{"id":80604,"date":"2022-01-13T06:50:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-13T12:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=80604"},"modified":"2022-01-12T15:19:48","modified_gmt":"2022-01-12T21:19:48","slug":"inhuman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=80604","title":{"rendered":"Inhuman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Remember in the 1980s, when some “conservative” fundies rejoiced at the deaths of AIDS patients. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a pretty depraved stance. Everyone knows that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone tell the fairly irredeemable LA Times drone Michael Hiltzik – who has reprised that particular bit of human depravity by declaring “Mocking some anti-vaxxers’ deaths is necessary<\/a>“. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helpfully, he adds “My exception applies to those who have actively undermined public health for the sake of an ideology and a culture war”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m not going to extensively pull-quote the column – which is full of the sort of “two weeks to stop the virus” cheerleading that seems to have come from a CDC press release in April 2020, or from someone who thinks Gavin Newsom is on the right track. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s not especially remarkable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remarkable? Humanity is secondary to progs like Hiltzik:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may be ghoulish to celebrate or exult in the deaths of vaccine opponents. And it may be proper to express sympathy and solicitude to those they leave behind.<\/p>

But mockery is not necessarily the wrong reaction to those who publicly mocked anti-COVID measures and encouraged others to follow suit, before they perished of the disease the dangers of which they belittled…There may be no other way to make sure that the lessons of these teachable moments are heard.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Actually, there is another way: : stop politicizing public health. Stop spreading distrust of “the Trump Vaccine” during the elections, and then turn around and claim credit for it. Stop making “sowing controllable panic” the default setting for public health messaging. Stop being whores for the Democrats, if you’re the media. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, this is more about them than – and their needs to find a scapegoat for their frustrations<\/a> – than the unvaccinated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But let’s not pretend this – mocking and giggling about opponents, on whatever issue, that die unfortunate deaths – is anything but the default setting for ghouls like Hiltzik. After watching people like him giggle and guffaw over the deaths of Tony Snow, Antonin Scalia and Rush Limbaugh, and hoot and holler for the death of Steve Scaliise, it’s a stretch to assume they have any other setting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sort of like guffawing about dead AIDS patents, only apparently acceptable. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember in the 1980s, when some “conservative” fundies rejoiced at the deaths of AIDS patients. It was a pretty depraved stance. Everyone knows that. Someone tell the fairly irredeemable LA Times drone Michael Hiltzik – who has reprised that particular bit of human depravity by declaring “Mocking some anti-vaxxers’ deaths is necessary“. Helpfully, he adds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[326,321,416,4,377],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-alt-media","category-big-left","category-covid19","category-media","category-the-second-civil-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80604"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80619,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80604\/revisions\/80619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}