That’s part of my daily email from the Washington Post today. We’ll ignore the first story, a swipe at President Trump for doing what WaPo would criticize him for not doing had he not done it—asking leaders of big businesses to help fight the pandemic. The second explains “stay-at-home” orders and the penalties people can suffer for disregarding them—with nary a thought about civil liberties.
It’s the third one that caught my eye. 9/11 (of 2001) is, of course, an unforgettable day for Americans who were, say, over 4 or 5 years old when it happened. It involved an evil, hate-driven, intentional attack on America by people determined to destroy us. We see it the way the Greatest Generation saw Pearl Harbor.
Now WaPo compares deaths from the coronavirus with deaths on 9/11. The virus has killed more.
I suppose that’s supposed to make us respond in a way somehow like our response to 9/11. But the differences are stark.
That’s not only because the coronavirus does not appear to have been an intentional attack driven by hate (though it might have been driven by a combination of egomaniacal pride in Chinese Premier Xi and foolish incompetence in the Chinese officials who failed first to clamp down on it in Wuhan and second to warn the world in time, and China is undoubtedly playing this for all it can get in terms of weakening the United States on the world stage). It’s also that the deaths it’s causing are spread over a period of weeks, not a few hours.
WaPo, committed to Progressivism and big government, no doubt sees this pandemic as the kind of crisis one must never let go to waste. The sad thing is that, so far, the Trump Administration seems in many ways to be playing right into the hands of those eager to pare down the free market and build up government control, of enterprises and of individuals.
James Mee says
Funny, at a certain level, to read this after recently seeing past material presented by Noam Chomsky about manufacturing consent. What are we being told to accept, think and see?