The Koch shadow
The “protests” are being orchestrated.
Conservative activists are demanding governors lift orders designed to stop the spread of the coronavirus, despite the recommendations of public health officials. Trump, who has clashed with Democratic governors over how soon to reopen the US economy, tweeted his support on Friday, in an unprecedented endorsement of civil disobedience by a sitting president.
Civil disobedience and violence. Unprecedented indeed.
Yet while organisers claim the protests are grassroots- and people-driven, a closer look reveals a movement driven by traditional rightwing groups, including one funded by the family of Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos.
The rallies have drawn comparisons to the Tea Party movement, which sprang into life in 2009 following the election of Barack Obama and was driven in part by Americans for Prosperity, a group founded by rightwing donors Charles and David Koch.
Wouldn’t you think we’re already right-wing enough for them? Wouldn’t you think they already get a big enough portion of the national wealth without needing even more? Wouldn’t you, even, think they would prefer to live in a country of people who don’t live in terror of a medical bill that puts them on the street?
Fox News ran favorable coverage of the Michigan rally and hosts including Laura Ingraham and Jeanine Pirro endorsed the protest.
“Fox gave the Tea Party a phenomenal amount of attention and promotion,” Gertz said. “It really sort of boot-strapped it to another level, and made it a political force, and we see something similar happening with these anti-stay-at-home order movements.”
Because…yay pandemic? I guess? Right-wingers are big fans of mass die-offs?
Hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets to protest Donald Trump.
Media: “Do these protests really accomplish anything? Don’t they risk antagonizing Trump voters? We went to a diner in the Midwest and asked some…..”
Dozens of idiots show up because Koch-sponsored groups backed them.
Media: “Grassroots protests are arising, raising the question of how long the Democratic governors of these states can maintain these policies!”
Yeah, but Soros is paying people to stay at home…or something.
You’d think that the number of things for which George Soros has allegedly paid would have bankrupted him many times over by now.
I don’t imagine that any of these flag-waving, freedom-loving, “Don’t tread on me” people who are so eagerly protesting stay at home orders can see that they’re being manipulated by wealthy reactionaries who wouldn’t dare join them on the streets or in their pick-up trucks. This time these behind the scenes instigators are not gambling agaimst the slow-motion forces of atmospheric and oceanic physics that they are pushing back with their climate change denial, but the almost instantaneous processes of a virulent virus. Unlike the supposedly far-off results of global warming, their greedy, short-sighted stupidity is going to bear fruit in days and weeks. Unless they intend to die themselves within that time span, they are going to be around when their bets go bad.
Many of the people out on the streets are soon going to be in desperate need of those very tests and ventilators which will their “president” has been criminally mismanaging. They are going to be endangering the lives of health care workers who will be asked to risk and sacrifice more because of their ill-conceived and foolish exercise in self-destructive political theatre.
All parties in this story are like those children in the study of deferred gratification who were unable to wait a short time to recieve two marshmallows, but instead demanded a single marshmallow immediately. The stakes these bold warriors for freedom are playing for are more than just marshmallows, but their lives and, they forget, the lives of all those with whom they come into contact. What are the chances that they have supported Republicans who have voted against or dismantled the sorts of universal medicare and social safety net programs that would support an effective shelter in place strategy? How have they been duped, once again, into acting against their own self interest? Their actions will not end, but actually extend the need for the lockdown. Their actions will speed up and widen the spread of the virus and raise its death toll. The resultant economic impact will be worse than if they’d just stayed at home and waited a little longer for their haicuts.