Why helping people victimized by forces outside their control is a good idea. --- The only villain is an impersonal natural force; everyone with a face is a victim, an Us to be tended. In the face of a virus, only the conventionally feminine approach of mutual care is useful. That leaves the lens through which the authoritarian sees the world (domination and submission) blind, and the tools available to him (scapegoating, exclusion, retribution, violence) impotent. There is no one to punish, no one to make suffer. Without that, the authoritarian is scarcely able to process the threat as a threat at all. A threat without an Other is like a wavelength of light that is invisible to him. […] Trump, his administration, and his coalition are in politics to help friends and destroy enemies. All they know is zero-sum competition, domination, and submission — and with no one to dominate, no one upon whom they can impose ritual cruelty to appease the bloodlust of their base, they are ... adrift. They simply aren’t confident, or competent, in expressing, organizing, and administering care. Many thousands of lives will likely be lost as a result. […] All across America, millions of people live in precarity, one step ahead of financial ruin, with lives that can be upended overnight by a health or employment twist entirely outside of their control. Metaphorically speaking, this country is full of viruses — poverty, poor health care, inequality, systemic discrimination, loneliness, and isolation — that infect innocent victims every day by the thousands. Those victims deserve care as well, and not churlish, moralistic, “means-tested” care. Just care, enough to get by and to live a life of dignity.