And here's today's
So we continue with my hate vomit against Britain's most professional and tedious pub bore. The thinking man's anachronism. The fact denier's friend: Peter Hitchens. A professional liar, obfuscator, and intellectual lightweight. A man that revels in dishonesty and cowardice while resorting to fascist grade rhetoric, all to sell papers. I find him utterly repellent. Squalid human carrion incapable of neither argument nor reason.
Still doesn't stop me from calling him out on his fact free bullshit.
Yesterday Peter was regaling us with tales of how Britain, whatever he means by that (he doesn't say) is going to be abolished, whatever he means by that (he doesn't say! HE NEVER SAYS!). Let us continue. Peter has some instincts, you see...
"I have learned over many years to trust my instincts, to take that train, to make that phone call, to turn that corner. When I have heeded them I have either benefited or been saved from bad things. When I have ignored them I have been hurt. It may be inherited from our forebears, or learned by decades of experience. It may be a mixture of the two."
So this is just magic thinking. But then Hitchens is a god botherer. Perhaps he thinks the Lord informed him of all the horrible things and he feels compelled, like some prophet of doom, Job for the Daily Fail, to warn us all. To shriek about how awful everything he cannot control is. But he knew he knew! Like all good people, he could see it coming and he invites you, implicitly, to agree. Like when audiences in megachurches, hearing the pastor get all fired up, believe!
The next section descends into an excuse for him to blurt out his bold (IE false) assertion about the current situation. None of which, over the last 3 months, he has ever EVER been willing to prove. Why? Because he can't. He goes on to liken it to both the death of Princess Diana and the Twin Towers. Bizarre. He seems to think that there is an authoritarian streak behind all of it.
"The Diana episode had been a Dictatorship of Grief, in which even the most revered parts of the establishment had bowed to the mob. ‘Show us you care!’ shouted the headlines. And woe betide those who did not.
Then came September 11, 2001, and a Dictatorship of Security. No argument could withstand the claim that safety was paramount, and we willingly made a bonfire of our freedoms, wrongly persuaded that we could trust our governments not to take advantage. "
This is just a complete and utter overreaction. Of course there were authoritarian measures, but this kind of language, again, is used in place of evidence. It's simpleton outrage for the gammon masses who read this bollocks, nuance be damned. It's telling that, during the NHS clapping, he was asked if he participated; quite politely and calmly. His response, predictably, was that he wouldn't be dictated to and so of course he doesn't. I mean he could choose to. But not, that would capitulation...dictatorship! We must never surrender! Argh!
"And now we have the Dictatorship of Fear. It is not the largely fictional ‘R’ number which governs the behaviour of our feeble Government, which is only just beginning to grasp how much damage it has done and how hard it will be to repair. It is the ‘F’ number, the number of people scared into pathetic timidity by the slick but false claim we were all at risk from a terrible and devastating disease.
The numbers of dead are grossly inflated by an incredibly lax recording system, which does not distinguish between those who died of Covid-19 and those who died of other things but may have been infected by it. Many who have died of Covid-19 are almost certainly victims of the Government’s failure to protect those who were in fact most vulnerable – the residents of care homes. "
Again, it's simpleton thinking. To reduce concern about public health and the spread of an incurable highly transmissible virus that can present asymptomatically, to just "fear" is asinine. As is having to point this out. It isn't about "fear", it is about a proportionate response, difficult admittedly in the capitalist environment. The alternative is sheer, possibly deadly, ignorance. 60,000 people have died! Does Peter imagine this is false?
No he makes all sorts of stupid accusations. "Incredibly lax recording", can he prove this? No. Does he have any basis upon which to make this claim? No. Does it suit his own fear-based narrative? Of course!
But notice how he has to acquiesce on the issue of care home deaths - where, if I may be so bold, a great many of his readers (his generation) live. Of course he's concerned about them, he won't want to be seen to disregard those deaths. Despicable.
"The sad but unavoidable fact, that the disease is little danger to most young and healthy people but is especially deadly to the old and ill, is also now beyond dispute. "
This is beyond ignorance. Young and healthy people may indeed have a greater resilience (which also ignores the after effects), but they are still carriers. Since we don't know who's vulnerable and who isn't, and we don't know who has it and who doesn't, there's only one viable alternative....
"The initial claims of Imperial College London, that half a million might die if strict shutdown measures were not taken, have been devastatingly dismantled by other experts, who believe its methods and codes are, to put it mildly, hopelessly wrong." No, they haven't. What Peter does is engage in confirmation bias: he finds the, inevitably outlier, voice that supports his assertion, arrived at prior to examining the evidence (because he has none). You're always going to find some fringe conspiracy thinking nutcase that supports any outlier position, no matter what the evidence says. The problem is that, without evidence, this also becomes an appeal to authority. I don't care if you find a Lord or Lady, a Doctor or a Professor, I care that these people you cite can support their claims. They can't, he can't.
And again the hyperhole "devastatingly", "hopelessly". Not even close.
Much of the rest of his article is him railing against lockdown. Yet no alternative has ever been forthcoming. He offers no alternative other than to side with right wing cranks and the few useful science-idiots that the likes of the Mail and the Spectator also pick up on, creating an echo chamber. So much for critical thinking eh!
He describes the lived experience of lockdown in the most lurid and ridiculous terms. If you take that view a walk in the park becomes an oppressive journey through Eastern Europe under the Stasi. It's so reductionist and transparently biased it cannot pososiby be taken seriously - or so you would believe. The really troubling part about it all is that there are a great many people that do; he has a lot of craven followers on Twitter. Gullible fools who spout this rubbish, regurgitating it thoughtlessly. The kind of cry foul about "woke" culture when they perceive their ideological opponents getting offended, but are the most thin skinned of all. They whine like hungry pups when called on to provide the merest scintiall of evidence. If they do you can guess the source.
This is how Peter views wearing face masks on public transport:
It isn't remotely comparable to a muzzle. They are two entirely different things. At the very least you can still talk wearing a facemask (otherwise shopping and alighting buses wouldn't work!). No one is curtailing your freedom through the use of a facemask. It just helps stem the spread of a virus. But Peter doesn't care about that - although if you accuse him of it, he'll just dodge by claiming he never said it. A simple dishonest trick people like this always use: because we have to infer it (easily done) it can't be true. You have to specifically say a thing outright in order to hold that view you see.
I think that's enough Hitchens related bullshit for today. Certainly enough for me. I shall endeavour to finish the rest of his insane long winded lunatic diatribe tomorrow, but honestly? Why am I doing this to myself!?!?
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