Quote of the Day: Modern Politics Edition

Ace of Spades blog nails it.

And then there are the Church Ladies of our new state religion - the whole Karen meme is about these suddenly empowered secular Church Ladies who live for moments like this. Normally their only joy in life is scolding people for simple sins such as not using canvas grocery bags or perhaps driving a large SUV. Now these humorless vigilantes feel they are deputized to enforce the observance of the shutter-at-home sabbath. A sabbath that goes on day after day, week after week, without any end in sight. Karen could not be happier. It is a near certainty that lockdown-induced chastity being imposed on millions of people is a thought that warms the icy heart of these charmless people. (And yes, there are male Church Ladies. We most commonly refer to them as “journalists")

On which subject, Norfolk Police clearly know who the real enemy are: people in unapproved fancy dress.

Isn't that just special? Inspector Karen wants to 'provide words of advice about the implications of his actions'. 

I guess the whole Tori Kutz thing is over now, huh?

And that's not the worst of it. There's a case for this authoritarian lunacy, just like there are good arguments against it, but the whole thing with Karenism, the most defining feature of it, is that it's the political equivalent of looking the wrong way down the telescope. Inspector Karen and the rest of the Operation Versace team are ready to Go! Go! Go! just as soon as they get a fix on this Unlicensed Thespian, but how about the stuff the Government is meant to control? The absolutely basic, pretty much the definition of being a country, stuff, like controlling our borders?

Nope, forget that. They're perfectly happy for .gov.uk to do absolutely nothing then take cover behind crappy euphemisms like 'so connected to the rest of the world'. 

Yep, that's it. It's just like how George Best died because he was so connected to the brewing industry.

Annnnnnnnd that's how we ended up in a country where the Wuhan Clan can jet right in 24-7, but if you want to sit on the grass in the park you, sir, are worse than Typhoid Mary.

There's No There There

Over in the sidebar at Ace of Spades blog, there's a really good question:

Interesting: The same people who say we have to shut down the country based on nothing but guesses and "models" are the exact same people saying we must not prescribe hydroxychloroquine until we have full 10,000 participant double-blind trials and conclusive scientific proof.

It seems the alleged "Science-Lovers" and Twitter scolds are willing to roll the dice on some speculations, but are extremely aggressive that we don't gamble on other ones.

So strange that sometimes we take suggestive evidence as conclusive proof that we must do something dramatic and destructive -- shutting the country's economy down -- but in other case, suggestive evidence is not enough to encourage doctors to prescribe a well-tested drug with minimal side-effects.

Why?

Well, quite.

Hydroxychloroquine has been used prophylactically for decades to prevent malaria. If it caused people's heads to explode, someone would have noticed by now. In fact, it may well be the least-new new drug in history, but we're all supposed to believe that prescribing it in this specific case, and only this case, is somehow incredibly dangerous. Hey, maybe we ought to tell the pills they're been taken to fight malaria, and hope they won't know the difference.

As the great Ann Coulter points out, things were a little different with an earlier plague:

When it came to AIDS, the gay community’s successful campaign to compel the FDA to allow “compassionate” use of unapproved drugs was a civil rights milestone on the order of Selma.

In a 1990 editorial, for example, The New York Times praised the “educated and articulate” gay spokesmen for bringing about “changes in the traditional methods of testing drugs,” adding that the new procedures were “a compassionate response to AIDS sufferers.”

Meanwhile, the MSM is occupying its time with stupid have you stopped beating your wife questions and bogus atrocity stories about the lack of ventilators... no, wait. That was last week, it's PPE that's the scandal this week.

It's all outrage, all the time, but no one will ask why doctors across the world have suddenly succumbed to the exact same delusion about patients getting better when they're prescribed a specific type of drug therapy.

What do the MSM think is going on? Mass hysteria?

Nope, they don't think at all. Bias doesn't even cover it. For all their ostentatious globalism, the MSM are the most insular people on the planet, particularly in the UK. Even a pandemic is viewed in terms of how it affects things in a half dozen north London postcodes.

You can hardly get them to acknowledge that closing down the economy may have negative side effects. 

All of which is by way of saying I can well understand this. How much respect are we meant to have for a bunch of clowns who offer no actual insight whatsoever, just a continuous bunch of lame-o gotchas?

They're supposed to be the Smartest People In The Room but all they can offer is parochial talking points. If it's actual analysis you're after, you're better off with just a bloggers like Hector Drummond.

It goes a little deeper as well. As US Youtuber Stephen Crowder points out, with the shut down in place America's late night talk show hosts are now just particularly high-profile Youtubers...

High profile *bad* Youtubers.

It turns out that once you take away the football team size writers room and the slick production values you're left with the entertainment equivalent of a bunch of beached whales.

Yep, the smart set aren't smart, and the funny guys aren't funny, but at least their arrogance is intact!

Hey, MSM: Wuhad One Job!

It may just be me, but I thought Piers Morgan's criticism of government policy on GMB this morning was totally over the top. 

As it happens, with a death toll of 55 up to yesterday, the virus had still killed less Britons than jihadists managed on a single day in 2005 but so far there's no sign of anyone handing out flowers or impromptu street posters yet.

“This job has changed significantly from planning for organic, people responses to tragedy, to being told: ‘We would like the people to do that, how do you get them there?’”

“A lot of the public’s responses are spontaneous, of course. But a lot are shaped. The [British] government doesn’t want spontaneity: it wants controlled spontaneity.”

The MSM were prepared to take part in a massive state propaganda campaign to manipulate the public reaction to terror attacks but now the same people claim it's super important that they give airtime to every unhinged conspiracy theorist and quack on the planet.

As the punchline of the old story goes, when it comes to the MSM and spinning the truth we've already established they're whores, now we're just arguing about the price.

Apparently, the price depends on whether or not a particular story helps the left, so I guess the MSM will start calming down about the virus as soon as it evolves enough to start filling in postal voting forms. Expect to start hearing about the vast majority of harmless viruses, coupled with glowing profiles of the ones used in gene therapy.

And then there's the other thing. Like I keep saying, 'freedom of the press' is short for 'freedom of the use of the printing press'. It means any citizen is free to set up a printing press and start publishing - or, to put it another way, it means the literal opposite to what the MSM claims it means.

There is no special group of people called 'the press' who have special freedoms over and above the ordinary citizen. That's important because the MSM has spent years supporting all manner of restrictions on the citizen's right to free speech. Remember these people thought it was perfectly sane for the police to prosecute a comedian for Felony Tasteless Comedy. 

The MSM has devoted zillons of words to the supposed threat of hate speech, and 90% of their output has referenced the same old cliche about 'shouting fire in a crowded theater'. Now we have the crowded theater of crowded theaters, they've suddenly turned into free speech maximalists.  Our democracy apparently depends on their supposed right to ask stupid gotcha questions, push absurd hypotheticals, and promote all manner of loons and malcontents.

This is who they are and whatever happens we should never forget that when we needed unity more than ever - the real sort, not the phoney baloney 'don't look back in anger' sort - these people were happy to act as saboteurs just so they could get one of their own in No 10.