Have you tried debating COVID with a liberal lately?
I have, and it’s rather pointless. They’ll wear a mask in public by choice even though they’re fully vaccinated, and demand their schools impose a mask mandate despite the lack of risk to their kids. Show them a study that says masks aren’t effective at reducing the risk of COVID, and they don’t care. They don’t want to see it. Show them the data that show their child is more likely to die in a car accident on the way to school than from catching COVID in school, and it doesn’t matter. Point out that the Delta variant is less lethal than the original strain of COVID, and it’s you that’s the problem for missing the point. They are just trying to “be safe.”
While many of these people must believe they’re doing the right thing, most of us have caught on and realize we’ve been subjected to fear tactics. Instead, we are choosing to live life and not be afraid. Since the pandemic, I’ve been to a number of super scary “superspreader events” such as a Trump rally, backyard barbecues, an indoor water park, a concert, and a theme park. It’s great to be doing real things surrounded by real people who also choose not to live in fear. We can all live normal lives if we want to.
Honestly, I think most of us are like that. We miss living life and are tired of the lies and fearmongering that came with COVID.
But COVID is hardly the only issue on which the left has used fear tactics to achieve compliance. Climate change is the next great example. For decades we’ve been told of how time is running out to do something about climate change. Al Gore claimed in his 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth that the world would reach a point of no return unless drastic measures were taken. Not only were those drastic measures never taken, but the point of no return never happened. In the past few years, we’ve had more similar apocalyptic predictions. In January 2019, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said “the world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” Ocasio-Cortez was actually referencing a United Nations-backed climate change report that claimed… cue scary music… that if we don’t curb carbon emissions over the next twelve years the effects of climate would be irreversible.
Scary stuff, right? Does anyone actually believe it? Does she even believe it? Probably not. How many of our elected leaders who try to scare us with dire predictions have exponentially larger carbon footprints than the average American? They’ll take private jets to international conferences on climate change and not even realize the hypocrisy.
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Still, how many decades of terribly wrong climate predictions can the left promote before they realize it’s all baloney? We’ve endured predictions of imminent ice ages, rising ocean levels, massive droughts, you name it, yet none of these have come to pass as predicted. But the left continues to push these baseless predictions on us because that’s the only way they know how to advocate for their agenda. It doesn’t matter that they’re repeatedly proven wrong. Meanwhile, any attempt at a reasoned debate about environmental issues can’t happen because we waste time on absurd proposals like the Green New Deal, or pointless treaties like the Paris Climate Accords.
They won’t either. Why? Because they aren’t selling facts or science. They’re selling fear. Fear is a powerful emotion, and clearly an effective one when it comes to swaying people. But how long can you sell fear before people realize they’re being manipulated? Sadly, as this pandemic has proven, there is a market for fear.
It was one thing in the early days of the pandemic when we didn’t know what was going on. Heck, even in my house we wiped down packages upon delivery…. for like, a week. We know a lot more now, and there are studies that show masking won’t change the trajectory of COVID and that kids can safely return to school without masks. The data have shown from the beginning that COVID largely affected the elderly and the sick. Instead of protecting the vulnerable, we locked down everyone, crippling our economy for no good reason.
That was fear ruling the day. Not science.
Let’s not forget that the Biden administration paused the Johnson & Johnson vaccine over a less than 1 in a million risk of severe blood clots and tried to claim that the Delta variant was deadlier than the original strain of the COVID virus. Worse yet, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of stories about supposedly “healthy children” hospitalized with COVID.
The fear tactics will continue, and some people will buy it. We can’t reason with these people. I’m convinced that they want to be afraid.
