Depoliticization in the Response to COVID-19

 

As many readers are likely aware, the world is in the middle of a raging pandemic due to the spread of COVID-19. The pandemic continues to affect the social, economic, and political fabric of nearly every country on earth.  Crises by definition challenge the coherence and ordering of our economic and political structures, creating the potential for a void or vacuum in politics- as the needs of populations increase drastically, tension arises when economic and political structures are incapable of helping people meet those needs.  The phrase “every crisis is an opportunity” speaks to these conditions. 

Crises show us much about the ideological commitments of the people and organizations attempting to respond to them. During COVID, a number of economic and ideological commitments are shared by ruling elites- it is this unified vision I wish to explore.  Examining the unseen or unacknowledged assumptions is vital because ideology doesn’t represent a disruption or distortion of status quo affairs; it is instead a way that people organize and understand the world around them, including how they manage and interpret contradictory forces that compete in their lives. COVID 19 is a stark example of how these forces are at play and what the goals and priorities of politicians and other elites in power truly are.  Both political parties, because of their commitment to a neoliberal economic and social vision of society, are incapable of managing the pandemic in any meaningful sense.  Even the term “managing” can be somewhat vague, as it presupposes a specific conception of what “management” even means to ruling elites. 

There are certainly differing tactics that each party could or would offer if they had sole control over the situation, and those would have effects at the margins, but neither party can provide a way to navigate the central contradiction contained in the COVID crisis: there is no way to manage the pandemic and keep the markets and supply chains of capital free-flowing. This points us toward a deeper (in in a sense more important) form of depoliticization- to present COVID 19 as a unique crisis and disruption of our socio-economic system, and not an indication of its structural limitations. 

That is not to deny that the pandemic has caused an acute increase in unnecessary suffering and death- an untenable position.  But the machinations that allow the pandemic to emerge and spread, and the US response to utterly fail are all the culmination of a set of inter-locked crises in capitalism.  First is an ecological crisis that aided in the emergence of COVID, in which overconsumption and environmental degradation destroys species and habitat at an alarming rate, exposing human populations to new diseases.  Second is an economic crisis propelling the spread of COVID, generated by a capitalist economy entirely dependent on the hyper exploitation of labor afforded by global commodity chains.  Third is the inability of the US government to respond to the pandemic, a result of the ruling class’s complete dependence on the limitless growth of consumerism to maintain their grip on power.

The government’s feckless response is the result of 40 years of bipartisan disdain for government intervention in markets and pandering to a corporatist form of societal organization. Almost every character in this tragedy has a behavior and way of thinking rooted in neoliberalism: individuals who refuse to wear masks are a product of this expansion of personal economic freedom as the primary principle organizing public and private life; the organizations that failed to mount an effective response due to decades of austerity measures and shrinking budgets in the non-profit sector; the health care system that couldn’t protect vulnerable patents such as the elderly and minorities because of its profit and market-oriented organization; the political culture that allowed it all, with both parties wavering early about the necessity of masks, social distancing, and large gatherings.

Depoliticization plays a crucial ideological role in portraying the pandemic as a distinct, abnormal crisis.  The refusal to tie the current pandemic to the core structures of our sociopolitical system is an intentional move to prevent any mobilization of political energy toward reshaping those structures. That energy would be Political because it would require a change in the way power and resources are distributed in society.

These changes play on what are antagonistic relationships.  One need look no further than the groups that would be most affected: the military industrial complex, fossil fuel companies, and health care.  These are all industries whose material interests rely on the ever-expanding growth of the US economy and the commodification of energy, security, and health care as scarce resources that generate profits.  Fossil fuel companies make money by selling carbon.  Health insurance companies make money by denying people health care access.  The military industrial complex makes money by encouraging increased use of weapons systems on foreign (bombs) and domestic (military gear sold to police forces) populations. 

There are literally trillions of dollars at stake for these industries, so it is no surprise that ruling elites have a vested interest in holding onto the power of these corporate donors. Depoliticization is a way to acknowledge that the structures of society have failed most people while articulating the cause as lying outside those very structures.  In a sense, every invocation of the problems of COVID 19 as exceptional is done in an effort to normalize the socioeconomic makeup of society.  Even the acknowledgement of failure is limited insofar as it’s seen as a consequence of an unmanageable and unpredictable event that political institutions have no agency in influencing or creating.  It is a continuation of the cynicism that lies within all efforts to depoliticize: the fundamental belief that thinks are unchangeable and we have to manage as best we can within the hellscape of neoliberalism.

Neither major political party in the US is suggesting the use of a widespread shut down to get the virus numbers down.  Trump and Biden have both been clear that it is a necessary objective to keep the economy running.  “Staying open” is even presented as a public health issue in itself:  if the economy shuts down, more people will suffer.  The relationship between suffering and economic downturn  is undeniably true, as people would lose employment, health care, and the money needed to access basic necessities.  It is also only true if we take as a given that all economic distribution should be handled by the private sector. This framing naturalizes the use of markets to organize society- it is taken as a given that the government providing for people while they stay home is an unreasonable or impossible ask.  Even Biden’s proposed response does not entertain this as a possibility.  It instead focuses on vapid responses like “more information” and “following science.”

“Following science” has become a mantra of the democratic party, especially over the last four years.  These tropes are always ideological in that they are presented as somehow above politics and instead a matter of objective fact or common sense.  In reality, scientists have said since the beginning that there can be no effective response to the pandemic while maintaining a fully open economy.  It was the rationale for the state shutdowns of Spring 2020, and none of the evidence backing it has fundamentally changed.  Even one of Biden’s advisors publicly said that a nationwide shutdown would be an effective way to curb the virus. The advisor had to walk back his own statements, assuring the public he wasn’t making any recommendations to Biden.

Science is merely a description of what methodologies are used to to reach conclusions in research.  It says nothing about how we decide what scientists to trust, how to implement their suggestions, and whether the possibilities analyzed by science are arbitrarily constrained by sociopolitical factors.  It is inherently Political, but used as a signifier to stifle any questioning or dissent.  It’s also become a tool of manipulation by politicians to associate science with liberals who endorse Truth and constrasts with conservatives who ‘ignore the science.’  The anecdote above about Biden's advisor reveals how even this area is rarely black-and-white.

Biden’s hesitation to endorse a shutdown or nationwide mask mandate is rooted in traditional politics in two ways.  First, the calculation that he cannot maintain support from the public or from politicians if he proposes a shutdown and mask mandate.  Second, the entire political apparatus of his party requires the support of corporations and the free-flowing cash of the professional managerial class those corporations employ.  As a result, there has been no consensus from the political parties beyond the standard infusion of trillions of dollars of cash as “liquidity” for corporations to access free money.  The stock market is assumed to be the epicenter of US economic health, and treated as such.  In the process, the inability of the country to organize and distribute its economic resources outside of the market economy is rendered natural, inevitable, and eternal.

The electoral political instincts of Biden are correct- exitpolls show that a large division in Biden v Trump voters was about whether one thought COVID or the economy was the most pressing concern in America.  Those who believed it was COVID voted for Biden.  Those who believed the economy was most important voted for Trump. The material interests of politicians require them to view these issues as technocratic management issues, and not questions of how power and resources are accessed and distributed throughout society.

Both parties also depoliticize the issue of health care.  The United States is the richest country in the history of Earth, but does not provide health care as a right to its citizens.  Instead, health care in the United States is tied to employment.  The situation is propelled through these material economic interests, as it is about maintaining the power of employers over labor and maintaining the multi-trillion-dollar health care industry, but it also speaks to the social conditioning of neoliberal ideology, and the role it plays in shaping our conception of self and community.  A key part of neoliberal ideology is transitioning responsibility from the community to the individual.  It is part of the deflection played by depoliticization, as no problem can be articulated as structural.  Instead, failures are products of individual behaviors and individual bad actors.

Trump’s vision is a brazen and overt endorsement of market ideology in health care.  He recognizes that millions lost their health care because it was tied to employment, but also believes the only viable solution is to keep the economy open so that the unemployed have opportunities to re-enter the labor market. 

Biden’s plan is a less overt flavor of the same ideology.  The common sense for Biden is that yes, we must keep the economy open and return people to the market as quickly as possible, but in the interim they should be provided with someminimal, means-tested care:

Millions of American have lost health insurance during the pandemic. Biden's coronavirus plan proposes to have the federal government cover 100% of the costs of COBRA coverage for the duration of the crisis. "So when people lose their employer-based health insurance, they can stay on that insurance, given the moment we are in," Stef Feldman, Biden's national policy director, told NPR.

How does this plan reinforce the ideological neoliberalism that shapes our health care system?  A central phrase here is: “…they can stay on that insurance, given the moment we are in.”  It potrays the crisis as an exceptional moment, somehow unrelated to any deeper structural problem.  The assumption is that people should have their health care paid for by government because it’s not their fault “in this moment.”  Since the pandemic face-crushed the US economy, millions lost their job through no fault of their own.  This perspective can only be rendered coherent if one believes that in normal economic times, people deserve to lose their healthcare. 

It’s an intersection of the economic and social viewpoint of neoliberalism, where the decision of the government to intervene or not is based on what level of “responsibility” is placed on the individuals.  Not only are markets the best way to organize our economy, social problems are not social at all!  They are matters of individual failings.  But what about people who get sick from cancer, diabetes, heart conditions, etc?  These individuals only deserve health care if they are responsible enough to maintain steady employment that provides health coverage. 

This plan also justifies government funded health care only through the lens of exception- reinforcing the belief that employer-based, market-organized health care is natural, inevitable, and preferable.  Government funded health care is contradictorily positioned as both a vital service needed by the people AND a commodity sold on the market and tied to employment.  The crisis thus serves the purpose of showing a façade of deep concern that masks an undying commitment to business-as-usual.

The assumption that the government should default to non-intervention because the problems people face are matters of their individual responsibility also lies at the heart of the failure of the US to contain the pandemic.  Through its economic rationality, neoliberal ideology grossly limits the types of financial and monetary responses available to government.  There is simply no world where a major political party would call for the non-essential parts of the economy to shut down while government provides resources directly to the people. Under neoliberalism, every part of the economy is considered essential!  In addition to this failed economic response is a failed social response, seen in opposition to mask wearing and mask mandates. All of these issues emerge within a history of government austerity putting downward pressure on budgets for vital community support services.

Political actors, including Donald Trump, exacerbated this issue by explicitly playing politics around mask usage. Their behavior is inexcusable and undermined the public's trust in government and the scientific community, but stoking a fire only works if the coals underneath still burn hot. Here is where the social components of neoliberalism’s obsession with personal responsibility come into play. The normalization of personal choice as the central vector of politics ensures that individuals’ self-identity is inextricably linked to their ability to exercise this choice.  Mask mandates run counter to the belief in choice, and are thus inevitably opposed by segments of the population.

The backdrop for this understanding of freedom are the larger economic assumptions about personal responsibility and health care, markets, and employment. Ruling elites and both political parties have relentlessly promoted the expansion and centering of markets to organize social life at the expense of the state. At the same time, the government absolves itself of responsibility for the crisis- it’s an exceptional moment that has nothing to do with socio-economics! - while putting the responsibility for ending it on individual citizens. No surprise that the result is a loss of trust and increase of resentment in government.

Even liberal leaders refuse to endorse a nationwide mask mandate, instead characterizing it as a decision that should be made at the local or state level. The science justifying and legitimizing mask mandates does not vary state-to-state, showing that even liberal democrats run up to hard limits in how much they are willing to “listen to the scientists.”  These tropes of “community and state control” over decisions are reliably deployed any time national leaders do not want to lead the way or take responsibility for change.  It’s hard to believe the urgency coming from both the scientific community and political leaders if the result is their unwillingness to invest political power in requiring the science to be followed. 

With vaccines on the horizon, the most acute distresses of the COVID-19 pandemic should soon subside.  The economic, social, and political fractures it has exposed will remain.  The political response to the crisis has been a frantic and committed attempt to disconnect any understanding of COVID-19 as connected to our socio-political structures and instead portray it as an exceptional and unpredictable event.  This framing of the pandemic serves an ideological function in that it depoliticizes the antagonisms that helped generate this crisis:  the defense, fossil fuel, and health care industries.  It naturalizes the market structure that arbitrarily distributes health care access to the exclusion of millions and ties it to employment, it rests on the assumption that health and economic outcomes are meritocratic measurements of personal responsibility and achievement, and it fosters a conception of self and community that centers individual freedom and personal responsibility as the only viable filter to understand the problems, causes, and solutions needed to change our economic makeup.  The result of these intertwining ideological framings is that the structural violence of poverty and inequality in environmental, income, and health access is normalized as the acceptable backdrop.

None of the proposed solutions of the leaders in both parties will stop the spread of the pandemic.  The science now is just as clear as it was in March:  requiring non-essential workers to stay home and all individuals to wear masks in spaces outside of the home is the only viable solution.  Unfortunately, in our neoliberal economy this is simply not possible unless the government is willing to provide the economic and material resources people need to survive. That would be the most unacceptable outcome, because it would show people a path forward, with nothing to prevent them from making the same demands of government in “normal times.”  Depoliticization is the only hope for survival of ruling elites, and it will continue to be the central purpose of their rhetoric in conceptualizing and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.