amidwesterndoctor | Recently an article
began circulating stating that the pandemic pushers deserved amnesty
for their actions over the last two years. This article was repeatedly
shared in our community as a way of politely saying "How About No” to
the author, and to illustrate that enough consequences from the vaccine
are starting to emerge that the government has realized they may need to
pivot to a new approach (which suggests additional issues from the
vaccines will emerge in the future). From having thought this article
over, my best guess is that this article was primarily targeted at
assuaging the guilt of the left leaning voters who trusted their leaders
on these vaccines and are not the most motivated to vote for them in
the midterms (as the polling data presently indicates a landslide for
the Republican party).
When I read through this
article, I realize the author highlighted a very common problem I
observe in human interactions (which I will admit I have also been
guilty of). The author is demanding to receive forgiveness for their
conduct, but in their apology, is refusing to admit they did anything
wrong. In order to accomplish this, they utilized a variety of
manipulative rhetorical constructs that are relatively simple and
frequently utilized.
Because it is so common to
encounter propaganda pieces like this, I thought there might be some
value in illustrating my thought process as I read this article. I tried
to not make this be too sophisticated so that it accurately portrayed
what jumped out at me when I first read the article. Additionally,
there are a few pieces of information I consider to be quite important
to know in my commentary and many more in the comments.
In reading this analysis, it is important to remember that many people make their decisions based on what their peers or the media tells them to do (which is likely the audience this article was written for) rather than being self directed and using critical thinking to discern which decision makes the most sense to them. As a result, we almost certainly interpreted this article dramatically differently from its intended audience which is receptive to this style of persuasion.
Thinking about this article more, I believe the fundamental
logical error in this article is that leaders should be absolved of
their responsibility for making incorrect decisions if there was a
degree of uncertainty with the information at hand. This is not the
standard we have held our leaders to, as their job is always to make the
best decision they can with the information that is available, and in
most eras, if the decision was correct they were praised for their
leadership, whereas if the decision was incorrect they were blamed for
their mistakes. The “but I couldn’t have known!” excuse has never been
deemed an acceptable way for leaders to justify their mistakes.
In
the past, leaders have successfully navigated much greater degrees of
uncertainty. In the case of COVID-19, Ron DeSantis, who had no previous
training in public health or medicine, was able to look at the data
himself and correct discern what policy needed to be followed. Although
DeSantis deserves praise for his leadership, the fact that he was able
to successfully figure this out without a scientific background
demonstrates that the degree of “uncertainty” here was clearly
manageable.
As this post shows, it can credibly be
argued much of this article was intentionally deceptive. What I am more
surprised by is the degree of a lack of insight the author shows into
the mistakes that were made. I should note that this is very common
behavior you will observe from those who have been influenced by cults
or cult like groups. As one reader remarked, it is astounding how much
the quality of journalism has declined over the last few years and that
an article of that quality made it to publication:
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