Sibylla Bostoniensis

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There's this thing going around, both in the conventional news media and on social media, that the reason Trump voters gave for voting for Trump was "the price of eggs".

I'm not sure where that synecdoche came from, but it's been widely embraced by both pundits attempting to explain the results of the election and furious leftists decrying it, "You mean because of the price of eggs people did a fascism?"

Well, yes? I don't know what you were taught in school, but I distinctly remember being taught in junior high social studies class that the ruinous terms of the Treaty of Versailles imposed on post-WWI Germany economic conditions that directly gave rise to the Nazi party and WWII.

This is where fascism usually comes from. When a populace feels sufficiently economically precarious, it becomes vulnerable to the blandishments of fascism.

Now, this is usually the point where someone protests that voting for the fascists won't actually improve the economy.

Well, yeah. In this case, our particular fascist seems extra-special idiotic and likely to deeply wreck the economy.

But please understand a few things.

First of all, "the economy" and people's individual economic circumstances are two different things, and the populace has, of late, been cottoning on to the fact that "the economy" doing well doesn't mean they won't be left to starve.

And they don't like that very much.

Look, there were two parties running. One of them was the Make America Great Again party. The other party was the American Economy Is Fine The Way It Is, Maybe Needs a Few Little Tweaks party.

Which of those appeals to someone who thinks their economic prospects stink?

A whole lot of Americans are of the considered opinion that voting for the Democrats is voting for a party that relentlessly gaslights them about economics, telling them they have nothing to worry about and their complaints are illegitimate, who are dismantling and stamping out their livelihoods, who have complete cavallier disdain for their economic fates, and has a bleeding heart and endless sympathy for any concern that's not theirs. As a bitterly funny tweet from a Black Twitter user put it:



Sure, the Republicans are lying to them, but at least they're telling the right lies.

There's something I've seen nobody anywhere say about "the price of eggs".

You know why eggs are so expensive in the US right now? Actually why?

2020 Dec 15: The Humane Society: "In 2020, we dismantled more cruel cages on factory farms and set new records for egg-laying hens" (by Kitty Block):

We have made remarkable progress in our work to end cruel cage confinement of farm animals during 2020. As a result, millions more animals around the world will no longer face lives of abject misery in tiny cages and crates on massive factory farms that treat them as products and not as sentient beings.

Here are some of the year’s most significant farm animal protection victories, where the Humane Society of the United States and Humane Society International led the way:

• We successfully waged a campaign in Colorado to pass a law banning the extreme confinement of egg-laying chickens and the sales of eggs from such cruelly confined chickens.

[...]

• U.S. Department of Agriculture data showed that the egg industry is now 28.5% cage-free. That translates to over 90 million hens who will never suffer in a cage. Before we launched our cage-free legislative campaigns in 2008, only 3% of hens were cage-free.

• As a result of our successful campaigns, Cal-Maine Foods, the world’s largest egg producer, announced a massive financial investment in cage-free facilities, committing more than $310 million to expand cage-free production.

Now, to be clear, that's not the only reason why the price of eggs has more than doubled in four years. We're also going through an avian panzootic, HPAI, resulting in the destruction of millions upon millions of egg-laying hens, reducing the egg supply.

But make no mistake: there's been a massive political effort to change the poultry industry in ways which caused prices to go up for the consumers, not for the benefit of any human, but for the benefit of chickens.

An effort which did not relent in the face of HPAI. One might reasonably think HPAI would be a reason to change course, to say, "Hey, given that there's been mass destruction of egg-laying birds, reducing the supply of eggs at the grocery store, and – supply and demand – driving the price of eggs even higher, maybe this would be a good moment to put the whole cage-free thing on hold? Just to relieve prices a bit?" But, no.

And this is a movement entirely identified with the left, and Democrats.

From the perspective of a whole lot of Americans, the Democrats are the party that cares more for the well-being of chickens than citizens, that care more whether a chicken can spread its wings than whether Americans can afford groceries, that care more about the abstract moral purity of not harming animals than whether actual living, breathing children will go hungry.

A whole lot of America sees the Democats as the party that will make political decisions entirely unconcerned with the consequences for the wallets of Americans, implying that the Democratic party is the patrician party, the party for people of such economic security that they can afford not to worry whether eggs cost $1.50/dz or $5.50/dz, and have no sympathy for people who do need to worry about that.

A whole lot of America sees Democrats as the party that says, "Let them eat free-range."

It's not the first time. The Democrats were the party of treasuring redwoods over logging jobs, prizing the lives of wolves over the livelihood of ranchers, shutting down polluters causing acid rain over factory jobs. The Democrats were the party in favor of shutting down the economy to halt Covid, damn the cost to business owners and the workers who depended on those businesses. The Democrats have a horrendous reputation of not being concerned about the "common man", and chosing what seem to them be the fancies of the leisured classes over their own hard-scrabble existences.

So this is the other thing "the price of eggs" is a synecdoche for. It's not just about feeling a pinch in the pocketbook: it's a reference to the idea that the Democratic party is wholly in the control of an economic class who is blithely unconcerned with the cost to the American people of the policies they promulgate.

I say this as someone who thinks there is no higher political priority than saving the planet from global warming, who was and remains 107% in favor of the Covid shutdowns, and who does think making chicken-farming more humane for the chickens is a good thing. I do understand where the other side is coming from. I understand why they hate the Democrats.

A whole lot of Americans voted for the guy fronting the party that claims to care whether they starve and to know why they hate the other party. I gather they did so reluctantly, feeling they didn't have much of a choice, given they weren't going to vote for the party that cares more for chickens than their children. I think a lot of them kidded themselves that the bullshit he spun might actually result in better economic situations for themselves.

Like, take the whole thing about tariffs. Instituting the tariffs Trump has promised/threatened would be economically catastrophic for the US. It is a clearly terrible idea for a bunch of reasons. But notice what the point of it was: to bolster US manufacturing, to ~bring back the good jobs~ – meaning good jobs for blue-collar workers. Here's a pertinent word I haven't heard in 40 years: protectionism. He's proposing protectionism as US policy, and the whole point of protectionism (late 20th century style) has been to support American workers. He's not promising business-owners protectionism – they don't want it, and it would come out of their hides and they know it – he's promising it to the workers, the blue-collar workers. It's not courting the bourgeoisie, it's courting the proletariat.

Sure, it won't work. It's a bad plan for helping blue-collar workers. But at least it is a plan for helping blue-collar workers.

Which do you vote for, the party with a bad plan to help you or the party with no plan at all to help you? Or, worse, the party that had not only no plan to help you, but a demonstrated history of throwing you under the bus in favor of the liberation of chickens?

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