Is virtue-signaling a pastime for people who find themselves unable to find something constructive to do?
That sure seems to be the case when looking at the San Antonio, Texas, City Council, which passed on May 7 a Resolution showing just how much they “care.”
In fact, they “care” so much, they don’t even bother to care about facts, logic, Common Law, the difference between opinion and slander, or even the difference between nationality and race.
And then there’s the whole Orwellian NewSpeak problem, whereby acceptance of the very notion of “hate speech” acts as a gateway for the government punishing people simply for not “thinking” or “speaking” the way the politicians prefer.
As the fifth item on their four-hour-long docket, the San Antonio City Council gang crafted a long Resolution, and it was broadcast on their tax-funded online presence and cable TV. And so the journey into heart-on-sleeve double-think and speech-policing begins, with the overwrought title:
“A Resolution Affirming the City’s Commitment to the Safety and Well Being of All Community Members In Combating Hate Speech.”
And, of course, the very title leaves unanswered the practical, logical problem of how “hate speech” is defined, but, with a progressivist wink and nod, we continue – with equally unfounded and impossible-to-know stats:
Whereas, since the outbreak of the COVID virus (not the correct title, there have been lots of COVID viruses), more than 3,222,107 cases and more than 228,756 deaths have been confirmed worldwide as of April 30, 2020, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, and, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1,005,147 cases and 57, 505 deaths have been reported in the United States as of April 30, 2020…
All of which would be fascinating and alarming – except none of it can be claimed correct.
Apart from the fact that many of those stats come from communist China, and its government has been less than honest on that issue and many others, there’s also the fact that for some time, the “test” for COVID-19, the disease caused by the Wuhan Coronavirus called SARS CoV-2, only showed antibodies, and those antibody tests were often unreliable.
And, of course, there’s the huge problem of the U.S. government CARES act possibly offering financial incentives to medical workers who mark patients as COVID-19 deaths when such a finding is inappropriate. Since the feds pay more to medical centers when they claim COVID-19 patients, and the instructions sent to the workers tell them it’s acceptable to mark people as COVID-19 victims, it’s possible that the number of deaths has been over-counted, while, as noted by The New York Times, the number of infections has been undercounted in the U.S.
But that didn’t stop the San Antone Gang from hyping the hysteria and emotion, adding:
And, whereas COVID19 will not be stopped by political boundaries, and was not created or caused by any race, nationality, or ethnicity, and the World Health Organization has cautioned against using geographic descriptions that can fuel ethnic and racial discrimination…
Of course, there are many plausible claims that the Wuhan version of SARS called SARS CoV-2 was created by the high-danger Chinese government biolab in Wuhan after scientists there and, earlier, at other labs, collected samples in the wild and tinkered with them to increase so-called “gain of function” – i.e. to increase deadliness. In fact, Newsweek recently reported on the involvement of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the use of U.S. tax money, and the awareness of Dr. Anthony Fauci of the project going back to at least 2014.
And, of course, the viral outbreak appears to have started in Wuhan, China, so calling it by a shorthand the "Wuhan Coronavirus" or "Chinese Coronavirus" has no tie to anything slanderous or libelous, or false, or prejudicial. In fact, “Chinese” is not a race. It’s a nationality. “Asian” is a race. Taiwan is populated mostly by Asian people, but they don’t consider themselves part of Red China. And this virus comes from…CHINA. It’s from WUHAN, that’s how it is distinguished.
But, far be it for anyone to actually mention the sources of the virus or possible human involvement in its creation. That would be politically incorrect and “hateful.” It almost seems as if some politicians want to stop people from using specificity when discussing this thing. Strange, that.
Continued the San Antone drone:
Whereas as our history has shown, times of great fear, uncertainty and unrest can lead to the demonization, blaming, and scapegoating of groups as ‘the other’…
About which one imagines she is implying the U.S. government arresting Japanese Americans and imprisoning them in camps during WWII.
Gosh, that activity also included the closure of their businesses, the punishment of those folks when they hadn’t committed any crime or had any day in court, the trampling of their rights and the Bill of Rights in general.
Why, that would never happen again, would it? We’d never see collectivists in government shut down people’s businesses and prohibit people from being on the streets, and from gathering in public; we’d never see people punished without trial or threatened because they want to be free…
The San Antone Council also offered a bunch of claptrap about “equal treatment” of people – which seems toweringly hypocritical coming from politicians who single-out certain businesses that are deemed “essential” and can engage in peaceful transactions, and others, called, of course, “non-essential,” that are forbidden from opening.
But that’s okay, because the politicians are social justice warriors, and words mean more than reality. They even went so far as to claim to pledge to “support the inalienable rights of all people in our community.”
Well, given their actions so far, that’s proven blindingly false.
And it’s shown once more that the politicians spouting loud about “hate speech” run the risk of trampling even more rights, because they don’t have the faintest clue about free speech, Common Law, and slander. Unlikeable opinions are not supposed to the purview of government. They are supposed to be up to us in society to see and evaluate. According to Common Law, only intentional lies in the form of slander or libel – lies that harm one’s reputation or property – are to be allowed into government courts should the wronged individual claim tortious harm.
Racism, sexism, or other kinds of ugly views about people do not fall within that realm.
But the San Antonio City Council doesn’t understand that. They’d prefer to virtue-signal and reinforce the slowly thickening Orwellian atmosphere of WrongThink that stifles freedom.