HOW AWFUL ARE THEY? THIS AWFUL!

Further Adventures in the Right's War on Truth

I’m sure the readers here have at least heard how the Collection of Clucks at the latest Star Wars Bar cosplay convention, er, I mean last weekend’s CPAC rockapalooza, where former NYT reporter Alex Berenson, who’s become a staple of vaccine hesitancy on Fox News, exclaimed that the country hadn’t reached the 90 percent vaccinated adults threshold, and received standing applause (actually, the goal was 70%, but hyperbole comes naturally to these guys). And that’s after the news came out that 99.5% of those now catching COVID-19 and dying of it are the unvaccinated. And that the ten states Trump won last November are the ten states with the lowest numbers of vaccinated residents. Yes - they’re actually happy to hear that their own are dying.

No matter how crazy I have seen the Crazies get after watching them since 1964, there’s part of me that still wants to discover that as crazy as they are, they’re not *that* crazy. Well, that’s crazy thinking on my part. Not only are they that crazy, they are far crazier.

This morning I discovered a fund-raising solicitation in my in-box from the “Epoch Times,” the publication of the far-far-right Falung Gong movement in the USA. I managed to get on their list back during the campaign last year, when I e-mailed them last year to let them know that I had gone out to get the Sunday paper early, and discovered they’d “bombed” the neighborhood with the paper - which I went up and down the street and collected (they were on the sidewalk part of driveways, putting them on “public property,” from where they could be removed) - and told them I’d do it again (which I did when they did it again). I always read these messages from the MAGAverse Id, to get what we used to call in the Navy “the straight skinny.” (Don’t try this at home, kids - leave it to the professionals. “You’ll shoot your eye out.”)

This particular missive was warning people that the vaccines aren’t safe because they haven’t received “final approval” from the FDA, and that you have a right to “refuse experimental treatments.” As is usual with this stuff, going back to Richard Viguerie’s mass mailings 50 years ago, a germ of truth is smothered in a souffle of lies. I filed it under “they don’t stop, do they?”

And then... and then...

This popped up in the newsfeed:

NEWSMAX HOST SUGGESTS VACCINES ARE “AGAINST NATURE,” AND SOME DISEASES ARE “SUPPOSED TO WIPE OUT A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF PEOPLE”

ROB SCHMITT (HOST): When it comes to vaccines, and I really do want to make this clear, I mean, I'm not an anti-vaxxer. I'm not a pro-vaxxer. I'm somebody that's looking at this thing and trying to figure it out. I've got people in my family, very close to me, who I thought should get vaccinated because when you weigh the risks. But when it comes to vaccines in general, are you of the consensus that it could potentially take a long time to really know what a vaccination does to people in some cases? You know, one thing I've always thought, and maybe you can guide me on this because, obviously, I'm not a doctor. But I've always thought about vaccines, and I always think about just nature, and the way everything works. And I feel like a vaccination in a weird way is just generally kind of going against nature. Like, I mean, if there is some disease out there -- maybe there's just an ebb and flow to life where something's supposed to wipe out a certain amount of people, and that's just kind of the way evolution goes. Vaccines kind of stand in the way of that. Do you follow what I'm saying? Does that make sense to somebody in medicine?

DR. PETER MCCULLOUGH (GUEST): Well, there are some reports that support what you're saying. There's one by Nissan and colleagues from Boston and the Mayo Clinic that shows among vaccinated populations the diversity of different strains is narrowing. So it's going to be fewer numbers of strains. Right now in the United States, we're about 40% UK variant or the Alpha variant, and we're about 30% now Delta, which is the Indian variant. They get progressively weaker, but the diversity is changing with vaccination. And I think, probably, the best way to think about it is vaccines really ought to be targeted to protect the highest-risk individuals. A young person like you, if you got COVID, it's very easily treatable. You get through it. Natural immunity, for sure, is superior.

SCHMITT: Yeah, you know, that's -- you make a good point there. Again, it's like if you've got this big risk, I think it might be worth whatever it is. But if you don't have a risk, I just, I can't comprehend why you would take something -- they start learning about the heart inflammation and stuff like that. I just don't understand why it's being pushed so hard on people that are very young. And now they're trying to give it to kids. You saw today, you know, the CDC saying that going back to school in the fall, it looks like if your kid's not vaccinated, they're going to have to wear a mask next year.

In case you had any doubt: THIS IS COMPLETE AND TOTAL FUCKING BULLSHIT!!!

I will refer you to the definition of bullshit by Princeton University professor Dr. Harry Frankfurt:

“So far as concerns bullshit, moreover, “pretentious bullshit” is close to being a stock phrase. But I am inclined to think that when bullshit is pretentious, this happens because pretentiousness is its motive rather than a constitutive element of its essence. The fact that a person is behaving pretentiously is not, it seems to me, part of what is required to make his utterance an instance of bullshit. It is often, to be sure, what accounts for his making that utterance. However, it must not be assumed that bullshit always and necessarily has pretentiousness as its motive. (I think we can agree that the above quote from Newsmax does indeed qualify as “pretentious.”)

“This is the crux of the distinction between the bullshitterand the liar. Both he and the liar represent themselves falsely as endeavoring to communicate the truth. The success of each depends upon deceiving us about that. But the fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor co conceal it. This does not mean that his speech is anarchically impulsive, but that the motive guiding and controlling it is unconcerned with how the things about which he speaks truly are.

“It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.

Dr.Frankfurt also notes the definition of “humbug” as defined in “The Prevalence of Humbug” by Max Black:

“Humbug: deceptive misrepresentation, short of lying, especially by pretentious word or deed, of somebody’s own thoughts, feelings, or attitudes.”

Yeah, that fits here too.

Rick Perlstein, perhaps the best historian of the rise of the New Right in America during the past 60 years, observed in an article published in The Baffler:

“After 25 years studying the American right, I think I’ve drilled down to the irreducible core of the thing. Because in these United States everything eventually comes down to questions of commerce...

“And yet this stuff is as important to understanding the conservative ascendancy as are the internecine organizational and ideological struggles that make up its official history—if not, indeed, more so. The strategic alliance of snake-oil vendors and conservative true believers points up evidence of another successful long march, of tactics designed to corral fleeceable multitudes all in one place—and the formation of a cast of mind that makes it hard for either them or us to discern where the ideological con ended and the money con began.

“But the New Right’s business model was dishonest in more than its revenue structure. Its very message—the alarmist vision of White Protestant Civilization Besieged that propelled fundraising pitch after fundraising pitch—was confabulatory too.

“These are bedtime stories, meant for childlike minds. Or, more to the point, they are in the business of producing childlike minds.”

Reading over the Newsmax transcript, one is reminded of what John Stuart Mill declared during a debate in Parliament back in 1866: “I never said the Conservatives are stupid; I said most stupid people are Conservative. It is a fact so evident, no gentleman may demur.”

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