Posted on 05/08/2020 4:27:18 AM PDT by Kaslin
The left's position on the nation's proper response to the pandemic, though shrouded in the language of compassion, is incoherent and morally repugnant virtue signaling.
Since this calamity began, many national Democratic leaders, the left-wing media and various never-Trumpers have been more interested in smearing President Donald Trump -- no change there -- than helping to solve the myriad problems caused by the coronavirus.
They wanted it both ways. President Trump was doing too much, and he wasn't doing enough. Before the outbreak, numerous Democrats were downplaying the virus and condemning Trump as a racist for his China and Europe travel bans. Later they blamed Trump for not taking the virus seriously, when in fact, they were taking it less seriously than he was. But being a progressive means never having to say you're sorry -- and that yesterday's inconsistent positions are deemed wiped from our collective memory.
From the beginning, Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, along with their medical team, were conducting daily press briefings to inform an anxious nation about the virus and the federal and state governments' efforts to slow the spread, organizing the distribution of medical equipment to hotspots and pushing legislation to provide relief for individuals and businesses devastated by the outbreak.
The media used those briefings to humiliate Trump rather than illicit facts to inform viewers. For example, New York Magazine's Olivia Nuzzi asked Trump, "If an American President loses more Americans over the course of six weeks than died in the entirety of the Vietnam War, does he deserve to be reelected?"
Editorial after editorial excoriated Trump for every imaginable sin and certainly every death -- while exempting Democratic governors from any accountability for wildly disproportionate cases and deaths in their states. They view everything through a partisan prism, and no crisis is too severe to be exploited for political gain.
Trump, they said, was only interested in manipulating the crisis to enhance his reelection efforts. He jumped the gun in expressing his hope to reopen our economy on Easter. He wasn't listening to the medical experts. He didn't care about Americans dying. He was practicing medicine without a license.
Unfortunately for these critics, President Trump was deferring to the medical experts, who repeatedly denied that he was ignoring them.
Considering themselves the sole exemplars of compassion, progressives insist that their views are the only morally acceptable ones, that all who oppose them are immoral and that so long as they have "good" intentions, neither their motives nor their policies can be questioned -- even if they are inconsistent or cause major harm.
Democratic leaders get away with indefensible, one-dimensional thinking, free from scrutiny by an equally one-dimensional media. Their statements are often childishly shallow -- and yet no one challenges them.
Take putative Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who tweeted Wednesday evening, "I've said it before, and I'll say it again: No one is expendable. No life is worth losing to add one more point to the Dow."
While this may strike unthinking people as a compassionate declaration, it is a cheap shot at Trump, other leaders trying to facilitate the reopening of our economy and Americans yearning to be free again -- and to return to work. Biden is simply expressing his party's position: You must choose between those at risk from the virus and reopening the economy. There are no competing interests to balance. Your concern for those unemployed, devastated, isolated, depressed and with other medical problems that are ignored because of the virus is illegitimate.
What's particularly offensive is Biden's reducing our concern for those financially devastated to a class-warfare soundbite ("to add one more point to the Dow") -- as if having a heart for the unemployed is promoting the rich. That doesn't even make sense, but it doesn't have to as long as it serves the narrative that Republicans are heartless.
Similarly, the never-Trump group The Lincoln Project produced an ad called "Mourning in America" in which Trump is blamed not just for the Americans who died because he "ignored" the virus but for the economic devastation it caused. That's convenient. These faux conservatives have absorbed the ideas and tactics of their progressive soulmates -- virtue signaling, the shameless advocacy of mutually contradictory positions and consuming hatred for Donald J. Trump.
You know that Trump haters from both sides of the aisle have lost any semblance of fairness when their biases compel them to direct their energies toward destroying Trump rather than seeking solutions for our common problems.
We should all be working together to reopen the economy while trying to prevent new flare-ups, which happens to be precisely what President Trump and his task force are doing.
Talk is cheap, and finger-pointing is easy, but real-world problems sometimes don't lend themselves to easy fixes. There are no perfect solutions here -- there is no way to avoid death and financial destruction, only to mitigate both.
I trust that reasonable people -- hopefully still a majority -- will demand accountability from their leaders but not hold them to impossible standards. While people often look to government during times of crisis, we must understand that there's only so much that government can do and sometimes it can also get in the way. It's time that state governments show a little faith in the American people and respect their prerogative to return to their lives while still exercising responsible behavior to protect themselves and their neighbors. We will get through this.
Satan is not restricted by the Rules of Righteousness. I thought we conservatives knew that.
Sure they can - they are firm believers that they can have their cake and ice cream at the same time.
Sure they can, as long as the ministry of propaganda does the thinking for a majority of the population...
Yet Satan can be restricted by the hedges the Lord places.
We should have reopened by Resurrection Day. With a national day of prayers and Thanksgiving.
By that standard, all automobiles should be banned because they are involved in fatal accidents at multiple locations in America every day.
We couldn't even go back to the horse and buggy days by that standard, because horses and wheeled vehicles can be dangerous as well. I had an ancestor who was run over and killed in a wagon train moving west.
On second thought. We shouldn’t have shutdown in the manner that we did. People at risk and nursing homes were the only things that should have been quarantined. Plus put a fence around NYC.
Bump
There are posters on this forum who call such talk “Monday morning quarterbacking” and label it counterproductive. They don’t believe in after action reports, apparently.
That's what he does, that's who he is.
Yes, he’s all that....but the book of Job says that God does place limits on Satan as God will choose.
Who are we to fear most...?
My point in this is that the Democrats (his minions) cannot be expected to play by the rules either. They lie, cheat and steal because that is who they are.
To expect them to do otherwise is illogical.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Democrats (and NeverTrumpers) were Americans
I have no illusions that major top Democratic elites won’t do nasty things. Yet it was eye opening to read about that one Democrat Iowa caucus person who wanted to change her vote because she found out that Buttigieg, whom she voted for, was gay and that felt that “we didn’t need that in the white house.”
There are a lot of moral minded Democrats like that in the party who vote the way they do simply because their families always did. Or they have more of a house and home, bread and butter soft socialist view as to how governments should approach their constituents. They literally hold their noses at the decadence their party has fallen into as they feel that the party still handles the bread and butter better than Republicans. Many have been asleep as to how evil the Democrats have become in terms of their beliefs and practices. Satan has moral persons in the Democrat party blinded right now.
I shook my head sadly at one leading Catholic prolife woman who was Democrat who was warning the party that much of the catholic women prolifers(which she said numbered in the 20 to 30 million range) could be thinking to switch their votes if the party refused to address their concerns. I thought to myself....”if only...” They’ll continue to vote Democrat because Catholicism tends to shape its adherents’ thought processes in a more “top down”, rely on the experts, acceptance of a more authoritarian governing structure.(Pope and church....then the king and his princes and ministers...they’d rather not vote or live in a representative republic if they didn’t have to).
Very interesting comment. Thx.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.