By Laura Ainsworth, Staff writer
September 13, 2021
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Question: What’s the most sure-fire strategy to get people to behave the way you want them to?
Answer: Scare them half to death.
And that’s really how the Democrats roll in the 21st century, citing so-called threats ranging from climate change to right-wing “insurrection,” though the strategy of cultivating fear certainly isn’t new. As H. L. Mencken said in the last century, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
There seems to be some discrepancy as to whether Mencken said “all of them imaginary” or “most of them imaginary.” Given the current circumstances surrounding COVID-19, he would have been smarter to say “most.” This virus is certainly not imaginary; it’s all too real and can cause everything from mild, even unnoticeable symptoms to consignment to a ventilator and eventual death in an ICU. It seems almost everyone knows at least someone who has died of this disease, though most of those have been elderly or affected by underlying health problems such as obesity or diabetes. Some of us, including me, are grieving for friends and family and even beloved entertainers who have died. I don’t mean to make light of the impact of this virus.
But since the vaccines came along, the government has been working overtime to make sure everyone gets “the jab” (or, in most cases, two or more jabs). Radio ads produced by the CDC call “Delta” the “new, more dangerous variant,” essentially pointing to a new hobgoblin, even though we don’t have evidence that it’s more deadly, just more easily transmissible. (But, hey, if the Delta variant isn’t deadlier, the NEXT variant to come along surely will be.) The ads say vaccines offer us “our best chance to get back to normal." Right.
The President himself is doing everything he can –- ethical or not, constitutional or not –- to get everyone vaccinated. Yet the protection provided by vaccines is so sketchy that many vaccinated people are still going around in masks.
But stories about hospitals filling up with unvaccinated people in a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” turned out to be fake news. As we reported a couple of weeks ago, there are 15 academic studies showing the superiority of natural immunity, including the latest out of Israel showing natural immunity to be far more effective than that produced by the vaccines. Details of that study are here.
But it doesn’t matter to apostles of Dr. Fauci terrified of the threat posed by the unvaccinated, who must now be fired from their jobs and generally treated as lepers, no matter what the reason for their personal choice not to get jabbed.
Think I’m exaggerating the fear? I saw it firsthand in an incident over the weekend and realized the emotional power of government propaganda. Here’s what happened, with some of the conversation condensed but, I swear, including these exact words. It got intense...
On Saturday, I went to the home of someone who had graciously allowed me to use his striking interiors for a photo shoot. (He’s probably in his 50s, not obese, with no underlying health problems that I’m aware of.) I had met him a couple of times before, but he didn’t know my politics and certainly didn’t know I’m a news writer/researcher for a conservative commentator. I think our conversation would have gone even more disastrously if he had.
His first question when I walked in was, “How are you feeling?,” as in, “Have any covid symptoms?”
Me: “I’m feeling great. And don’t be concerned --- I’ve already have covid.”
Him: “Okay, but you’ve been vaccinated, right?”
Me: “No...I’ve been doing a lot of study on this and choose to rely on my natural immunity.”
Him: (moving across the room) “What??? You mean, you’re NOT VACCINATED???
Me: No, in fact, it’s looking as though natural immunity might be way better than the vaccines---
Him: (horrified) But you didn’t get vaccinated TOO??? I just ASSUMED someone like YOU would be VACCINATED!! Are you an ANTI-VAXXER???
Me: No, not at all. I traveled to India just a few years back and had to get some shots, and that was fine with me. But with covid, there are some studies---
Him: That’s just your OPINION!
Me: Well, opinion based on what I’ve been able to find out---
Him: It seems like most of the people who don’t want the vaccines are evangelical Christians!
Me: Actually, the groups with the greatest percentage of unvaccinated are Ph.D.’s and health care workers.
Him: I BELIEVE Dr. Fauci!! And I don’t think I can have an unvaccinated person in my house!
I could hardly believe what I was hearing. This man was freaking out over the fact that I wasn’t vaccinated, even though I’d had the virus months ago and was perfectly fine. My photographer was already there to do the shoot and had been setting up. I’d spent hours getting ready for this and was on a deadline to get these pictures. And this homeowner was so fearful of the unvaxxed, he was about to kick us out of his house.
What he decided to do instead of banishing us was leave the house himself, with his wife, and they went out to a restaurant for dinner, where, presumably, there were people who hadn’t been vaccinated, taking off their masks to eat. They didn’t come home till after we had left. I never said fear was rational. Nothing about this makes sense.
This is really the first time I’ve personally witnessed such an irrational expression of fear. I’ve seen images on TV, of course: Democrats screaming at the sky when Trump got elected and leftist women donning “Handmaid’s Tale” garb out of genuine terror of what he was going to do to women’s rights. But of course, those women had nothing to fear but fear itself. Their fear was based on nothing. They had been brainwashed to be terrified of Trump.
So it is now with the campaign against the unvaccinated. They (we) are "those" people.
Whatever the reason for this one-size-fits-all insistence on everyone getting these vaccines --- I won’t speculate here, but it’s obviously not to “get back to normal” --- it is ruining some people’s lives. I’d like to leave you with this video made by an ethics professor at Ontario’s Huron University College, Dr. Julie Ponesse, just before she was fired after 20 years for not following their new COVID-19 vaccination mandate. In it, she explains that coercing someone (like her) into a medical procedure is...not ethical.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/vaccine-mandate-ethics-professor-video
Permalink: https://www.mikehuckabee.com/2021/9/the-latest-government-fear-campaign