Monday, April 13, 2020

Inevitably, the coronavirus becomes a political football


We're seeing the beginnings of coordinated action by the Democratic Party, and its allies in the mainstream media, to use the coronavirus pandemic as a means to attack President Trump and the Republican Party.  Any and every "news" report can and will be skewed to portray the latter in the most unfavorable light possible.  Headlines may bear little or no relation to the content of the report that follows, because those writing them know that many readers won't go much further than the headline;  so a misleading one, even if not supported by the details, will do its propaganda best.

Here's one example from yesterday.  The Drudge Report, a reliably anti-Trump source, headlined its main page as follows:




Fox News, a more-or-less reliably pro-Trump source, used this headline:


Fauci expresses 'cautious optimism' on coronavirus,
says lives could have been saved if US acted earlier


Which headline is correct?  Apparently the second, because what Dr. Fauci actually said was this:

He acknowledged that lives could have been saved had U.S. officials acted earlier, but still defended the Trump administration's response. “‘What would have, what could have,’ it’s very difficult to go back and say that. I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But, what goes into those kinds of decisions is complicated." He continued, "If we had, right from the very beginning, shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different, but there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down.”

No anti-Trump source that I was able to find disagreed with that content.  In other words, Dr. Fauci didn't "download on Trump";  in fact, he doesn't even appear to have mentioned his name in connection with the dilemma over when, and how far, to shut down the USA in response to the pandemic.  In this case, the Drudge headline is clearly slanted, biased propaganda, rather than news, while the Fox headline is a much more accurate reflection of what Dr. Fauci actually said and/or implied.

Looking at the headlines over the weekend, it's clear that most of the anti-Trump media (including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy [owned by the WaPo's holding company], The Atlantic, and the many other usual suspects) are all in lock-step over ascribing the pandemic's consequences to the present Administration's mistakes in handling it.  It's becoming a constant, daily drumbeat of propaganda.  They're clearly taking their marching orders from a central set of "talking points", orchestrated by the Democratic Party and/or its influential backers.

In reality, as I mentioned last week, from an historical perspective there were plenty of mistakes made, on both sides of the political aisle, that led to the problems we've experienced in our national response.  There's more than enough blame to go around - but why bother?  Our immediate task isn't to exact retribution for what was done, or not done, five months, or five years, or five decades ago.  It's to solve our present crisis.  When, and only when, we've done that, need we worry about pinpointing blame - but that won't prevent the same problems from arising again, because their basic cause is human nature.

In good times, we forget or ignore the bad, and so we're not prepared when the latter come around again.  It's been that way throughout human history.  The current pandemic is no exception.  Anyone trying to tell you that this time is different, that this time one side alone is to blame while the other is doing its best to cope despite its political opponents . . . they're lying through their teeth.  The truth is not in them.  Whoever they are, on whatever side of the political aisle, if they try to lie to you like that, consider voting against them and for their opponent.  US politics will probably be healthier for it.




Peter

10 comments:

TheOtherSean said...

"There's more than enough blame to go around - but why bother?"

Because available entertainments and diversions are rather limited at the moment.

Rob said...

It's an election year... They have been unable to remove Trump so far.... There is a LOT of money on the table with the virus...

Beans said...

Of course the Dems and their media mouthpieces are playing political football with Corona-Wuhan, Novel Communist China Corona Covid-19 or whatever you call it.

Notice how it got little play, even though it was big news internationally, until the complete end of the fake impeachment process? And then suddenly the Dems realized we were in a health crisis?

Trump acted earlier and quicker than many other world leaders. It was the dems making fun of him and acting against him in regards to travel bans and quarantines and preparations, that were unprepared and unready to lead.

Heck, even Slow-Joe has continued to make fun of Trump for reacting while blaming Trump for not reacting enough.

And it was the Dems playing politics that really screwed up any national response with them still insisting on keeping borders open and their pork-filled stimulus package.

Let us all hope that, starting May 1, we can all get our lives back together again.

Ray - SoCal said...

Fauci was on cnn, and they were looking for ammo against Trump.

The Dailynews is peddling the US knew about Coranavirus earlier, and Trump was warmed back in December. This is getting a lot of pushback in the most popular comments.

Dems and their allies are attacking quinine a lot. Instapundit has a good link going through issues at captains journal.

Gut feel - Democrat’s are not going to succeed in hanging coronavirus on Trump, as they did Katrina in Bush. It’s boomeranging on them. and their ignoring and trying to coverup for a China is not working. More and more the guess is this came out of a Chinese Lab. In January this was a conspiracy theory that got Zerohedge banned from Twitter, now the Uk government is mentioning it as a possibility.

Robin Datta said...

Piano wire neckties à la The Third Reich for the policymakers at the NIAID, the FDA, the DEA, the US Congress and the US Senate who hampered, delayed or criticized efforts at containment might modify those untermenschen's nature to be more cautious when their acts result in the deaths of large numbers of US citizens.

Sam L. said...

This is why I despise, detest, and distrust the media, especially the NYT and WaPoo. I wonder whether the Dem Party is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the msm, or the other way round; regardless, they're in cahoots.

John said...

Obscuring the truth and outright lying about information that means life or death
to many thousands of Americans isn't just criminal, it is treasonous terrorism.

Bruce said...

I think everyone is forgetting that it was Fauci himself, still, several days after Trump ordered the travel ban that was saying there was very limited risk to the general public. Fauci literally CANNOT "unload" on Trump for not doing enough earlier, because Fauci was one of the ones telling him NOT to. Thankfully, DJT has more brains than some of the scientists advising him and went ahead and did what they were telling him was unnecessary!

Ruth said...

Doesn't matter if Trump had ordered a shut down sooner. Half the country would have refused to do it just because it was Trump who ordered it.

Unknown said...

And if they had let General MacArthur have his way in Korea, none of this probably would have happened...

Shoulda, coulda, woulda...