Member-only story
Mutually Assured Salvation
Why we still need to help, even as the pandemic wanes
American life under the shadow of COVID has incontrovertibly proven two facts. First, conservative governance is hellbent on demonstrating its own uselessness. In the midst of a pandemic that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, the Trump administration was insistent on pretending it could do nothing. Republican ideology is a flat circle. Campaign on the notion that government cannot address any social ills, then prove the same in office through a combination of incompetence and ideological recklessness. If anyone thinks a second Trump administration, or a DeSantis administration or a Carlson administration or what-have-you, will be any different, I have some NFTs of a bridge I would like to sell you.
At first glance, there is a contradiction between the notion of mutual aid, which devolves the provision of assistance to those in need to individuals, and the ideals of classical liberalism, which view government itself as an expression of our collective needs. By supporting the former, are you not expressing a lack of faith in the possibilities of the latter?
This brings me to the second fact we’ve come to learn over the past year and a half: progressivism as a passive ideology is not enough. Showing up at the ballot box every four years, or even every two years, voting for Democrats…
