This is (to me, anyway) an interesting article: How the American Idiot Made America Unlivable. The article clearly appeals to people who inhabit an echo chamber I do not, and it is filled with generalized insults and ludicrous statements designed to raise the blood pressure of anyone else in that echo chamber.
The picture in it got me thinking, though. The title, How the American Idiot Made America Unlivable combined with the photo implies Christians, particularly from the south, are the American idiots to blame. The picture is about refusal to accept any C19 vaccine and likened the vaccine to the mark of the beast. I'm not at all religious and I would refuse the vaccine right along with those folks. Does that make me an American idiot, too? Maybe.
My concerns are based on issues apart from religion. Fauci's connection to Big Pharma - his ridiculing inexpensive but effective hydroxychloroquine and zinc and pushing for an expensive and untested remdesivir. Bill Gates pushing hard for a vaccine while talking about population reduction (vaccines save lives, not end them or render them sterile, so what the hell is he playing at?!). Absurdly inflated infection rates for asymptomatic people, admission that the test often results in false positives, and countless examples of attributing death to C19 when clearly another event was the cause.
The mortality rate for this virus is very low. We've experienced worse several times in our history. At no time ever, pandemic or not, has our economy - and our liberty - been locked down like this. To lock it down over a virus with a mortality rate well under 1% makes no damn sense; there's absolutely no precedent for it.
We're told masks won't prevent you from getting the disease - nothing will, in fact - but they may help prevent you spreading it around.
We're told the natural recovery rate is very high, but that we all need to be vaccinated.
We're told it's imperative that we shut down businesses and/or work from home indefinitely to prevent the spread of this virus from overwhelming our hospitals, but protests and rioting may go on unabated.
On the face of it, none of this crap makes any sense. And we've seen people point out the lack of logic and contradictions, but still we ignore it all!
A lot of people think that if you're suspicious of vaccines, even after many vaccines have been shown to cause serious harm, you must be an "anti-vaxer". No, I'm against being lied to and I naturally distrust anyone who wants to inject me with something. Particularly something that hasn't been tested!
We have ample evidence that there is a lot more going on that we aren't being told about, but allegedly smart people refuse to look at any of it. No one is asking why. Well, check that. Many people are asking why, but they're being censored by every major communications platform.
As most of you know, I'm a libertarian. Small-l libertarian. Libertarianism and I part ways on the issue of abortion.
I don't ascribe to the idea that a person isn't a person until he or she is outside the womb. Scientifically and medically, we can and have saved children inside the womb if the mom has suffered some catastrophic problem. They may be a couple months premature, but most of the kids pull through. There is no logic to the argument, therefore, that a person isn't a person until after they have been born. Therefore, there is no logic that a person who is six months old in the womb isn't a person, but a person who is eight months old in the womb is a person. Therefore, until someone can convince me otherwise, a zygote should be protected in the same way a person outside the womb should. Granted, our bodies will sometimes get rid of non-viable people; that's a natural process and I'm cool with that. I'm not suggesting an embryo should pay taxes. I'm saying that the same protections of personal property - your body - be extended to the unborn.
I'm never OK with abortion.
If I said that last sentence to the people who wrote the article above, they would almost certainly label me a Christian nut-job who is against women's choice. Well, no. Actually, I have a pretty good argument for my position. But I get the strong vibe they would never ask me why I hold the position I do.
Gun ownership is another touchy subject. For many people, if you own firearms, the implication is you want to use them against other people. Obviously, that's nuts. It's like saying "I own a fire extinguisher because I hope my house burns down." But once divulged as a 2A supporter, you're pond scum as far as many people are concerned. Gun ownership is strongly associated with their idea of the red-neck, Christian, uneducated, fundamentalist, Bible-thumping bigot who's a member of an anti-government, white-supremacist militia. Uh, no, actually, sometimes we just want to have the means to keep our families safe and it has nothing to do with any of those things.
There are more examples out there how we see these folks vilifying good people to silence them and paint them as horrible people. Their brain-dipped readers accept this nonsense. Yeah, I know. It's standard-issue propaganda. We've seen it before. But actually watching this unfold in real time in the context of C19 is fascinating. Terrifying, but fascinating.
The picture in it got me thinking, though. The title, How the American Idiot Made America Unlivable combined with the photo implies Christians, particularly from the south, are the American idiots to blame. The picture is about refusal to accept any C19 vaccine and likened the vaccine to the mark of the beast. I'm not at all religious and I would refuse the vaccine right along with those folks. Does that make me an American idiot, too? Maybe.
My concerns are based on issues apart from religion. Fauci's connection to Big Pharma - his ridiculing inexpensive but effective hydroxychloroquine and zinc and pushing for an expensive and untested remdesivir. Bill Gates pushing hard for a vaccine while talking about population reduction (vaccines save lives, not end them or render them sterile, so what the hell is he playing at?!). Absurdly inflated infection rates for asymptomatic people, admission that the test often results in false positives, and countless examples of attributing death to C19 when clearly another event was the cause.
The mortality rate for this virus is very low. We've experienced worse several times in our history. At no time ever, pandemic or not, has our economy - and our liberty - been locked down like this. To lock it down over a virus with a mortality rate well under 1% makes no damn sense; there's absolutely no precedent for it.
We're told masks won't prevent you from getting the disease - nothing will, in fact - but they may help prevent you spreading it around.
We're told the natural recovery rate is very high, but that we all need to be vaccinated.
We're told it's imperative that we shut down businesses and/or work from home indefinitely to prevent the spread of this virus from overwhelming our hospitals, but protests and rioting may go on unabated.
On the face of it, none of this crap makes any sense. And we've seen people point out the lack of logic and contradictions, but still we ignore it all!
A lot of people think that if you're suspicious of vaccines, even after many vaccines have been shown to cause serious harm, you must be an "anti-vaxer". No, I'm against being lied to and I naturally distrust anyone who wants to inject me with something. Particularly something that hasn't been tested!
We have ample evidence that there is a lot more going on that we aren't being told about, but allegedly smart people refuse to look at any of it. No one is asking why. Well, check that. Many people are asking why, but they're being censored by every major communications platform.
As most of you know, I'm a libertarian. Small-l libertarian. Libertarianism and I part ways on the issue of abortion.
I don't ascribe to the idea that a person isn't a person until he or she is outside the womb. Scientifically and medically, we can and have saved children inside the womb if the mom has suffered some catastrophic problem. They may be a couple months premature, but most of the kids pull through. There is no logic to the argument, therefore, that a person isn't a person until after they have been born. Therefore, there is no logic that a person who is six months old in the womb isn't a person, but a person who is eight months old in the womb is a person. Therefore, until someone can convince me otherwise, a zygote should be protected in the same way a person outside the womb should. Granted, our bodies will sometimes get rid of non-viable people; that's a natural process and I'm cool with that. I'm not suggesting an embryo should pay taxes. I'm saying that the same protections of personal property - your body - be extended to the unborn.
I'm never OK with abortion.
If I said that last sentence to the people who wrote the article above, they would almost certainly label me a Christian nut-job who is against women's choice. Well, no. Actually, I have a pretty good argument for my position. But I get the strong vibe they would never ask me why I hold the position I do.
Gun ownership is another touchy subject. For many people, if you own firearms, the implication is you want to use them against other people. Obviously, that's nuts. It's like saying "I own a fire extinguisher because I hope my house burns down." But once divulged as a 2A supporter, you're pond scum as far as many people are concerned. Gun ownership is strongly associated with their idea of the red-neck, Christian, uneducated, fundamentalist, Bible-thumping bigot who's a member of an anti-government, white-supremacist militia. Uh, no, actually, sometimes we just want to have the means to keep our families safe and it has nothing to do with any of those things.
There are more examples out there how we see these folks vilifying good people to silence them and paint them as horrible people. Their brain-dipped readers accept this nonsense. Yeah, I know. It's standard-issue propaganda. We've seen it before. But actually watching this unfold in real time in the context of C19 is fascinating. Terrifying, but fascinating.
