Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

Camera pans over a street where medical personnel in hazmat suits are loading body bags into freezer trucks.

Voiceover:

I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors say, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability.

 

I'm unsure what your link said, but the one I look at on the tracker I go to is deaths per million.

 

Trump overwhelms your thinking.

Beyond that, it seems - I write “seems” - that you think America, well, stinks. And I mean you think that in a substantive, thoughtful way.

The US is a giant nation (physically, culturally) that, despite the best efforts of a careerist federal government, consistently bends toward annoyingly local, individualistic solutions (I’m annoyed by them to sometimes) and has the kind of population where a Fox News can come in and successfully divide it up. It’s factional in a way Germany appears not to be, and while that keeps the US from being the kind of geopolitically homocidal world menace Germany once was, it’s also deeply frustrating in times like these, when it might be better if the whole nation was pulling in the same direction.

Which, it isn’t. And the way the US is set up, it’s purposely hard to get the train shifting too hard in one direction for very long.

I actually think that’s sort of Taibbi’s long-game point: Liberal media wants America the way it wants America, and when people at large don’t agree, or even want to pose questions, the problem isn’t so much the substance of their dissent, it’s the freedom to dissent, and the irritating effort that comes with having to deal with dissent, with a nation that has to be convinced, won over, even compromised with.

 

Is it a YouTube issue? That's an awfully powerful man sharing a letter on Twitter, essentially telling these platforms what to do.

 

Has literally nothing to do with my post.

And "liberal media" is a disqualifying phrase.

Are we really quashing 'dissent' by making Joe Rogan one of the most popular thought leaders in America?

Uh - oh. The Atlantic.

Why Is Joe Rogan So Popular?

C'mon.

 

Misinformation during a public health crisis gets people sick and dead. Shame on a US Representative for not wanting to see that happen. Not for the first time, we say social media companies are not a public space. If quacks want to spread their crap to the public, they can, as the old saying goes, hire a hall.

 

tl;dr re: @Azrael's riff on libertarians ... "The ones I agree with make good points."

 

I thought I was pretty careful to stake out a certain kind of for-profit, professional media skeptic.

Honest question: are there left libertarians in American politics?

I was wondering this morning if Bernie Bros might be gathered under that umbrella.

 

While Trump minimizes the toll, government orders 100,000 new body bags

 

And yet there is a Congressman, telling these companies what to do.

 

Yes, he's telling them that spreading misinformation in a pandemic is bad and they shouldn't allow people to use them for that purpose. It's not a law, it's not even a hearing. It's one guy saying what frankly ought to be obvious to everyone.

 

Sure ... in fewer than 25 words you made it clear that you were only down on libertarians with whom you disagree: "All our high-profile 'libertarians' tend to conservatism. That's why you sort of sense them leaning Trumpwise when they commence 'just asking questions.'"

Eugene Volokh, Megan McArdle, Kevin Williamson, Deirdre McCloskey, P.J. O'Rourke, John Cochrane ... one MAGAist after another.