Why Do the Elitists Loath Prepping?

This month (September) was national disaster-preparation month. It produced some useful articles about disaster preparation and preppers, such as this WJCT report on why Mormons store food, this article from Sharon Hughes at Renew America which acknowledges that preppers have a point, and even this article from NYT's Metro acknowledging that planning for a natural disaster might be a good idea. 

However, most MSM articles fall into two broad categories: those that mock preppers as wasting time for something that is never coming (for instance, this recent column by Steve Johnson at the Chicago Tribune), or that think preppers are dangerously paranoid (e.g., this column by Pat Cunningham at the Journal-Democrat).

That latter column prompted Jason Cote, also writing at the Journal-Democrat, to ask why liberals mock survivalism and prepping. His conclusion is:

The “prepper movement” has been largely ignored by the media, however now it is estimated to be over 3 million strong. In response to the growing movement, many on the left have taken to mocking preppers and labeling them as uneducated nut jobs.
You see, many of our leftist friends have a blind faith in government that those on the right can’t understand.  

The more liberal among us believe that regardless of what calamity may befall us, the swift hand of government will swoop in and carry us away to safety. In a real sense, they are deeply offended that not everyone feels the same way.  

The fact that some people feel that the economic system is on the verge of collapse, or that we may be left for weeks to fend for ourselves after a natural disaster doesn’t make sense to them because the government should be our savior. 

 ... There has developed, however, a parent-child relationship between the government and the citizenry. The child believes it is the responsibility of the parent to protect it. The parent generally feels it exists in order to take care of the child. If the child can live on its own then it doesn’t need the parent anymore. A populace that can take care of itself, feed itself, and defend itself is less reliant on the government, which leads to a lesser need for government. Individual responsibility lends itself to increased individual rights and that goes contradictory to the leftist political agenda. 

I believe Cote is correct as to why many people (not just liberals) do not themselves partake in disaster preparation. In fact, you see a special category among some Christians replicating this same thinking, except that "government" is replaced with "God."  (Apparently the latter haven't read the story of Joseph and the 7 years of famine, or studied the events of the first winter of the Plymouth colony).

However, I think there is more to it than just this. Both Johnson and Cunningham possess an ignorance of the practicality of disaster preparation. With Johnson, in true elitist fashion, this ignorance exhibits itself in disdain. Because it is not important to him or his wine and cheese consuming friends, it is unimportant--in fact, in Johnson's mind, it is something to be ridiculed and belittled, as an activity engaged in by the great unwashed masses. It takes a truly cultured mind, like Johnson's, to "realize" that storms, power outages, or loss of a job, only happen to peasants.

Cunningham exhibits a different reaction to the unknown, but one that is also typical--fear. The "survivalist" is a bogeyman. It is this fear of the unknown that leads to ridiculous statements such as the following, from the Washington Post:

... But state police said he [Frein] has a philosophy: survivalism. 

What is it? 

In short: a stark worldview that fuses, in varying degrees, millennialism, Second Amendment and hard-money advocacy, environmentalism and racism. It’s an ideology with many godparents, including Henry David Thoreau, Ludwig von Mises and Charlton Heston. And its proponents think the world as we know it will end soon — and we must be prepared. 

Hence their nickname: “preppers.”

Or this from an article at the Christian Science Monitor:

For the most part, survivalists – or disaster-prepared “preppers,” as they like to call themselves – are interested mostly in indulging useful fantasies about “bug-out” packs and other necessary items to have and know how to use if there is a major societal disturbance that leads to uncontrolled unrest. 

But their world view – which The Washington Post’s Justin Moyer describes as fusing “millennialism, Second Amendment and hard-money advocacy, environmentalism and racism” – can also lead some such thinkers into lonely, dark corners, where the ends may begin to justify the means, says one survivalism expert. 

“There are rare but real dangers in the acts of a tiny minority of racists, antigovernment activists, and anarchist [attackers],” Richard Mitchell, author of “Dancing at Armageddon: Survivalism and Chaos in Modern Times,” said in an interview with the University of Chicago Press. “But when genuine violence and conflicts occur they come from outside survivalism, from … individuals separated not only from conventional associations but also from survivalist organizations that these individuals deem unfocused, equivocating, convocations of mere putter-planning.”

This is, of course, the same penetrating analysis that underlay events such as the witch trials.