User talk:Hegt

Is there a reason you're sharing the unreliable Daily Wire links with what looks like COVID-19 misinformation? How is it worth reading? 23:56, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
 * How is it misinformation? All of the articles points are well founded on fact. Hegt (talk) 00:00, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Lol. 00:01, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The Daily Wire is not a reliable source of information (cited in Wikipedia). 00:13, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Could you instead read the article instead of making assumptions? This is clearly poisoning the well tatic?Hegt (talk) 00:41, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * "The genetic fallacy is a logical fallacy but is frequently not a Bayesian one: some sources are so consistently full of it that pointing this out reasonably constitutes a refutation for all practical purposes (e.g., Scopie's law). If something is bullshit 99.9% of the time, it may not be worth investigating — especially when there are more trustworthy sources or pressing issues available". The Daily Wire is full of it. Ergo, we're not going to waste time investigating obvious political hackery. 00:45, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Daily Mail is deprecated on Wikipedia due to unreliability. --Andrew5 (talk) 01:29, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * They weren't talking about the Daily Mail. 01:33, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia does still mark it unreliable. In fact, only The Daily Dot is reliable for a daily source. --Andrew5 (talk) 01:35, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Have you considered just walking away and not dying on pointless and stupid hills? 01:39, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Words of wisdom.
The Writing and SAT Verbal Skills course begins. Feel free to participate join many other students who are already participating.[1] "User:Hegt" (inappropriate name), I wasted time with your unsubstantial additions and found propaganda supporting tax-payer funded abortion and higher taxes, so regardless, I'm so confident that you're easily taken in by Hollywood Values. You are in complete denial that that creationism helps resist drug abuse. Whatever the mainstream media might say, crudeness, vulgarity, mockery, sarcasm and parody aren't humor. By the way, note how few liberals take the World History Midterm Exam. Being a liberal means merely pretending to be smarter, and it doesn't help that strategy to display one's actual knowledge. Go back to public school.--Aschlafly 00:53, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

To address your sorry excuse for an article
"On Oct. 30, 2020, just days before the presidential election, Joe Biden tweeted, “I’m not going to shut down the country. I’m not going to shut down the economy. I’m going to shut down the virus.”

This was a lie.

It was a lie because nobody can shut down the virus."

Biden is pretty obviously engaging in rhetoric designed to walk the middle ground between acting as a leader durring a pandemic and not pissing off the rich fucks who have a vested interest in not dealing with another series of lockdowns. Shapiro has not demonstrated that this is a lie.

"Government does not have the power to end disease, as a general matter. When it comes to a wildly transmissible coronavirus specifically, no government can end the virus. Even the sainted Dr. Anthony Fauci has admitted as much: “we’re never going to eradicate this … elimination may be too aspirational.”"

So. First off, Shapiro is taking these terms in the most literal pedantic sense possible (and given his market demographics that's not a surprise). Second off, this quote from Fauci has been clipped (note the "...", indicating part of the quote is missing, and, were I to speculate, would suspect it's likely there to avoid outright defamation), and Shapiro does not provide a link for this or any of the quotes he's drawing on. That's a major red flag that his article might not be on the up and up.

"Which means that government should not aim for elimination; it can aim for some level of control. That control must be balanced with countervailing concerns, ranging from suppression of economic freedom to the effects of social isolation. This means that the lowest-cost intervention was incentivization and distribution of vaccines — a service performed by the Trump administration. The worst form of control would be overbroad, coercive restrictions that fail to achieve their objectives."

"Economic freedom" is an empty term that means nothing, and is dismissed out of hand. I don't know enough about the specifics of the psychological impact of lockdowns to comment on that. Biden incentivized and distributed vaccines. Trump half-assed the lockdowns to begin with, then half-assed the vaccine rollout, all while downplaying the pandemic, after flat out denying it for months. He gets no credit. The last senstence in the quoted paragraph is just asserted.

"And yet it is precisely those forms of control now being sought by Democratic mayors and governors, as well as the Biden administration. To make such tactics even more puzzling, Democrats are pursuing such restrictions in the face of an extraordinarily transmissible variant — some 70 times more transmissible than delta — that has far lower death rates than prior variants."

A lower death rate for a deadly disease is still in the thousands to tens of thousands. And, even with these measures, the healthcare system is already overwhelmed. Again.

"Such restrictions include vaccination passports, mask mandates, mass testing, and vaccination mandates. Vaccination passports will not control the spread of omicron, because the vaccinated are capable of spreading COVID-19. Mask mandates will not stop the spread of omicron; nothing short of N95 masks would do much to even slow that spread, even theoretically. In practice, mask mandates have not achieved their desired effect, as omicron spikes in places like New York City demonstrate. Mass testing will not control the spread of omicron, because asymptomatic people will not test — and if we quarantine millions of asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic people, we will shut down the economy and our school system. And vaccination mandates will simply result in supply chain shortages, including within our health care system, as well as ugly social divisions."

Firstly, none of this is sourced responsibly. I know this is an opinion article but Ben "facts not feelings" Shapiro is A) dropping the ball when it comes to citations for serious claims and B) relying on an argument from emotion. Additionally, the economy breaks if we have a big enough surge. Oh, and the other variants are still active... So yes we should engage in evidence based safety measures. Perhaps Shapiro ought to take a grade school level course in how diseases work.

"So, why pursue useless — no, counterproductive — COVID-19 restrictions?

No, we do not. Next assertion.

"Because the big-government lie must be maintained. It is an article of faith. And faith requires reason-free sacrifice — it requires skin in the game, demonstration of devotion. To pursue rational policy would evidence no fealty to the notion of government-as-protective-god. To pursue irrational policy and then demand obeisance — this is the mark of the faithful. And if you are not faithful, you are a heretic."

''And so regulatory genuflection becomes a test of virtue. Effectuating strict regulations is a sign of moral strength, of belief in the myth of government as catholicon. Pushing back against those restrictions is a sign of heresy.''"

That's not how religion works. Next.

"On Oct. 22, 2020, in a debate with President Donald Trump, Biden said that “anyone who is responsible for not taking control … anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America.” This was incorrect. The truth is that anyone who claimed that he could take control of a virus should be held responsible for the consequences of that lie."

Biden has been substandard in dealing with this pandemic. Trump actively sabotaged his own response.

"But that will only happen when Americans abandon the cultic worship of government and return to reality. And Biden and Democrats will fight such blasphemy with every weapon in their arsenal."

Great Man Theory has indeed been disastrous. I blame the American culture of hero worshiping presidents in this instance though.

"The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire."

Ben Shapiro is one of the owners and one of the founders of the Daily Wire. This disclaimer isn't worth jack shit.

In conclusion, this article was stupid, dishonest, boring, unsourced, and a waste of my time. The fact that you actually seem to put stock in it shows how deeply fucked the human species is. Shapiro also never manages to demonstrate dishonesty by the way, just that Americans are dumb and overly parasocial with politicians. 00:50, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * It's pretty easy to disprove several of the article statements (Biden rejected vaccine passports, the medical establishment has concluded that face masks work against COVID-19) with quick Google searches. And ranting about the "cultic worship of government" rings pretty hollow given his responses to Big Culture Conservative Government initiatives (he tends to hem and haw when encountering these, like his response to critical race theory bans and Texas's asinine bounty abortion law.)
 * Any reasonable analysis of Shapiro will determine that he's a pundit hack of the lowest kind, an Ann Coulter type who largely tracks in dehumanizing stereotypes, cherry-picking, and when all else fails, making shit up.. The fact that (unlike Coulter) he knows how to use "big words" like "regulatory genuflection" and "effectuating" makes him appear smart to some, I guess. But a William F. Buckley, he is not. (Shapiro getting destroyed by in an interview kind of proved that). PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 01:17, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Nice job GC. But despite your arguements I still believe lockdowns are bad idea. Hegt (talk) 01:44, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't care. I had no expectation of convincing you otherwise, as I fully expected you to double down on your views. I also have no intention of debating this matter. I explained how the article you shared was wrong. You can delude yourself otherwise all you like, but you will do so without me. 01:58, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * However, you're not going to persuade anyone in the wiki. If you want to share links, please vet sources better; we don't want to be a host for misinformation. 01:59, 12 February 2022 (UTC)