A story in this month’s Scientific American points out that Americans are dying younger and at a greater rate than citizens of other industrially advanced countries. The reason for this is not complex, it’s easy to say exactly why:
Conservative ideology is causing more Americans to die.
The story points out that life expectancy in America is lower now than it has been in any year since 1996. That means that the advances in medical science and social behavior that have led to an almost continual rise in life expectancy for a century and a half stopped in America in the last few years and, in fact, we have gone backwards.
Over the past 160 years, life expectancy (from birth) in the United States has risen from 39.4 years in 1860, to 78.9 years in 2020. One of the major reasons for the overall increase of life expectancy in the last two centuries is the fact that the infant and child mortality rates have decreased by so much during this time. Medical advancements, fewer wars and improved living standards also mean that people are living longer than they did in previous centuries. (Statista)
In fact, the only reason American life expectancy has dropped significantly in any years since before the Civil War, when these things began be be tracked systematically, has been due to the Civil War and the First World War combined with the Spanish Flu of 1918-20.
Modern American conservatism is having the same effect on American lives and life spans as war and disease has had in the past.
Conservatism is literally killing Americans. And it’s doing it in three easily understood ways:
1. COVIDiocy
Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, thanks to Donald Trump who still thinks the entire world conspired to make him look bad by choosing to pretend to get sick and die, combined with the propagandists in right-wing media, who think that any time a scientist or anyone who actually knows stuff says something, it’s an attack on conservatism by the “woke hordes” of science and education, Americans in droves have refused to take basic precautions against dying from COVID and COVID comorbidities. And so hundreds of thousands of Americans have died, unnecessarily, thanks to conservatism.
Now, nearly three years into the pandemic, with highly effective vaccines widely available, life expectancy in many middle- and high-income countries has started to bounce back. But in the U.S., it is still dropping. A study last year found that life expectancy in most Western European countries recovered in 2021—most likely the result of high vaccination rates that reduced mortality, particularly among the elderly. But the U.S. has continued to see declines, in part because of lower vaccination rates as well as a devastating opioid epidemic. (Scientific American, February 1, 2023)(op cit)
Two aspects of COVIDiocy are striking. The first is that it’s outcome affects two classes of people most strongly.
The first factor is race. Life expectancies have been falling for Black people and Native Americans at a faster rate than others and, interestingly, the third fastest decrease in life expectancy is among white people. This is America, nearly every aspect of our social lives is affected by race and racism. Black people and Native Americans began with lower life expectancies and fell farther, but white people actually joined them, this time. White conservatives, those embracing the ideologies of wilful stupidity and conspiracy theories über alles are among the third greatest loser in this race towards an early grave.
The study finds that excess deaths during the pandemic were 76% higher among Republicans than Democrats in two states, Ohio and Florida.
What’s more, the partisan gap in death rates increased significantly after vaccines were introduced. (Government Executive)
The second factor is gender. More men are dying of COVIDiocy than women, increasing the common reality that women typically live longer than men. Way to go conservative men! Your politics are killing you faster! You’re number one! You’re number one!
2. The Opiate Crisis
It isn’t just COVID that’s killing more Americans. We are still in the midst of an opiate crisis. Again, an issue that is only made worse by conservative ideology and politics. It began with the conservative idea that profits trump common sense and medical science, leading physicians, encouraged by pharmaceutical companies in search of profits, to prescribe opiates like they were Tic Tacs for years and years. It ends with America’s studied inability to manage a social or medical crisis without making it all about “how much better I am than you.” Because conservatives insist on treating drug abuse and addiction as a moral issue rather than a medical issue and a social management issue, and because conservatives can’t imagine helping people when they can blame them for problems not entirely of their own making, America simply can’t handle opiate addiction rationally or effectively. As long as we see addiction treatment and recovery as a failure of morality (I’m better than you), and more as a criminal issue to be managed by imprisonment (I’m still out here and you’re in there, so I’m better than you), we will continue to fail to address the opioid addiction issues that plague America. Oh, and racism drives a huge amount of this attitude since white people typically view drug addiction as a “non-white people problem.” This is America, after all.
3. Guns
Guns, guns, guns, guns, guns. Guns. It’s no secret America has a serious gun problem. It’s only gotten worse over the past few years. Mass killings are on the rise, gun violence is on the rise.
The 45,222 total gun deaths in 2020 were by far the most on record, representing a 14% increase from the year before, a 25% increase from five years earlier and a 43% increase from a decade prior.
This is all due to conservatives unwillingness to address gun violence, and their obsessive worship of gun ownership as code for manliness and “freedom.” America is all but unique in the world in its rate of gun death and widespread gun violence.
And, of course, racism. American conservatives see gun violence as a thing black people do and, therefore, they need their guns to protect them from the scary black people.
Hey, white people, here’s a statistic for you:
In 2019, 316 people of Asian or Pacific Islander origin died by suicide using a firearm in the United States. In that same year, 20,090 White people died by suicide involving a firearm in the United States.
Number of firearm suicide deaths in the United States in 2019, by ethnicity
Add in the fact that men kill themselves at a rate nearly four times higher than women, and that gun on your bedside table (or the 200 guns in your closet) takes on a far more ominous symbolism, doesn’t it, white guys?
Also, too…
More Guns Do Not Stop More Crimes, Evidence Shows
Victims successfully use gun in less than 1% of all person to person crimes.
Victims use guns in less than 1% of contact crimes. Victims using a gun were no less likely to be injured after taking protective action than victims using other forms of protective action. Compared to other protective actions, the National Crime Victimization Surveys provide little evidence that self-defense gun use is uniquely beneficial in reducing the likelihood of injury or property loss.
This finding is evidence-based, not anecdote-based. If you believe the gun nuts, hundreds of thousands of people a year (as many as three million!) use a gun to deter crime. But evidence shows otherwise.
To believe fully the claims of millions of self-defense gun uses each year would mean believing that decent law-abiding citizens shot hundreds of thousands of criminals. But the data from emergency departments belie this claim, unless hundreds of thousands of wounded criminals are afraid to seek medical care. But virtually all criminals who have been shot went to the hospital, and can describe in detail what happened there. (op cit)
The simple fact is, conservatism’s choice to make fetishistic obsession with guns the symbol of their identity is killing more Americans and killing more American conservatives than it ever did.
COVID, Opiates, Guns. Every day, in every way, conservatives make the stupid choice and follow the stupid path, driven by willful ignorance, conspiracy theories, egotism, toxic masculinity and, of course, racism. And it’s killing us.
Americans are dying more and life expectancy in America is plummeting, all due to conservative ideology and policy. How many more Americans must die from conservatism before we take our country back from the brink of death by conservatism?