lawn-care companies and greenhouses, to resume
> operating.
>
> Many states, including Georgia, Oklahoma, Alaska, South Carolina, and
> Ohio, have already moved to restart parts of their economies following
> weeks of mandatory lockdowns that have thrown nearly one in six American
> workers out of their jobs.
>
> SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies
>
> ____________________________
>
> Jai Sen
>
> Independent researcher, editor; Senior Fellow at the School of
> International Development and Globalisation Studies at the University of
> Ottawa
>
> jai.sen at cacim.net
>
>
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