Hispanic Fanatic

Over the past few months, I’ve learned a number of interesting things from conservative media.

For example, I’ve learned that Covid-19 is no worse than the flu — wait, check that — it is no worse than a really bad cold. So we should all stop cowering in fear, jam ourselves into a crowded bar (without a face mask of course), and inhale a big old lungful of freedom. It’s all a hoax!

Also, I’ve learned that coronavirus is a highly lethal weapon that was created in a lab, then unleashed on America as an insidious plot to kill millions and destroy the country. 

Now, you might think that those beliefs are completely contradictory. 

But that’s just what they want you to think.

Yes, these are the golden days for people who love a good conspiracy theory. Or for people who have a soft spot for full-on lunacy. Or for sociopaths who want to undermine society and turn us all into babbling, paranoid freaks. For any of these people, these are the good times.

For the rest of us, these days suck.

You see, it’s bad enough that we are all preoccupied with the thought of ending up unemployed and hooked into a ventilator. The real world is sufficiently horrifying, thank you.

But no, we have C-level celebrities and right-wing demagogues overruling medical professionals because doctors are, you know, in on it. 

Meanwhile, across all social media, we hear shouts to “stop being a sheep and think for yourself,” a phrase usually screeched by people who have formed their entire worldview based on one YouTube video from a disgraced scientist and forwarded emails from acquaintances who barely graduated high school.

And of course, there is Q, an amalgamation of madness so twisted that it is difficult to believe that its adherents are not enacting some bizarro performance-art piece.

As we know, people who worship Q are proud of seeking the truth, which is odd in that they believe literally anything that an unknown person with unknown motivations and unknown credibility says on the internet. If this Q individual — who again they know absolutely nothing about and has not called a single thing correctly — told them that ducks were secretly cows, they would believe it.

This is what thinking for yourself looks like.

Keep in mind that there is no liberal equivalent to the Q movement. It is yet another odd manifestation of the right-wing mindset that conspiracies are more prevalent among conservatives (along with their tendencies to be more fearful and to possess absolutely no sense of humor).

In any case, Q fans and Plandemic believers and 5G truthers and others of their tribe all insist that their beliefs are true because they cannot be disproven.

Indeed, can you definitely prove that lizard people are not running the post office? I didn’t think so.

However, what these lovers of speculation and heresy forget is that “there are no good conspiracy theories, because they are attractive precisely because they’re unproven, imprecise and non-falsifiable.”

Science, in contrast, rests on the assumption that theories can be verified, or replicated, or dismissed based on the evidence. 

But that’s damn dull in a world that thrives on “confusion to create a sense of comfort and control when it’s in short supply,” such as when a killer virus arrives, apparently out of nowhere, to decimate society.

Instead of acknowledging that viral pandemics are part of the natural course of civilization (which they are), many Americans declare that it’s all the fault of Bill Gates, so if we can somehow stop him, everything will return to normal.

So then we enter a vicious loop where “you can’t productively question someone’s superstition, because they never really thought it was an actual explanation of how the world is.”

In this way, conspiracy theories aren’t theories at all. They aren’t hypothesis about how the world works. 

They are desperate, illogical, and pathetic attempts to gain control of an uncontrollable narrative.

The result is that we now have millions of Americans who believe the government has engineered a fake crisis in order to… what exactly? Keep us at home for a few months? Exert power over our lives (and then inexplicably relinquish that power over several weeks)? Or groom us for nefarious ends that are conveniently never identified?

No, I’m pretty sure that the number of people who are petrified of being microchipped far exceeds the number of people who actively want to microchip them. I mean, nobody gives a fuck about tracking your every movement, because your every movement is boring.

But in the spirit of reaching out to my conspiratorial brothers and sisters, I propose a friendly wager. Let’s assume that coronavirus is indeed a manmade plot. Now please note that Covid-19 is the worst pandemic in a century, has killed hundreds of thousands of people, and pulverized almost every country on Earth. That can’t be easy to pull off, so this shit is not a test. This is the final gambit of the Bavarian Illuminati or the New World Order or the UN black helicopter dudes — whoever you like. 

That means it’s time to put up or shut up. Five years from now, if people are no longer dying by the thousands, a malicious government has not imprisoned you, and you have not been microchipped, will you lunatics shut the fuck up permanently? Will you admit that you were wrong, and your nonsense did nothing but terrify people and poison the nation? Will you see that Covid-19 was not a means to a totalitarian end, but a horrific plague made worse by governmental incompetence?

Or will you just make up some new insanity about the ceaseless quest to destroy your freedom, even though that war never seems to actually get waged?

How will you possibly justify the next conspiracy?

A majority of Americans now say they would sooner trust a one-eyed, rabid hyena to lead our country than Trump.

OK, they didn’t actually say that. But they might as well have, because the fact is that most Americans disapprove of our bleach-guzzling chief executive’s response to Covid-19, and the percentage who recognize the president’s bumbling ineptitude is steadily rising.

Foremost among the president’s critics are Latinos, which is only fair, considering that he is highly critical of our very right to exist. You see, we have a new reason to dislike the Trump Administration — yes, an additional reason for our continued antipathy to the most powerful racist in modern American history.

It turns out that Hispanics are “disproportionately dying” because of the coronavirus.

For example, in New York, Latinos make up 29% of the population but are 39% of those who have died. In San Francisco, Hispanics make up 16% of the population but constitute 80% of those hospitalized for Covid-19. Or look at Austin, Texas, which is 34% Hispanic, but where Latinos make up 53% of all Covid-19 patients. And then there is the whole state of Illinois, where “Latinos are testing positive to coronavirus at higher rates than any other demographic group.”

Across the country, “a combination of factors — including working in low-paying front-line jobs and a lack of savings and health insurance,” plus systemic racism and institutionalized poverty, means that “Latinos are shouldering a disproportionate burden of the pandemic.”

But wait, it gets even grimmer. On the economic front, the country’s “widening income inequality gap has led to many minority groups paying a higher price” during this pandemic. About 40% of Latinos, compared to 27% of all Americans, have taken a pay cut, and 29% have lost their jobs, as opposed to 20% of the overall population. 

The Hispanic Consumer Sentiment Index (a real thing) is way down, and many Latinos don’t have enough money to send remittances to Latin America, which affects “the well-being of families and cripples the economies of developing countries.”

Also, Latinos often have worse health insurance and tend to have less money saved. Here is where I will mention that “for every $1 of liquid assets of a white family, the median Hispanic family has 47 cents.”

As one final insult, keep in mind that if Latinos dare to go out for a walk, we are more likely to get ticketed for violating social distancing orders, even while white Americans “in privileged neighborhoods flout mask-wearing and distance rules.”

In essence, this crisis has increased the odds that we will die early, fall into poverty, or get cuffed by the cops, all of which is ironic considering that Latinos are more likely to be deemed “essential workers” and are a huge reason that this country hasn’t totally collapsed.

So yeah, it’s a bit irksome.

Now, you might ask what our president is doing to alleviate this grossly imbalanced suffering. Well, considering that he himself is grossly imbalanced, the answer is clear: A whole lotta nothing.

For example, although 86% of Latino small-business owners “reported significant negative impact on their businesses by the pandemic,” a survey of Latino small-business owners who applied for coronavirus relief loans found that fewer than 20% of them received money.

The government’s mislabeled, mishandled Paycheck Protection Program money “went to Wall Street billionaires” and banks, with the result that “Lupita’s taqueria or Juana’s quinceañera shop didn’t get money while Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and major hotel chains are getting millions of dollars.”

Sounds about right.

Now, it seems odd that this depressing cavalcade of information is not influencing the Trump Administration’s response to the pandemic. After all, the president is charged with ensuring the safety of our country’s residents. There is really nothing in the job description more important than that.

But of course, you just forgot that the Trump Administration is nothing more than thugs, cronies, morons, zealots, con men, hypocrites, xenophobes, and straight-up lunatics.

And that’s on their best day.

No, the orange man with the tiny fingers and the big temper will not save us. Nor will his lickspittle flunkies in Congress come to the rescue. Keep in mind that “because the disease is disproportionately killing black and brown people in cities, Republican powerbrokers simply don’t care about it as much as they would if it were disproportionately killing their supporters.”

So conservatives will not plug in until the virus hits the heartland. By the way, this is already happening.

But even then, Latinos will not be considered “the regular folks,” or have their sacrifices acknowledged or their pain relieved.

As long as this administration is in power, it simply will not happen.

Your life is worth $10 million.

Reading that statement, you may have one of the following reactions:

Wow, I am seriously undervalued.

Does that include the black-market price of both kidneys?

Is that how much the hitman wants?

Just give me five minutes to develop a scam involving life insurance.

What the hell are you talking about?

I will now address the last of those statements.

What I am talking about is the fact that “when evaluating the impact of government policies that affect public health, analysts place a statistical value of about $10 million on each human life as a way of measuring the appropriate amount of risk a policy may cause or mitigate.”

That’s right — when it comes to implementing new policies or jettisoning old procedures, we crunch the numbers and assign a cash value to each life.

Makes you feel valuable, doesn’t it? 

Keep in mind, however, that our old assumptions about the value of human life are changing in this hellish new era. Local governments are fretting about economic damage and the possibility of armed lunatics storming their capitals, and they are responding by ending lockdowns even though “in every instance, looser restrictions improve the performance of the economy but also lead to more deaths.”

This means that the value of a life varies from state to state. For example, one analysis found that “relaxing business closures and stay-at-home rules could cost 13,000 lives in Texas and 12,000 lives in Georgia by September 1, [but] it will also preserve $3.4 billion in statewide income in Texas, and $1.7 billion in Georgia.”

Extrapolating those numbers to “determine the income gained per death when comparing moderate and strict measures” means that your life in Texas is worth $254,000. But your life in Georgia is worth just $247,000.

Talk about a loss in value.

The study estimates 116,000 American deaths by the end of June “if tough restrictions remain in place —but 353,000 deaths if those restrictions are partially lifted.” The researchers add that “if fully lifted, with no further restrictions, deaths would spike to 895,000,” before helpfully adding that “that would save jobs, though.”

Now, when we refer to hundreds of thousands of dead Americans, we most certainly are not talking about you. We are talking about someone else — anyone else — and never you or someone you know. It’s always someone else, probably someone poor with darker skin.

Indeed, most of the people who advocate for reopening the economy don’t seriously believe that they or their loved ones will be infected. Oh, they might say they’re willing to die for the economy, but come on. Who would want their epitaph to be, “He heroically died for a microscopic uptick in GDP”?

On some level, perhaps even subconsciously, most of these people believe that they are magically immune to the virus, or that it won’t kill them because they pray to the correct god, or because they are tough Americans, or because they can buy their way to safety (ok, that last one might be true).

In any case, it’s always a numbers game. For example, consider this hypothetical scenario:

“There is contagious disease that will kill 99 Americans if we do not shut down the country.”

It is doubtful, of course, that we would go into full lockdown if fewer than a hundred people were at risk of dying.

But let’s change a key detail:

“There is contagious disease that will kill 99 million Americans if we do not shut down the country.”

I’m pretty sure most of us would say, “Bolt the doors now,” if one-third of Americans could potentially be killed. Hey, even most of the gun-toting, freedom-lovin’ protesters would suddenly abandon their “principled” arguments if they and their families were in an epicenter.

So that’s the problem. Somewhere between 99 and 99 million is our problem.

There are those who argue, of course, that we should never take economic concerns into consideration when we talk about human life.

But we do this all the time, usually in a subtle, easily acceptable manner. We give cash awards in civil trials for wrongful deaths. We value interstate commerce so much that we built a freeway system that kills thousands of Americans each year. And then there is that aforementioned $10 million number (or $247,000 in Georgia).

Yes, we routinely roll the dice with death.

Of course, it’s a lot more fun to gauge the odds of non-lethal matters. For example, the odds of Joe Biden being elected president are pretty good, as of this writing. But they should be even better, considering that he is running against the only president in history to be both impeached and run the country into an economic meltdown. Plus, this president thinks swallowing bleach is a good idea.

Seriously, how is this even close?

But ultimately, we return to the question of our very existence. What are our odds of making it out of this Covid-19 mess alive?

Well, perhaps we can listen to our old friend Chris Hedges, widely regarded as a brilliant writer, insightful thinker, and possibly the most pessimistic man alive.

Hedges recently discussed our terrifying new era, and he encapsulated his thoughts with the following sentence:

“These days are the good times, as compared to what is coming next.”

Well, I feel better now. Don’t you?

If there is one thing that a corrupt president, a neo-fascist political party, and several thousand gun-toting protesters know, it’s that the simple act of saying you can now get a haircut will cause our economy to rebound so quickly that every citizen will get prosperity whiplash. Just like that — no more Great Depression 2!

Oh, and also, the virus has been defeated, and only a few disposable people will die from this point on, so don’t concern yourself with them.

Yes, the same individuals who told you that we would be welcome as liberators, that the glaciers aren’t melting, and that job creators will trickle down their cash are now insisting that opening up restaurants will cure our financial ills — even though a lot of economists agree that many Americans remain too terrified to mingle in crowds, which would thwart any economic improvement, and every serious epidemiologist has said that opening up now only ensures more death and misery from Covid-19.

But who are you going to believe? Esteemed scientists from top institutions with access to the latest data and sophisticated predictive models? Or a guy who says gurgling bleach is good for you? 

I think the answer is obvious.

Now, to be fair, there are coherent arguments for considering a slow, phased-in reopening for some parts of the country. And one can even disagree — to a point — about the lethality of Covid-19, the effectiveness of face masks, and the constitutionality of lockdown orders.

But we’re not hearing the reasonable arguments that conservatives could have made. Instead we are hearing from ferocious right-wingers who insist that 70,000 deaths is no big deal, that social distancing is a myth, and that patriotic behavior consists of screaming obscenities into a cop’s face from one inch away (guess that whole Blue Lives Matter movement is done).

Soon, we will hear Fox News shriek that washing your hands is un-American. After that, it’s just a matter of time before a gang of bellicose conservatives burst into a New York City ICU ward and lick all the ventilators (just to own the libs).

In essence, we can’t have a rational discussion of how to reopen the nation if one side says, “Let’s look at the science,” and the other side says, “It’s all lies! Sacrifice the weak!”

Furthermore, there will be no limit to the madness, no turning point where hardcore Trump supporters will abruptly say, “Enough.”

Yes, imagine the following worst-case scenario: 

Over 2 million Americans die. Unemployment hits record levels. Chaos engulfs the nation. 

Even with all that, 40% of Americans would still vote for Trump and insist that liberals are out to destroy America.

To understand this, keep in mind that just as the virus took years to evolve and mutate in order to spark a pandemic, the GOP took decades to arrive at this moment, when Republicans openly dismiss “scientific merit and expert recommendations and instead award lucrative contracts based on political connections and cronyism.”

You see, the Republican Party has, “dating back to Ronald Reagan, attacked the very ideas of the common good and mutual obligation, equating the idea of success with violent, personal sacrifice.”

For the modern GOP, the noblest thing you can do is die for a corporation, and the most evil concept in the world is the idea of societal benefit.

As a result, there is no conspiracy too insane, no rationalization too idiotic, no pivot too jarring, and no excuse too pathetic that will prevent hardcore conservatives from shouting that progressives are scheming to steal our freedom.

So where does that leave us?

Exactly here, in this nation where millions of citizens honestly believe that doctors and nurses who risk their lives working to save Americans are, in actuality, opportunistic villains or brainwashed stooges.

Personally, I look forward to watching Fox News in October, when their commentators will insist that the reports of our societal collapse are exaggerated. They will tell us to pay no attention to the rampaging hordes outside our bedroom windows, and they will opine that liberals won’t tell you that Lord Humungus is actually a really great guy.

And much of America will believe them.