The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(10-17-2021, 07:03 AM)taramarie Wrote:

(10-16-2021, 06:57 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: A GOOD video about how vaccines work, which is created by professionals who know what they are talking about, and get to the point.

"Professionals" as you know also once promoted the benefits of smoking among a host of other things. All it took was a bit of money and they would say anything the person wanted.

The sorts of "professionals" of which you speak who trivialized the dangerous character of narcotics, radiation, lead, cadmium, and tobacco have a knowledge of the scientific lingo (easy to develop if one has a smattering of scientific learning in college) are the people involved in public relations intended to bamboozle people into accepting dangerous features of life so that lucrative activities can be protected from political scrutiny. They are masters not so much of science as they are of public relations, often the commercial equivalent of Orwellian Newspeak. They are masterful liars, and in essence the people who tried to protect tobacco are the ones who deny or trivialize global warming. They keep lying as long as they get paid and they get paid well. Nobody works as a confidence man for a near-starvation wage.

I can't see the same level of sophistication (the sort that can concoct such an oxymoron as "clean coal" -- beware of oxymora in a debate -- you know, "scientific creationism", "scientific socialism", "scientific racialism", "national socialism") in the anti-vax movement. I see crank denial of science without any obvious commercial backing as there is for 'creation science'. American Big Business really does want its employees and customers inoculated, as do most American liberals. People usually on opposite sides can agree on something for once, which is a rarity in America for now.

Are you going to believe the scientists who have plentiful checks upon the acceptance of flawed research, like double-blind tests and peer review, or are you going to believe someone who has a hustle? I can't see any commercial interest in the continuing mass death of COVID-19. It's killing workers and customers and thwarting much economic activity that is usually lucrative. If you are thinking of the mortuary trade... the people dying of COVID-19 are generally unable to afford expensive funeral and burial plans. Sale of respirators? Ford Motor Company recently manufactured large numbers of them. Ford would rather be making motor vehicles again in a new time of prosperity.

Much of the disdain for inoculation comes from religious cranks. They might claim that the inoculation is the Mark of the Beast or that the inoculation creates some microscopic chip that allows the government to track them so that it can round them up for incarceration in concentration camps in which most people die either of execution or being worked to exhaustion on near-starvation rations. (In truth the Government can track your phone calls if you use a cell phone and of course your transactions on debit or credit cards. Having used my debit card, a food-aid card (I am on disability) and cell phones on trips largely to lake-shore communities in Michigan, I could be tracked by the federal government and the State of Michigan.

Then again, I am not a fugitive from justice. I know enough to not do bad things to people, like dealing drugs or imbibing in child pornography. (The real crooks use cash, and one can live very well for a time through dealings with them that allow them anonymity). If one isn't interesting to the government then one is safe from its scrutiny.

I was once in a debate on freedom of speech and the limits of the freedom of expression. Criminal speech has no protection. It is acceptable to depict a bank robbery in a or a literary work, but it is not lawful to say "This is a stick up. Everybody turn over the f---ing money and nobody will get f---ing hurt, and don't nobody trip no f---ing alarm!" at an active bank . (Bank robbery is a dumb crime, and most of the people doing it are addicts looking for funds for getting a fix. They are usually out of control and under-educated). Releasing official secrets is blatantly illegal, and it is usually tantamount to espionage or treachery. Violations of copyrights are illegal. Provocation of violence (the infamous "incitement to riot" is a prime example) is not protected. Libel and slander are civil torts, but they can be expensive at law. Pornography is tricky unless it involves children. Someone asked me what I would proscribe, and I responded "medical quackery".

Anti-vax stuff is medical quackery. It is sickening in the extreme that our latest ex-President expounded on it instead of telling people to wear masks, do social distancing, and sanitize almost every surface. Injecting bleach? UV light? Chloroquinone? Yuck! Later we have people hawking a worm-killing medication for horses. (I can imagine an ad involving "Mr. Ed" telling people to get inoculated and to leave Ivermectin to horses.





This would be the perfect spokesman... excuse me spokes-horse! Of course, Alan Young is dead, as is "Mr. Ed", the talking horse... but even I could write that script!

To say that those who push vaccine resistance for some religious or political agenda are horses' asses is to neglect that the derriere of a horse is the source of much of its power. The literal rear-end of horse is necessary for making one of these magnificent animals what it is. I'd compare such people instead to the fangs of venomous snakes.