Say what you will about irrational sociopathy, at least it’s an ethos

Here’s another entry from the “Shut your mouth and get your ass to a packed TGI Friday’s” crowd:

“Your life for my convenience” is pretty much Republican philosophy in a nutshell.

It doesn’t require elaborate argument to show how disgusting this mentality is. But the thing is that it makes no sense even on its own terms:

• You can allow business to open, but you can’t force customers to patronize them. Being indifferent to other people’s life isn’t enough, you need most people to be indifferent to their own, and that’s where even a lot of dedicated Fox viewers will draw the line. Many businesses will remain closed or open and then quickly close because they aren’t getting enough business to be viable. Restaurant reservations plunged before stay-in-place orders were put in place, very few people are buying cars although dealerships are remaining open, etc.
• Your ability to put food on the table is already being threatened by the pandemic. People won’t come to work if they’re infected and it will be increasingly difficult to replace them.
• The implied argument here that getting COVID-19 is no big deal if you’re under 65 is also insane. First of all, many people under 65 have already been killed. But, also, this isn’t a binary outcome where either you die or quickly recover with no ongoing effects. The virus wreaks havoc on the body and getting the disease is likely to have substantial ongoing effects among survivors.

What is needed, to get to some semblance of “normal” back, is frequent testing of people who aren’t visibly sick, tracing, quarantine, and cash payments to people and businesses. But in part because idiots like Mandel, Trump and Kushner think you can restore the economy by lifting regulations and gutting out some extra deaths, we’re going to get the downside they acknowledge in moments of candor but little of the upside.

UPDATE: This is how you subtweet, kids:

"I'm getting out of this lockdown and going BACK TO WORK!" says Twitter personality whose bio is "stay-at-home mom."— Jill Filipovic (@JillFilipovic) May 6, 2020