The Casual Blog

Great blue herons at Jordan Lake

I went out to Jordan Lake a couple of mornings last week, including on Wednesday, which was the fiftieth anniversary of the first Earth Day.  I managed to get my photography gear down the loose rocks to the river side, set up the tripod, tested exposures, and waited to see what would happen.  I enjoyed watching the birds, and especially the ospreys and the great blue herons. 

The GBHs are really good at catching fish!  It happens so fast that you can barely even see the catch.  Looking at the pictures afterward, I felt sad for the unfortunate fish, but still happy for the birds.  They aren’t cruel; they fish out of necessity.    

On the drive, I listened to more of the Scene on Radio podcast,   which I’ve found very thought-provoking.  The producers and scholars discussed libertarian ideas, including the notion that all government is bad and individual wealth is the highest good, and explored how those ideas relate to race and politics.  

As the podcast noted, what drives the hard-right plutocrats is not just pure greed, but also a kind of twisted idealism.  They believe that the individual is supremely important, and individual success is the highest good.  There is no point to social organizations or communities other than as a platform for high achievers.  Wealth is a sign of virtue, and poverty a sign of vice.  Greed is good, and only the wealthy matter.   

Osprey with fish

These people generally admire the work of Ayn Rand, a third-rate writer and pseudo philosopher whose awkward and sad novels idealize grotesquely rugged individuals.  Admiring Rand is more than a sign of poor literary taste; it indicates moral immaturity.  In the Randian libertarian view, it is not just understandable, but desirable, to cultivate indifference to the welfare of others.  The poor are by definition unworthy, and deserve whatever misfortune strikes them.

Preventing minorities from voting is an important political objective for the libertarian right.  The plutocratic leadership  expects to always be a minority working to benefit itself, and so an actual democracy where everyone is allowed and encouraged to vote would not work for them.  

If there were a level playing field and an informed electorate, the majority would never vote for such a system, since it doesn’t serve the best interests of most people.  But of course, we do not have those things.  Instead, we have massively-funded disinformation campaigns, gerrymandered electoral districts, and laws discouraging the non-rich from voting.  And if that is not sufficient, they cheat.  This could all be viewed as wrong, but they view it as well justified, since they believe (or at least some part of them believes) that all that matters is their own welfare and success.  

It is hard to believe how pervasive these libertarian, anti-government ideas have become, especially given how much they conflict with traditional American norms of fairness, equality, and representative democracy.   This helps explain why we in the US lack some of the basic attributes of advanced democracies in Europe, such as a health care system that works for people other than the rich and safety net programs for ordinary people.  Such programs would involve government action.  And in this extreme libertarian view, government action is always bad.  The same for taxes.

This is one of the rays of hope of the coronavirus pandemic:  it exposes the narrowness and moral degeneracy of these ideas.  It could hardly be more obvious that government action is needed to address the pandemic, and it seems crazy to argue otherwise.  To be sure, some still do.  Some are so in love with their ideas, or desperate for income and food, that they have been marching in protest against business closures, at the risk of their lives.  But others are not so fanatical, and are moderating their views to accommodate reality, and survive.    

Perhaps we’ll emerge from this crisis with a more realistic view of the importance of government, and more compassion for those less fortunate.  We might rediscover the significance of the natural world, and cultivate more appreciation for animals other than humans and the fascinating interrelationships of living things.  If we can get started down that road, there’s still hope that we won’ t ravage the planet completely  before Earth Day 100.