"For the unvaccinated, you’re looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm."
Those were fighting words.
Even out of office, Trump still shapes what Americans believe.
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| The Claremont Institute |
An essay by a conservative commentator said the political messages coming from Blue America anger Red America. Especially offensive are those words from Biden. Look at the hostility!
Michael Anton's began his essay:
On December 19, 2021—less than a week before Christmas—the Biden White House issued a statement containing the following extraordinary sentence, which astonished even the Administration’s harshest critics and alarmed many inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt: "For the unvaccinated, you’re looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm." It’s rare to employ this kind of undiplomatic language even against America’s global adversaries. Against American citizens? Hence so many shocked and angry responses.
I perceive Biden's words to be a neutral and descriptive warning. Anton saw it differently. He took offense. There is a message in his reaction. Vast numbers of people in Red America don't think COVID is serious. Therefore, Biden's sentence must have been a wish, not a warning or plea.
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| Nonchalant |
COVID is an opportunity for Americans to observe the power of leadership. Even out of office, Donald Trump remains the central figure in American politics because he remains a persuasive thought leader. He shaped how people think about immigration. He told people how to think about trade with China; about NATO; about the news media; about Black Lives Matter. He is so persuasive that he could define an economy in sharp recovery as "carnage," and people believed it. Then, two months later, with the same condition and trends in place, he said it was the greatest economy of all time, and people believed that, too. His most extraordinary feat of thought leadership is having persuaded people holding half the political power in America that an election that has been studied, audited, litigated, and found legal and appropriate by his own appointees was, in fact, flagrantly stolen from him.
There is nothing Biden does in shaping opinion that is anywhere equivalent. Biden is president, but not a thought leader.
Facts don't interpret themselves. They are given meaning and narrative. So far there are about a million "excess deaths" in the USA, about 800,000 of them closely attributable to COVID. Unvaccinated people overrun hospitals. Currently 1,500 people are dying every day, almost entirely the unvaccinated. Biden states these facts--that reality--and a GOP-oriented intellectual is outraged. How dare Biden tell us we could die from COVID!
Trump shaped our first impression of COVID: It's no big deal. A million deaths, in a population of 320 million, is less than 3/10th of one percent. What does that mean? It means it will probably be the other guy who dies. It does not mean the same thing as Muslims or the Chinese shooting down three or four American passenger planes every day, the same number of deaths. That would be understood as an act of war. For the Trump-influenced, COVID should be understood as a trivial danger, and a president who says it might kill the unvaccinated is showing contempt for them. A year out of office, Trump's understanding of COVID still shapes the opinion of the Trump-oriented half of America. This includes people on a deathbed.
The man in this video died shortly after recording this:
". . . Every part of my body was racked in pain. These are the things we have to suffer, it's part of living. You have to trust your immune system. And if the alternative is that we live in fear, that we create a bogey man out of something that hopefully I'm showing that isn't anything to be afraid of for 99.9 percent of us. . ..
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7 comments:
Republicans consider it their right to infect others, just as it’s their right to overturn an election if they don’t like the results. Are you trying to take away their freedoms? You must be one of those liberal elites, attempting to impose alien, far left intersectional values on the impoverished non-college class.
Michael Anton says that it’s “undiplomatic” to present anti-vaxxers with the facts. They’re convinced that vaccines will make them sterile or magnetic or enable the government to track them (unlike their cell phones) and besides, the pandemic is a hoax. They can’t be reasoned with and mocking their stupidity isn’t productive. About all that leaves is mandates.
"I'd rather take my chances..."
Why? For me the question was actually pretty easy:
Vaccine: Known science...not entirely risk free, as opposed to:
COVID: Unknown, novel, proven lethal, threat to society.
In addition, if one must choose a risk isn't it better to do so for the sake of community?
No brainer from here.
But perhaps the most uninformed notion in the video is the "trust your immune system" statement. It shows a lack of understanding of the disease process, as well as how society has faced our mortal enemies on the planet, microbes, since the dark ages.
You focus on Trump but science denial is promoted by Republicans en toto. If it was just him it wouldn't have the power. We must not overlook the fact that without the enablers he'd be irrelevant.
"GOP-oriented intellectual"
Watch the oxymorons...
I’m confused. If Trump is a leader, then why are so many of “his people” NOT getting vaccinated like he said he was vaccinated and boosted? In reality Trump is an opportunist, thrusting himself to the front of the crowd that had already formed. We saw that happen on his televised town halls When he told the crowd to get vaccinated and got booed. Sensing that he was losing them he said they should do what ever they wanted if they like. Antivaxing is a thing that’s been going on for some time. Trump simply gave it play and said “I’m Your guy too.” He did the same thing with the alt-right movement when he gave encouraging remarks about their actions. Also with the Proud Boys when he said “Stand down and stand by.” He is an opportunist with listeners. We call these people influencers. Biden has what is called a positional leader, he is POTUS. Biden’s words have weight and cause governmental action. Trump is simply “good copy” for the 24/7 media. Trump has an established bad boy storyline. I follow him in the media wondering “When will this bully be brought low?” Others follow him wondering when will he ascend again? The real question is hidden, whether our form of government will survive? That is the question that appears the most ominous to me.
I wonder how the anti vaccination people feel about soap and hand washing?
Yep. They say about 20% of the population doesn't wash their hands after taking a crap. We now know who they are.
I am glad the conservatives don't mind if the guy cooking their food skips handwashing, too.
Vaccination saves lives in the community.
On another more political board I sometimes visit, a MAGAt was trying to explain that the two sides don't agree on facts.
Of course, his facts was not rooted in reality, nor were they facts. Just wishes.
Mark16:18…. They will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” For antiVaxers with God. And then we have the antiVaxers with the god, Trump, with strong immune systems and no fear. “Truth or Consequences” “Hoping all your consequences are happy ones."
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