The temporary imposition of popular relief programs in response to the coronavirus makes Republicans nervous. --- In one short month, the United States has made a significant leap toward a kind of emergency social democracy, in recognition of the fact that no individual or community could possibly be prepared for the devastation wrought by the pandemic. Should the health and economic crisis extend through the year, there’s a strong chance that Americans will move even further down that road, as businesses shutter, unemployment continues to mount and the federal government is the only entity that can keep the entire economy afloat. But this logic — that ordinary people need security in the face of social and economic volatility — is as true in normal times as it is under crisis. If something like a social democratic state is feasible under these conditions, then it is absolutely possible when growth is high and unemployment is low. And in the wake of two political campaigns — Bernie Sanders’s and Elizabeth Warren’s — that pushed progressive ideas into the mainstream of American politics, voters might begin to see this essential truth. If the electoral danger for the Republican Party is that voters will blame the president for high unemployment and mass death — a reasonable fear, given how Trump loudly denied the threat in the face of warnings from inside and outside his administration — then the ideological danger is that it undermines the ideological project that captured the state with President Ronald Reagan and is on the path to victory under Donald Trump. […] After years of single-minded devotion, the conservative movement is achingly close to dismantling the New Deal political order and turning the clock back to when capital could act without limits or restraints.

Mitigation can buy us time, but only suppression can get us to where we need to be. --- All of the difficult actions we are taking now to flatten the curve aren’t just intended to slow the rate of infection to levels the health-care system can manage. They’re also meant to buy us time. They give us the space to create what we need to make a real difference. […] Some Americans are in denial, and others are feeling despair. Both sentiments are understandable. We all have a choice to make. We can look at the coming fire and let it burn. We can hunker down, and hope to wait it out—or we can work together to get through it with as little damage as possible. This country has faced massive threats before and risen to the challenge; we can do it again. We just need to decide to make it happen. […] All of the difficult actions we are taking now to flatten the curve aren’t just intended to slow the rate of infection to levels the health-care system can manage. They’re also meant to buy us time. They give us the space to create what we need to make a real difference.

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.

We live in an interwoven, interconnected world where an injury to one is truly an injury to all. We must confront the coronavirus with solidarity and fight for a society where the health of all is more important than profits for a few. --- The scramble reveals a class system in which a mark of relative status is the power to withdraw. If you have wealth or a salary from an institution that values you, and enough space at home, you might be able to pull off the essentially absurd trick of isolating yourself for a few months by drawing down the global web of commodities on display at Costco and Trader Joe’s. But for the 50 percent of the country that has no savings and lives paycheck to paycheck, or in small apartments with little food storage, or has to hustle every day to find work, this is simply impossible. People will be out every day, on the subways, at the gas stations, choosing between epidemiological prudence and economic survival, because they have no choice but to make that choice. […] “Wash your hands” is good advice but also a poignant reminder that this is not the sort of problem that personal responsibility can solve. Epidemiology is a political problem. It’s not hard to sketch the steps that would ease our cruel situation: a work stoppage, massive income support (unemployment payments with some universal basic income in the mix), a moratorium on mortgage foreclosures and evictions. Treatment for coronavirus and potentially related symptoms should be free and comprehensive, no questions asked (about immigration status, for instance), so that no one goes untreated because of fear or poverty. This is all, in the most straightforward sense, good for everyone. It is also how people look out for one another’s vulnerability and need when they see one another’s problems as their own. […] It takes a vast and intricate infrastructure to keep us all running in one another’s service, and in the ultimate service of return to capital: from highways to credit markets to the global trade regime. The fact that these interwoven systems are tanking financial markets around the world at the prospect that people might need to spend a few months sitting at home rather than hurrying around exchanging money shows how finely calibrated they are to profit, and how totally lacking in resilience to shifts in human need.

Donald Trump is running for reelection on an anti-socialist message. But the COVID-19 outbreak demonstrates the emptiness of ideological labels.