September 7, 2021
MY CORNER by Boyd
Cathey
The Vaxx, the Contrary
Messages, the Implications
Friends,
Sometimes in the midst of all the assaults on our historic
Western civilization, the best approach, the most effective counter-arguments utilize
humor, mordant wit that can make significant points and sometimes attract more
interest and readers than a serious documented report.
Unfortunately, in our day and time, far too many of our fellow
citizens either don’t have time to spend reading such epistles; often they confront
such detailed information with a yawn, counting the minutes to the latest
episode of “America’s Got Talent” or “The Bachelorette,” or anticipating more
social posturing on Facebook or Twitter (which increasingly dominate our lives
to the exclusion of all else).
While many of our parents (and we) grew up, even in the most
rural schools, reading a smattering of Shakespeare (I had to read “Macbeth” and
“Julius Caesar” in high school), memorizing a famous poem or two (I can recall learning
by heart Milton’s “On His Blindness” and Edgar Allen Poe’s “Annabelle Lee,”
again in high school), being able to write a correct sentence, and learning at
least the outlines of American history…while they and we were at least exposed
to such education, today it seems that much of that has gone by the wayside.
On National Public Radio on September 4, on one of its “woke”
quiz shows (I think it was “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell me!”), a youthful, supposedly
educated celebrity contestant was asked to name the famous plantation where
George Washington lived on the Potomac River (Mount Vernon). You could hear the
contestant’s consternation and perplexity…it was if somehow she had stepped
into a black hole in a galaxy light years away. Obviously, her history courses,
such as they were, didn’t mention that. Answers to all the questions about
trendy rock groups, a sure thing. But a real knowledge of American history? Nyet.
Indeed, the accusation is that such knowledge is a sure sign
of “racism,” that is, “historic white supremacy,” whose hegemony marks and
stains irremediably every aspect, every facet of our history, our culture, our
language, and our very existence.
To follow the template of the new breed of “academic
scholars”—an Ibram X, Kendi, a Nicole Hannah-Jones (of the “1619 Project”), and
a Robin D’Angelo—“whiteness” is akin to a terminal disease, an inherited fatal and
ineradicable malady which must be literally torn out of society, extinguished,
totally expelled. And far, far too many of our educators either believe such rubbish,
or, at the very least go along with it or simply refuse to oppose it for fear
of being labelled “racist” and banned on Twitter or Facebook, or perhaps
severely punished at work or “cancelled” in the public square. The outrageous examples abound.
There has been, of course, pushback. But in our present
society, the major vehicles of communication and learning are possessed by those
who wish our extinction, and they employ those media with an unrelenting zeal,
an almost hysterical commitment, which borders on sheer madness or lunacy. They
are, as I wrote back on December
2, 2020 in one of my columns, the modern equivalents of “pod people,"
human beings possessed demonically of an inextinguishable, all-encompassing
ideology, a fanaticism which resembles a psychopathic illness.
Over the years I have noticed that one of the most effective
weapons in our small quiver is humor, especially the kind that is simple, at
times ironic, and that literally slaps you in the face. That’s one of the
reasons why Tucker Carlson has been so successful: he is able to combine a
withering critique of the latest politically-correct abomination, oftentimes
something very serious, with the ability to simplify and demonstrate the utter
ridiculousness, the laughable (if they weren’t so serious) inconsistencies of
so much that passes for politics, education, and media in our benighted nation.
You don’t have to read a long and involved policy report,
although perhaps after commentary by Carlson, finishing with an amusing zinger,
you might be persuaded to. Knowledge and understanding are, in a real sense,
intuited by the listener/viewer, the image projected, often sardonic or ironically
sarcastic, laced with ridicule…but all the same, hitting the mark.
Recently, The Guardian,
that major purveyor of Leftist thought and information in Britain, complained “Is rightwing comedy on the rise?” And one of the “rightwing comedians” on the
rise that The Guardian obliquely
attacks is a Russian-born Brit named Konstantin Kisin.
I admit that I had never heard of him…until just the other
day, when I ran across his fascinating and searingly accurate portrait of the
dominant media, both American and British. Titled, “Why Won’t They Believe
Us?,” it showed up in The
Tablet on August 10 of this year. And although its main goal is to
explain with irony and thinly-veiled humor why so many people are reluctant and
hesitant to get vaccinated for COVID, indeed doubt about and mistrust of the
entire agenda that government is now foisting off on its citizens, what Kisin
writes has far greater application in Western society concerning the role of
what Dr. Paul Craig Roberts has termed the “presstitutes,” our servile media.
Kisin’s essay is like a rapier thrust into the puffed-up belly
of our establishment media and government, slowly building and then twisting into
its target, and at the same time causing us to reflect on the ideological
insanity of our media and the Deep State the media whores for. And in the
present combat in which no prisoners can or should be taken, it may well be
more effective than the latest statistical study issued by the Heritage
Foundation or some other pseudo-conservative outfit more concerned with
appearances than the real, grungy combat we must engage in.
*****
I offer that essay here:
Why Don’t They Believe Us?
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/vaccines-konstantin-kisin
You’re struggling to understand where all this vaccine hesitancy
comes from. Let me help you.
By KONSTANTIN KISIN
AUGUST
10, 2021
Imagine you’re a normal person. The year is 2016. Rightly or
wrongly, you believe most of what you see in the media. You believe polls are
broadly reflective of public opinion. You believe doctors and scientists are
trustworthy and independent. You’re a decent, reasonable person who follows the
rules and trusts the authorities.
Imagine your shock, then, when Brexit, which you were assured
couldn’t happen because it was a fringe movement led by racists for racists,
happens. The polls, which widely predicted it wouldn’t happen, were wrong. The
experts and pundits who told you day after day that it wouldn’t happen were also
wrong. “Oh well,” you say, “these things happen.”
Imagine that soon after Brexit, Donald Trump is running for
president. You are told by the most trustworthy media outlets that he is going
to lose. Some experts say his opponent
has a 99% chance of winning. Imagine waking up the morning after the election
to discover that the pollsters, experts, and politicians you still trusted were
wrong again. Now the racist monster who you were told would never get near the
White House is the leader of the free world.
“How did this happen?” you ask yourself. How could everyone I rely
on for good information be so wrong? “It was the Russians,” they tell you. “The
Russians did Brexit, and they got Trump elected too.” Imagine that for the next
three years, day after day, the media and politicians you still trust keep you
up to date on this story of Trump’s collusion with Russia. They tell you the
how, when, where, and why: the dossiers, the whistleblowers, the peeing
prostitutes. Imagine your desperation for things to somehow make sense again.
Here comes the Mueller report. Hard evidence of foreign meddling
in Brexit and the 2016 U.S. election is coming to set the world right again.
Imagine your shock, then, when you discover that Brexit had little
to do with foreign meddling, and Robert Mueller has very little to report about
Trump and the Russians. The collusion story, which dominated your news intake
for the better part of three years, slowly dies down. Then it’s gone. No one
talks about it anymore. Imagine that bit by bit, you’re starting to feel that
the events you were told would not and could not happen not only happened, but
happened without some sort of malign interference. Instead, millions of your
fellow citizens simply voted for them. In the American case, it turns out many
of your fellow citizens who simply voted for Trump come from states that have
been devastated by an opioid epidemic enabled by a corrupt system of incentives
involving the Food and Drug Administration, doctors, and Big Pharma. (You might
want to take note of this. It will come up again later.)
Again, you ask, “How could this happen?” And again, the media
outlets and political representatives you’ve always trusted have the answer:
racism.
“Your country is racist,” they tell you. If you’re white, this may
seem strange to you. Other than a handful of idiots, you’ve never met a racist.
If you’re an ethnic minority immigrant like me, this seems even stranger. Why
would people in one of the most welcoming, tolerant countries in the world want
to convince themselves their country is racist when it’s so obviously not?
But the evidence is right there on your TV screen. Imagine your
horror as a famous and beloved gay African American actor is assaulted by MAGA
hat-wearing thugs who racially abuse him and put a noose around his neck. In a
prime-time interview, he cries while
talking about it.
Imagine your outrage as you see news reports of a bunch of MAGA
hat-wearing kids from a religious school [Covington Catholic] contemptuously
confront a Native American elder. Professional, adult commentators on TV tell you the kid has
a “punchable face,” and while you abhor violence, it’s hard to disagree.
Imagine that for days you watch coverage of these events, with expert after
expert, pundit after pundit, sharing and fueling your outrage. Maybe your
country really is racist. Maybe you’re racist.
Were you always just blind?
Imagine that soon after, however, the Jussie Smollett story turns
out to be an attention-seeking hoax: He made it all up. Imagine you also
quickly discover that the Native American elder was the one who confronted the kids, and not the other way around. “If this is such a
racist country,” you ask yourself, “why would they need to make up stories of
racism?” As you ponder this, you remember that for years now, you’ve been
expected to go along with other, more elaborate make-believe stories.
You’re expected to understand that gender is not as binary as
school, your eyes, and your own experience have led you to believe. Whatever
you learned about biology growing up is not only wrong, it’s pathological and
harmful, according to the
American Psychological Association. You no longer know how many genders you’re
expected to be able to recognize. You do know that asking questions is
dangerous.
Imagine that you still want to believe the experts and the
commentators, but now that requires you to believe your country is racist, that
men are bad, and that gender is a social construct, which is an idea you still
don’t really understand.
It’s at this point that a pandemic breaks out in China.
You are initially unconcerned, but as terrifying scenes
increasingly emerge from Italy and other countries closer to home, it is clear
that something big is happening. You watch nervously as politicians give press
conference after press conference, flanked by experts, to explain the
situation.
President Trump shuts down travel to the United States from China.
He has been widely condemned as a racist repeatedly in the past, and the same
explanation is given this time. It’s not just Americans who tell you Trump is
racist for calling a virus that emerged in China a “Chinese virus.” In
response, the mayor of Florence advises Italian
citizens to fight Trump’s anti-Chinese bigotry by “hugging a Chinese person.”
Shortly after, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one of the most powerful Democrats
in the country, visits Chinatown
in San Francisco to explain that “there’s no reason tourists or locals should
be staying away from the area because of coronavirus concerns.”
“Thank God there are some sensible, nonracist people who aren’t
overreacting,” you say to yourself. Imagine watching as Trump “doubles down on
his racism” by claiming the virus may have come from a lab in Wuhan.
“Nonsense,” you think. You’re more concerned with how best to protect yourself
and your family from this deadly disease than with its origins at this point
anyway. You consider buying surgical masks, or using homemade ones—you’ve seen
visitors and tourists from Asian countries wear them, and they’ve been through things
like this before, so maybe it’s best to follow their lead.
But the country’s chief medical experts tell you not to wear
masks, and to focus on washing your hands instead. As lockdowns are introduced
around the world, you diligently follow all the rules. You stay at home. You
only go out once, and live off savings or government grants. You do your best
to keep your hands clean, to not touch other surfaces that other people touch.
Some political representatives make the solemn decision to shut down beaches,
parks, and playgrounds, encouraging everyone to stay indoors.
You are proud to be doing your part. Thanks to you and millions of
your fellow citizens, the first wave of the pandemic overwhelms certain hot
spots, but it does not devastate the health care system at a national level.
While thousands sadly die, you’ve helped to protect those around you.
Imagine your confusion as the same people who spent three months
telling you not only that masks don’t work, but that there are several reasons
you shouldn’t wear or purchase them, suddenly introduce mask mandates. We’re
“following the science,” they tell you. This seems to make little sense, but a
pandemic is no time for questions. And who knows, maybe our understanding of
the science evolved?
As you cautiously go to the supermarket, you notice that masks
have made people less likely to socially distance. You remember reading somewhere
that bicycle helmets work similarly: They give the wearer more confidence, and
the result is often more accidents and injuries, not fewer. “Silly people,” you
say to yourself. “If only they would follow the experts.”
You turn on your TV and learn that shoppers at your local
supermarket aren’t the only ones who have been ignoring the rules. Nancy Pelosi
arranged for a salon, shutdown by government decree, to open privately for
her—then publicly blamed the business owner for violating the lockdown. California
Gov. Gavin Newsom is seen eating dinner at one of the most expensive
restaurants in America with a large group of unmasked people indoors. In the
U.K., Neil Ferguson, the epidemiologist whose projections were used as the
basis for lockdowns, appears to have broken his own rules to get some action
with his married lover. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, Dominic
Cummings, drove halfway across the country to ensure he had a better place to
isolate. The journalists who berate him for
this are later found to have attended an unmasked, indoor birthday party in
breach of the rules. The lockdowns continue.
Then a man is killed in Minneapolis by a police officer arresting
him for a petty crime. The man is African American. The officer is white. The
arrest and murder are captured on video, which quickly goes viral around the
world. Imagine your horror as you watch an officer of the law kneel on another
man’s neck until he passes out and later dies. “This is disgusting,” you say to
yourself. “I hope they throw the book at him.” Overnight, a huge campaign for
racial justice springs up around the world.
No one explains what racism had to do with the incident, but they
don’t need to. As you know by now, the West is racist, America is racist, and
police are racist. Therefore any time a crime has a white perpetrator and an
African American victim, there is only one possible motive. The fact that an
identical incident led to the death of a white man named Tony Timpa in Dallas
in August 2016 is never mentioned for context.
While the lockdown rules remain in place, the protests against
injustice spill out into public spaces. Tens of thousands of people crowd into
the streets of major cities. Few of them wear masks, and social distancing is
nonexistent. Clashes with police ensue, and in the United States, protesters
loot stores, destroy businesses, attack residents, and start fires. A retired
African American police officer from St. Louis named David Dorn is among dozens
of people who are murdered in the chaos.
Attempts
to discuss the negative impacts of lockdowns on health and mental well-being,
especially that of children barred from going to school, are suppressed.
The media describes these events as “mostly peaceful protests,” as
broadcast reporters stand in front
of burning buildings. After months of harsh restrictions, the media and
political class offer no criticism of protests that violate every element of
lockdown policy. After months of telling you to stay at home to avoid spreading
COVID, doctors explain that
rather than being a potential form of super spreading, “protest is a profound
public health intervention.”
Big tech companies go into overdrive to stop the spread of what
they call disinformation. Alternative points of view regarding the efficacy of
masks and lockdowns, as well as the origins of the virus itself, are
increasingly blocked, flagged, and censored. Attempts to discuss the negative
impacts of lockdowns on health and mental well-being, especially that of
children barred from going to school, are suppressed. As the year runs on, with
a pivotal U.S. election looming, Trump promises a huge push to develop a
vaccine. Then-Sen. Kamala Harris, running for vice president, says that if Trump
advised people to take a vaccine, she wouldn’t take it.
On the eve of the election, a major media outlet releases a
damaging report about Hunter Biden, son of presidential candidate Joe Biden.
The story alleges corruption that may implicate his father, as well as drug
use, paying for prostitutes, and more. Twitter and other social media platforms
immediately prevent the story from being shared. The media lines up
commentators to claim the story was, yet again, “Russian disinformation.” Once
Hunter’s father wins the election, it becomes clear that several key elements
of the story are likely accurate, and the laptop from which the information was
recovered is not in fact a Russian
decoy, but Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Meanwhile, in the U.K., the publicly available number of COVID
patients and deaths nationwide turns out to have been inaccurate. For some
time, any British citizen who died at any point for any reason after having
tested positive for COVID was counted as
dying from COVID,
even if it was from a car crash. The official figure is later revised again. The number
of people who are in hospital because of COVID also turns out to be incorrect.
Now that a bigot is no longer president of the United States,
closing national borders to visitors from other countries is no longer
considered xenophobic. In fact, it is widely advocated in the media. Likewise,
it is no longer considered racist to detain people at the border, to put them
in holding cells, to deport them, or to simply turn them away.
The supposedly racist conspiracy theory that the virus came from a
lab in Wuhan is now also open for discussion. It even looks like the most
credible explanation of the origins of the virus. Imagine your horror as you
learn that the reason thousands of people died in the first wave of the
pandemic was that elderly patients with COVID were allowed, and sometimes
compelled, to be released back into nursing homes. In fact, it was a personal
decision by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, brother of CNN anchor Chris Cuomo. Gov.
Cuomo’s publisher later suspends promotion of a book he wrote in the meantime.
It’s about his leadership during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Texas and Florida, which largely remained open and
avoided draconian lockdowns, seem to have made out OK. Kids have been going to
school, businesses have stayed open. You look at COVID death rates by state,
and neither Florida nor Texas cracks the top half.
It is at this point that vaccines become the main focus of
government policy and media commentary.
The same people who told you Brexit would never happen, that Trump
would never win, that when he did win it was because of Russian collusion but
also because of racism, that you must follow lockdowns while they don’t, that
masks don’t work, that masks do work, that social justice protests during
pandemic lockdowns are a form of “health intervention,” that ransacking African
American communities in the name of fighting racism is a “mostly peaceful” form
of protest, that poor and underserved children locked out of shuttered schools are
“still learning,” that Jussie Smollett was a victim of a hate crime, that men
are toxic, that there is an infinite number of genders, that COVID couldn’t
have come from a lab until maybe it did, that closing borders is racist until
maybe it isn’t, that you shouldn’t take Trump’s vaccine, that you must take the
vaccine developed during the Trump administration, that Andrew Cuomo is a great
leader, that Andrew Cuomo is a granny killer, that the number of COVID deaths
is one thing and then another … are the same people telling you now that the
vaccine is safe, that you must take it, and that if you don’t, you will be a
second-class citizen.
Understand vaccine hesitancy now?
