The New York Times has taken it upon itself to offer friendly advice to anyone who is friends with someone who doesn’t believe everything they report.
In a hilariously patronizing op-ed published on April 23, editorial writer Shira Ovide explains how readers can help their “uncle who believes in coronavirus conspiracies” — immediately classifying anyone that doesn’t buy into the mainstream media narrative as clinically insane. Ovide dumps on people who are hesitant to trust government authorities or the CDC, people who are protesting to get back to work, and those who think that 5G has something to do with the COVID-19 epidemic.
“What I learned is we need to have empathy for people who are afraid of a scary illness,” she writes. “We should be on the lookout for those who have reasons to talk up misinformation. And with trust in authority figures falling among many Americans, we can step in and spread good information to people who trust us and model good behavior.”
The list of “coronavirus conspiracies” include the very real possibility that COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan lab instead of at the local wet market, the obvious fact that Bill Gates is using the crisis to further his dystopian agenda, and the sentiment that the death rate is inflated due to the fact that there are so many asymptomatic cases that never get diagnosed.
The supposed means for “helping” relatives who don’t hold to politically correct beliefs is downright creepy. The NY Times starts with the seemingly innocent suggestion that those who hold to the “right belief set” help their “kooky” relatives by “amplifying accurate messages” and “spreading accurate information”.
The piece then suggests that those with the correct, media-sanctioned belief set “use the trust” that friends and relatives have in someone they know to get them to toe the line. The article suggests that people who believe everything the mainstream media has to say enlist others in their quest to spread mainstream beliefs, including trusted figures such as church deacons and school officials.
The notion that people who don’t “toe the line” need help smacks of USSR-style campaigns encouraging loyalty to the Communist Party. These policies wound up with people ratting out their own family members for failing to embrace official points of view.
The truth of the matter is that there is still much that isn’t known about the novel coronavirus, and not all government agencies and authorities have provided accurate information or handled the pandemic in a competent manner. Questioning official narratives isn’t “kooky” or a full-out embrace of far-out conspiracy theories. To the contrary, it’s something that every single person who cares about the truth should do regularly.
Once again, liberal elites demonstrate that they just can’t fathom the idea that they might be wrong about something — anything — and that they might have to accept that there are people on Earth that disagree with them for one reason or another.
Featured Image by Adam Jones
