Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube

Liberal Elite More Deadly Than Coronavirus

As the coronavirus pandemic spreads, millionaires and billionaires, who have been key to oppressing the working class, are trying to position themselves as everyday Americans. We need to understand them for what they are: beneficiaries and key supporters of the capitalist system that helped create this crisis.

Mike Pappas

March 29, 2020
Facebook Twitter Share

My name is Mike. I’m a physician in NYC working on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic. I’m also a socialist and member of Left Voice.

It was recently reported that a 17 year old boy in Lancaster, California died suddenly, likely of coronavirus. The boy, who had no previous health conditions, was sick for only a few days. On Friday he was healthy and by Wednesday he was dead. On Wednesday, he went to urgent care as he was not feeling well, but since he had no health insurance, the urgent care center declined to treat him. He was directed to transfer to a nearby hospital, but en route, he went into cardiac arrest. He arrived at the nearby hospital, was revived, but died hours later.

In a Youtube address, the Mayor of Lancaster, Rex Parris gave his condolences. “We have lost” a 17 year old boy, he said. No, no, no, a 17 year old boy was killed on Wednesday night. A 17 year old boy was killed by a capitalist economic system and a for profit health care system that puts profit accumulation above all else. Explain to me how we can live in a country that allows one man to have a net worth over $100 billion, but still allows for someone to be “turned away” due to their health insurance status?

Let me be clear, the for profit health care system killed this boy–just as it has killed many others from either denying them care or from economically destroying patients and their families. In this system health and well being are secondary to profit accumulation, period.

It’s interesting that politicians like Parris continue to use this type of passive language to misidentify the real problems at hand. They never remotely touch upon how their maintenance of exploitative, oppressive systems may be to blame. Let’s take another politician as an example, shall we? 

Cuomo, Liberal Elite’s New Darling

America’s new darling New York Governor Andrew Cuomo–oh, isn’t he just so dreamy?

Each day I have not been working in the clinic or hospital, I have watched Cuomo’s daily address where I have seen him identify his family as if they are normal, everyday members of the working class. He speaks of how the coronavirus could affect his mom or his sister as if they live just as an everyday New Yorker does. He wants to position himself as the progressive antidote to Trump. 

But this hunk of a millionaire is the same person responsible for shutting down several hospitals in the state, leading to an overall reduction in hospital beds. Peculiarly, NYC is now scrambling to make makeshift hospital sites for the influx of new patients that will need to be treated. This is the same man who just pushed a plan to cut Medicaid spending by some $400 million during a pandemic. The same man who uses prison labor to bottle hand sanitizer and refuses to release inmates from overcrowded jails, even as coronavirus spreads. At the same time this man pretends to care about the working class, he appoints private equity vultures like William Mulrow and Stephen Cohen as key individuals in “rebuilding New York’s economy.”  He isn’t one of us. 

Buddy, Mr. Cuomo, I am talking directly to you, your family knows nothing about the hardship a working class family is enduring. You know nothing about the struggle working class New Yorkers face. You know nothing about the struggle of the patient I spoke with today who is currently living in one of the crowded shelters of NYC, pregnant, with coronavirus. One of the shelters that is so crowded because you and every other capitalist politician allow hundreds of thousands of apartments in New York City to stay vacant so your elite friends can turn a profit. .

We Are All in This Together?

Now that we see coronavirus exposing all of the contradictions of the capitalist system, billionaires want to pretend we are all equal in the fight against the virus. They are suggesting that we’re all in this together. Bezos recently suggested that the public donate to the company’s “Amazon Relief Fund” established to support workers under financial distress. Amazon’s child company, Whole Foods, suggested that workers share sick leave with other workers who need to take time off. Meanwhile these companies pay ZERO DOLLARS in taxes. 

The world’s richest man, who runs a company that is worth over $1 trillion, could individually cover any expense of every one of his employees and not bat an eyelash. If anything we should take every dime this criminal has accumulated by exploiting his workers and give it back to the public.  

We are all “in this fight together”–as the corporate elite likes to claim– yet hospitals are postponing buying ventilators because they are concerned about their bottom line, despite the coming catastrophe health care providers like myself know is on the horizon. We are all “in this fight together,” yet investment bankers are pushing medical supply companies and drug firms to consider ways they can increase profits from this crisis. 

The only positive I see in the pandemic, is it is finally exposing capitalism for what it is: a parasitic system, run by a parasitic class that does not give a shit about the planet or the general public. Working people need to stick together during this crisis, but we also need to understand who our enemies are: the capitalists and the economic system that has led us into this mess in the first place.

Facebook Twitter Share

Mike Pappas

Mike is an activist and medical doctor working in New York City.

United States

What “The Daily” Gets Right and Wrong about Oregon’s Move to Recriminalize Drugs

A doctor at an overdose-prevention center responds to The Daily, a podcast produced by the New York Times, on the recriminalization of drugs in Oregon. What are the true causes of the addiction crisis, and how can we solve it?

Mike Pappas

March 22, 2024
Former president Donald Trump standing at a podium in front of American flags.

To Stop Trump, We Need Much More Democracy, Not Less

Democrats have been trying to kick Trump off the ballot as an "insurrectionist." Liberals say we have to restrict democracy in order to save it. As socialists, we think they have it backwards: to beat the Far Right, we need a mass movement fighting for radical democracy.

Nathaniel Flakin

March 18, 2024

New Jersey Democrats Attack the Public’s Right to Government Records

The New Jersey state assembly, led by the Democratic Party, just tried to fast-track a bill that would have gutted the Open Public Records Act. This is a reminder that their party is an obstacle, not an ally, in the fight to preserve democracy.

Samuel Karlin

March 15, 2024
President Biden giving his State of the Union speech at a podium in March, 2024.

Biden’s State of the Union: Hyper-Nationalism and Eroding Legitimacy

President Biden’s hyper-nationalistic State of the Union speech focused on selling himself as a defender of democracy at home and abroad. But it’s not enough to solve his — and the whole U.S. regime’s — crisis of legitimacy.

Tatiana Cozzarelli

March 14, 2024

MOST RECENT

A square in Argentina is full of protesters holding red banners

48 Years After the Military Coup, Tens of Thousands in Argentina Take to the Streets Against Denialism and the Far Right

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets across Argentina on March 24 to demand justice for the victims of the state and the military dictatorship of 1976. This year, the annual march had renewed significance, defying the far-right government’s denialism and attacks against the working class and poor.

Madeleine Freeman

March 25, 2024

The Convulsive Interregnum of the International Situation

The capitalist world is in a "permacrisis" — a prolonged period of instability which may lead to catastrophic events. The ongoing struggles for hegemony could lead to open military conflicts.

Claudia Cinatti

March 22, 2024

Berlin’s Mayor Loves Antisemites

Kai Wegner denounces the “antisemitism” of left-wing Jews — while he embraces the most high-profile antisemitic conspiracy theorist in the world.

Nathaniel Flakin

March 22, 2024

Lord Balfour Was an Imperialist Warmonger 

We should give our full solidarity to the Palestine Action comrade who defaced a portrait of Arthur Balfour at Cambridge University. But the problem for everyone who opposes the genocide against Gaza is how to massify and politically equip the movement.

Daniel Nath

March 21, 2024