Trumpers Don't See Why Bummer Media Keeps Bringing Up Unemployment And Death
Pity party. PITY. PARTY.
Republicans, for the most part, see sincere empathy as their enemy. They see it as a way they lose. Elections, public confidence, etc. People start feeling badly for other humans, next thing you know, they start thinking crazy shit like "Maybe we should get food to people who don't have food!" or "Maybe everyone should have healthcare after all!" instead of "Boy! I sure do like it when other people starve and die, because it's a reminder that I'm winning!" It's why they didn't allow pictures of caskets during the Iraq War, because back when they did that during the Vietnam War, people started thinking of those caskets as actual human beings, actual teenagers sent off to die in an obviously stupid war.
Now, during a pandemic, some of them are striking out against people feeling bad that other people are losing their jobs and still other people are dying. They're thinking of those people as people instead of as numbers. It's super easy to be chill about people dying in horrible ways if you just think of them as numbers.
On "Fox and Friends" yesterday, White House economic advisor Peter Navarro lashed out at the media, claiming that everyone on the Sunday shows was just throwing a big ol' "pity party" for unemployed people and comparing things to the Great Depression when this is absolutely nothing like the Great Depression, except for all of the unemployed people.
WH trade adviser complains media comparing current unemployment figures to the Great Depression was a “pity party.” https: //t.co/NpWJ6kZzPO
— TPM Livewire (@TPM Livewire) 1589215435.0
"That was a pity party yesterday on the Sunday shows," Navarro complained on "Fox and Friends," singling out CBS News "Face the Nation" host Margaret Brennan, ABC News "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos and "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace.
"This is not the Great Depression," the White House official continued. "Anybody who thinks this is the Great Depression doesn't understand either history or economics."
Navarro claimed that President Donald Trump had built "the strongest and most beautiful economy" before the virus took hold.
Can we just take a moment here and appreciate the creepiness of Trump's acolytes adopting his linguistic tics like that? Like, yes, it's weird enough that Mr. Navarro calls feeling sad that people are unemployed a "pity party" as opposed to "a normal, human, non-sociopathic reaction to things," but saying things like "the strongest and most beautiful economy" is bizarre. It's like that episode of "Punky Brewster" where she and Cherie wanted to hang out with the cool 6th grade girl gang, the Chiclets, and started talking like valley girls to fit in. But at least they defected when the Chiclets said that in order to hang out with them, they had to do one of the 47 different kinds of drugs they kept stashed in a cigarette box, several of which looked suspiciously like Excedrin.
Pile of drugs from the Punky Brewster "Just Say No" episode. Pretty Sure there's a Good'n'Plenty in there somewhere.
But I digress.
"Now it's going to be a long process because of the structural adjustments that are going to take place as we adapt to the virus socially and culturally and economically," he said. "But this Great Depression pity party stuff I saw yesterday, this ain't that."
Well, let's see how he feels when I start singing "Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out," eh?
Navarro isn't the only one mad at the media for not being upbeat enough. John Nolte over at Breitbart is sick and tired of the media talking about all of the people dying without once bringing up all of the people who are not dying.
For what are obviously partisan reasons, the media are desperate to stay focused on the coronavirus death count, even though there is not much that can be done about those deaths.
The media "guardians" at both CNNLOL and the far-left Washington Post are demanding the media stay tightly focused on death-death-death. But other than to exploit those deaths for political purposes — you know, pretending every death is President Trump's fault, scare people into staying home, bully governors into keeping their states closed so we enter a Great Depression and elect Rapey Joe Biden to save us in November — this is all, well, pretty stupid and not a little anti-science.
Yes, because according to "science," people never die. They have everlasting life with Jesus and all of the dinosaurs he rode around Bethlehem in his lifetime. And talking about people dying from COVID-19, just because people are dying from COVID-19, is clear partisanship. If the media were being fair, they would tell everyone that everything is so great right now because Donald Trump is president, and then everyone would go out and live their lives and go to work, not even noticing that fewer and fewer people keep showing up each day.
Nolte then goes on to list the large numbers of people who died from other epidemics, noting that we didn't do anything like this when they first came on the scene.
The Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918… Did you know there's still no cure for that? In some form, it's still out there. What saved future generations was either the virus mutating into a less lethal strain after its third wave in 1919, but before its fourth wave in 1920, or it was herd immunity — or it was some combination of both. Either way, the Spanish Flu is still around .
Before it was over, worldwide that sucker infected 500 million, and anywhere from 50 to 100 million died , including some 500,000 to 675,000 Americans.
In 1968, the Hong Kong Flu hit, killing one to three million worldwide and around 100,000 here in America. The Hong Kong Flu is still out there infecting people every flu season.
Sssshhh . No one point out that maybe not as many people would have died from those epidemics if they had been doing what we're doing now. That would be awkward.
Not caring whether non-fetal-Americans live or die or have jobs is a slippery slope to a progressive worldview — and many conservative talking heads have been fearful that this could truly happen.
Fox article: Laura Ingraham warns the left is using coronavirus pandemic to 'remake America into a progressive society'
And you know what? They're not wrong. The problem is, people actually are dying, people actually are losing their jobs. These things are touching other people and as many idiots as we have out there chanting for their right to get infected and to infect others, there are going to be a few (not many, but a few) getting a wake-up call that has absolutely nothing to do with the media throwing a "pity party."
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I was just thinking yesterday that we've had nearly a month's worth of 9/11s.
I honestly don't think the press is covering the deaths enough. That's such a huge number that I think humans can't take it in. It becomes just a statistic, or a data point on a graph. Not because people (well, decent people who aren't sociopaths) don't have empathy, but because it's too awful and the human mind tries to protect us from it.
The media should be showing body bags and refrigerated trucks and hundreds of coffins and funerals. Because people need to be reminded that this isn't just a fight over who gets to have their hair cut or who gets a little sick and gets better.
Seriously. That's the population of a small city. 80 thousand people. Nearly 27 9/11s. Think of the days and days of crying many of us did after 9/11. But this is dispersed, it's quiet, and it's unseen because families can't even be at the hospital with their loved ones when they die. It's often after weeks on a ventilator.
America needs to feel the weight of this many deaths, to grieve it, and to understand it.
And it's hiding in plain sight. Of course.