Respectfully, Before You Take Another Sip of that Punch, Do You Think Jim Jones May Not Have Your Best Interests in Mind?
Respectfully, Before You Take Another Sip of that Punch, Do You Think Jim Jones May Not Have Your Best Interests in Mind?
In September, you wrote a piece comparing dumb anti-vaxxer right-wingers in Tennessee to the enlightened and caring people of Prince Edward Island; by caring about each other, you wrote, the people of PEI had done what was necessary to defeat COVID-19.
Your conclusion in September: "It’s darkly ironic that the same miracle drugs that could allow us to defeat a once-in-a-century plague have themselves become the seed pathogen for a conspiracist outbreak that’s not only undermining public-health policy, but even causing mobs of anti-vaxxers to assail politicians in public with epithets and gravel."
Today, the highly vaccinated population of PEI is being crushed by COVID-19, despite the prevalence of the "miracle drugs."
What struck me about your September column was the degree to which you didn't examine any of the arguments vaccine-hesitant people in Tennessee were making — you just assumed that their views were stupid and baseless conspiracy theories. A few months later we can see that double-vaxxed and triple-vaxxed people are getting sick. We can see that the vaccines — the "miracle drugs" — don't have the promised efficacy. Are you willing to revisit your September column, and the presumptions that drove your analysis? Are you willing to be part of a conversation, or are you still operating on the assumption that people who disagree with you on the topic of the available COVID vaccines are stupid and evil?
What I'm left with is this: In a column about idiots who don't understand and can't be reasoned with, you explicitly used the word "miracle," placing COVID-19 vaccines on a religious plane and elevating them above debate, or even examination. Who dare question the MIRACLE!?!?
That's a remarkable irony in a column about rational thought and conspiracy theories, don't you think?
I hope you'll start over, with some small degree of moral modesty.
thanks,
Chris Bray
Your reference to Rev. Jones is very apt.
What you need to ask Mr. Kay is, "What caused the hole in your heart, and what healthy thing could you fill it with?" I once taught a young adult bible class using the Socratic method and suggested we next discuss whether God is almighty. Some young woman pulled out her bible, found a passage, read it, and basically ended with, "God said it. I believe it, and that settles it!" No nuance about multiple translations, words evolving over the centuries for her! George Carlin once characterized these folks as, "I used to be all strung out on drugs, now I'm all strung out on the Lord." Jesus taught in parables because they're harder to twist than mere declarations.
It's the outliers of the antelope herd who get gobbled up by the lions, but as George Bernard Shaw said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
I'm tempted to go on more digressions, but suddenly I am run over by a truck.
I get it. The use of the word miracle was purposeful, to get the rubes to buy in with a buzzword.