Thursday, April 16, 2020

Who's Lying?

Life can be hard and to a large extent arbitrary.  Most of us are taught that being good is rewarded.

Follow the rules, finish school, get a job, get married, buy a house, have a family and life will be good.

Unfortunately that formula doesn't always work and, in fact, it may be a fiction.

Life is simply not a smooth path with rules.

It may fit more into the philosophy espoused in the Woody Allen film, Annie Hall where he explains to Annie that some people are living horrible lives from any number of afflictions. The lucky ones are merely miserable.

We are currently faced with a disease that is highly contagious and could devastate a large swath of humanity.  We have been faced with similar diseases throughout history, the black plague, influenza and others.  Perhaps for the first time we reacted to this one with strict measure that seem to have mitigated the damage but which has devastated the economy, at lease in the short term.

This mitigation has led some to argue the strict measures weren't necessary.  This is a chicken and egg argument, would it have been much worse without them or were they unnecessary in the first place.

Had we done less its pretty obvious that more would have been infected and more would have died.

The commentators don't care about people dying in many cases, as long as it isn't them.

They look at the workers much like soldiers in a war, facing danger but doing their duty which is to help them make money.

Many might die but they won't be inconvenienced.  A lot of the workers are buying in as they hear how "the social elite" are lying to them about the risks.

Once you have bought into the theory that some liberal elite group is untrustworthy, you start to believe the conservative elites who actually lie better.

Is it liberals being overprotective snowflakes?

Or is it conservatives being uncaring money grabbers?

That's a life or death question.

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