COVID and Milgram's Experiment

I'd like to discuss this issue in terms of upper-level obedience to authority, that being the responses of the State governors, and how they relate to the messaging given by the Federal government. First, I'd like to point out that "saving the economy" effectively means "saving the stock market," and therefore "saving the rich." In 2018, "84% of all stocks owned by Americans belong(ed) to the wealthiest 10% of households" (NYT). This disparity has only increased between then and now. So, keep in mind, when the president focuses on "the economy," he is not focused on the 90% of Americans whose struggles are not alleviated when "red line goes up." Billions of Federal aide dollars have been allocated not to struggling Americans, but to investors in the stock market. I learned in highschool that "trickle-down economics" doesn't work. The copious aid given by the government to large corporations during the pandemic is, in my opinion, clear evidence of this administration's prioritization of maintaining power over the needs of the 90%. With this in mind, let's look at one of Milgram's variations of the experiment in which those administering the test were not instructed to pull the switch administering the shocks. In this variation, 37 out of 40 participants continued through to the highest shock level. As one might expect, these participants passed the blame on to the person who physically administered the "shock." This causes one to think about the reluctance of the Federal government to implement nation-wide COVID relief policies. While there are many reasons for this (stemming back to the founding of this country), particularly concerning the balance of State and Federal authority (I'll link an interesting Atlantic article below), one cannot help but think that this system allowed for easy complacency on part of the Federal government. The plainest way we see this is how when the president is questioned about his responsibility for the high death count, he deflects blame onto the State governors, saying that "some States did well, others did not." The cruel irony here is that it would seem the Governors that "aren't doing a good job" are exhibiting rhetoric in line with that of the president. Many delayed a state-wide response while parroting the president's insistence that the crisis was a "Democratic Hoax," and that the travel bans implemented had, in fact, prevented the spread of COVID throughout the United States. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves, for example, insisted that implementing a state-wide lockdown would be an authoritarian measure far too similar to what China or North Korea would do (apparently). Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt made his position on lockdowns clear on March 14 when he posted a photo to Twitter of his family at a crowded restaurant with the caption "It's packed tonight!" The next day his spokesperson reaffirmed his sentiments by saying that "the governor will continue to take his family out to dinner and to the grocery store without living in fear, and encourages Oklahomans to do the same." Statements like these only reinforced the Whitehouse's agenda as they downplayed the severity of the virus, whilst stoking conspiracies of Democratic fear-mongering. In conclusion, even though the current POTUS is at fault (both directly and indirectly) for much of the damage COVID has caused The United States, the long tradition of shifting blame from the Federal Government to the State Governments has aided in his delusional messaging that he is not responsible for the American response to COVID. Unfortunately, those in power have done a decent job of getting the president's supporters to drink the koolaid, and trick themselves into believing that this couldn't have been helped. Yet, despite the undeniable separation of Federal and State power within the United States, the POTUS has fallen into the same line of thinking as 37/40 of the participants in the aforementioned Milgram experiment variation: How could it be his fault when it was the Governors who made seemingly individual bad decisions? To end this on a cynical note, I personally believe that he knows exactly what he's doing, and it's his followers that are duped into believing his flawed rhetoric through propaganda. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/business/economy/stocks-economy.html https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/why-theres-no-national-lockdown/609127/ https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/04/01/coronavirus-state-governors-best-worst-covid-19-159945