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Re: Objectively intelligent.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
My take is that he is engaging in false equivalence. We know the Fox News people and MAGA hat crowd were shrugging this thing off as mere flu. There's tons of recorded media out there in which they brazenly did so. And many of them continue to do so today. Douthat seems to be trying to make an argument that the Left was engaged in similar behavior -- covering up stories about the virus in a fit of political correctness.
But that simply did not happen. I'm as contrarian as contrarian gets, but even the ultimate contrarian, Michael Kinsley, could not repackage recent history to credibly argue the false equivalence suggested by Douthat. It just ain't there.
ETA: Jerry Falwell Jr. is going kill hundreds of people on the campus of Liberty University and thousands beyond its borders. Douthat should perhaps write about that.
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His column is actually better than that. I was just interested in the specific point he was making about early reactions to the virus.
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“It was fortunate that so few men acted according to moral principle, because it was so easy to get principles wrong, and a determined person acting on mistaken principles could really do some damage." - Larissa MacFarquhar
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