Dead Dogs, Dead Bangladeshis, and The Loss of Morality

The below has nothing to do with tech, hockey, or books (not really). But it does touch on systematic problems, something that I do try and emphasize.

South Dakota Governer Noem wrote a book (well, likely paid a ghostwriter to write a book. Most politicians, even ones I agree with, do this and tend to try and hide who actually writes the book. It is irritating, as if writing were not a skill, but a near universal sin.) in which she describes shooting her dog and a goat right before her kids got off the bus. And while she has gotten, thankfully, a lot disgust for her actions, I am reminded not so much of other far right politicians but of center-left writer Matthew Yglesias.

I know that sounds odd, given that Yglesias is generally considered to be a liberal. He is a fellow at the Niskanen Center, which is generally considered to be a center-left think tank. He has written for generally left-leaning organizations, such as the American Prospect and Slate, before founding Vox and then his own Substack (one of the ones that Substack itself offered money to come to the platform). But he also wrote one of the most morally horrific piece sof “journalism” I have ever read. And suffered no consequences for it.

In 2014, Bangladeshi workers were forced into a building that the owners known or should have known was a death trap. It had been closed by the government days before, and engineers told the owners that the building was likely to collapse. But management forced the textile workers back into the building and 149 died in the collapse. Yglesias then write a piece arguing that this was … fine. That different places have different working situations and that is okay, because that is how Bangladeshis, the ones not murdered by their bosses, will one day reach developed economy status. “There are very good reasons for Bangladeshi people to make different choices in this regard than Americans”, says Yglesias, as if being forced to choose between forced to work in a deathtrap and starving to death was a choice and not the result of massive power imbalances abetted by American companies and governments turning a blind eye to said imbalances.

It is the logic of a sociopath. Or a murderer. And he suffered no consequences for this morally abhorrent opinion. He founded Vox, then when to Substack and was welcomed with open arms into a powerful think tank, as already noted. Our elites were fine with a man who argued that murder was an economic choice. So I am not surprised that we have sunk to the place where a Governer thinks she can curry favor by bragging about shooting her own puppy.

The situations are somewhat different. Noem desperately wants to be Trump’s vice-president, and she has tried to paint her decision as an instance of not shying “ …away from tough decisions”. It is transparent nonsense, of course. Dealing with a ill-trained, even violent dog by taking the easy, murderous way out is the very definition of shying away from a tough decision. She took the easy way out, the way that would let her indulge her baser instincts. Much the same way that Ygelsias indulged his baser instincts.

We have regressed as a society. We have allowed our government ot devolve form a manifestation of our public will, no matter how flawed, to a handmaiden to the most powerful. We have privileged greed and the needs of the economy over mutual aid and the needs of society. One of the reasons Biden won, I think, is that he self-evidently was a decent person in an indecent time. But the indecency remains, not only manifested in the violent, authoritarian rambles of Trump and the people who follow and model him. It is also present in the insistence that people are economic units, that valuing human lives and dignity is not as important as their impact on the economy, that helping hands might occasionally help someone who doesn’t “deserve” it, so all children should suffer.

That it is good and right to reward a man who thinks the murder of nearly one hundred and fifty textile workers is perfectly OK since it keeps prices low.

I am not saying that the neo-fascism of the far right is the same as the more banal evil of leaving everything to the market. One is clearly more violent, more dangerous. But they both have, at their heart, a coarsening of morality, a prioritization of power, be it economic of physical, that reduces people to means to an end. The line from Ygelsias to Noem is not as long or winding as some would believe.