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It’s the Stupidity, Stupid
“The best way for people to prevent spread is to get vaccinated … second best is to wear masks.” – Justice Kagan
This is so stunningly counterfactual, so blindingly stupid that it is upsetting that a Supreme Court Justice deciding federal COVID policy made this statement. How can she not know that infection case numbers have not in any way declined anywhere on the planet as a result of large vaccination rates? How can she not know that mask mandates (even with actual high usage) have resulted in immeasurably small to nonexistent reductions in spread? How can she not know that federal “experts” have recently declared cloth and surgical masks to be useless — after two years hectoring us to use them?
How scary is it that this highly qualified, high-ranking federal judge is not only spectacularly misinformed but seemingly confident in her grasp of the issues? Does mere membership in the bubble-dwelling self-congratulatory elite excuse this kind of cognitive malpractice?
What does this woman read, watch and listen to—and what other spectacularly wrong opinions has she formed as a result? What the hell happened to America’s highly educated class that this kind of kneejerk partisan error is not an embarrassment but a norm.
It is healthy to have policy differences among Americans but when those we should be able to look to make the best-grounded, well-reasoned arguments for their side choose to be intellectually lazy to the point of absurdity, we have a real problem.
Published in General
If you want to listen to somebody who knows what he’s talking about, don’t listen to governmental officials and media sources. They are a plague on public discourse. Listen to the scientists and physicians who have demonstrated their knowledge of the topics. Some of them tend left in their politics, but they decry the media/government messaging on covid as much as anyone else does. Sometimes the only way I know that Biden or the CDC have been saying stupid things again is because they tell me about it. But they tend to be more specific than the people here who repeat, mantra-like, “But we were told…,” “But we were sold…” When I hear people here on Ricochet say those things, I don’t come away with any information I can use. When I hear those people say it, I often come away with information that I can use.
There is a whole world out there that doesn’t consist of governmental officials and the news media.
Thank you for at least getting a little more specific. I did not know that Biden ever made such a claim. If there was a date, time, and cite for it, that would be information I could use.
I wish somebody would put together a database or timeline of those quotes, along with a source for each. It would be a great public service. It would be information that a person can actually use in public discourse.
Now you are talking nonsense. It is these government officials creating the mandate and the associated havoc. Just because we heard them say something in the past doesn’t mean we believed them. We are simply observing the fact that they are liars and should not be believed, in other words, the same as you. Why do you waste words making it sound as if there is some disagreement going on.
Because there are disagreements going on that people here are entirely unaware of.
It means they just accept something that is obviously true. I don’t need to present evidence that George Washington was the first president of the US, for instance. Bad judges do the same with obviously disputed facts, and should be fired or sanctioned for doing so. Sotomayor is unfit for the role, but we already knew that.
Here’s a comment I posted on another thread:
Sometimes I watch Fox News. Over the course of time a multiplicity of controversial events come to my attention where there is an opposing assessment presented on CNN, MSNBC, and the broadcast networks. As time goes by then the coverage at Fox usually proves accurate. Even then the others frequently still cling to the false narrative. This is what confirms my confirmation bias.
It is possible to find out who lies when you see what goes on in a trial like the Rittenhouse murder trial. And there are scads of other and they all go the same way. Some things are hard to get at the truth but when it becomes part of the public record it is easier. Then you can discern a repeatable pattern by the liars and that will have a high degree of reliability.
Begging the Colonel’s pardon, but you have to listen to government officers. If you don’t, you go to jail. I take your point, and I don’t expect these sphincters to know the science forward and back. But I do insist that the government officers weigh things according to the Constituion, neither to penumbras and emanations (not to mention aurae) nor to international norms and the sensibilities of the something something.
Government weenies do not have the capacity to get the science right — but they increasingly have the power to make us do what they say. And Simon says (note use of active voice!) put on your mask, get the shot, stand over there, and stay home — or else.
Frankly, I think this aspect of your argument makes Flicker’s point.
Yeah, it can come to that. And they will say that ignorance of the law is no excuse. So be it.
Those are all good points about the mandates. But if you say, “We were told” thus-and-so about the vaccines, and you use that as your standard for whether the vaccines work or not, that’s just [coc-uncompliant]. That’s crazy talk and does nothing but undermine the effort to keep government within constitutional bounds.
If you point out that a specific officer on a particular date said something that was shown to be mistaken or even a deliberate falsehood, that’s different. And useful.
Being against the mandates is good. But mixing that opposition with nonsensical gibberish about the vaccines just undermines any good you might accomplish, even if your nonsensical gibberish is just a response to governmental gibberish.