More from @bergerbell

Genève CampbeII

@bergerbell

Apr 19, 2022

Having a hard time understanding how one can be *two years* into this and not have wanted to really understand it, the mechanisms by which it functions.

I get those who just don’t have the time. But most of these people do.

It’s almost like we don’t trust ourselves at all. We’re on autopilot, outsourcing our brains, dependent solely on chaos-incentivized information streams + failed institutions to somehow spell it out for us.

We're so disembodied and SO BOMBARDED with information on literally everything that—for many people—it feels like you really *don't* have the capacity or right to even think through the logic for yourself. A constant, reflexive deference to institutions and hierarchies first.

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Genève CampbeII

@bergerbell

Apr 19, 2022

Listen to the batshit logical incoherence, total lack of evidence, and blatant emotional manipulation coming from the Twitter Doctors™ most outraged about masks on airlines. This isn’t new; these aren’t random one-offs. THESE PEOPLE HAVE BEEN LIKE THIS THE ENTIRE TIME.

It just worked better before—they’d always been given the benefit of the doubt—because, unlike this situation, facts weren’t so observable as immediately absurd to people with no background in this stuff. But the mode was always the same. Exploiting empathy in lieu of a defense.

This dynamic was so, so toxic and it really did skew everything. Discourse, policy, norms, all of it. Limiting reasonable objections, shouting down respectful critique and alternate policies. Same exact environment. This is their toolkit. It’s really all they have.

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Genève CampbeII

@bergerbell

Apr 15, 2022

We were referred and screened into a really special intensive program for toddlers with significant hearing and communication disorders in SF. Went for our classroom day: masks required for all 2 y/os, SLPs, teachers, and parents. Director in an N95, muffled. Nobody can see lips.

No deimplementation timeline or plan; “People are still getting the virus.” Zero willingness to consider alternatives.

Sitting in the car, crying. We can easily afford to kludge together our own services and therapies. But other people? These kids are not being served.

Anyone of prominent station who didn’t vocally strike this down and rebuke the premises of masking toddlers outright—who tried to work within the system and the logic as some sort of pragmatic middle ground to encourage it to end as an effect—is culpable in this. You did this.

Read 6 tweets

Genève CampbeII

@bergerbell

Apr 13, 2022

@DouthatNYT

We can’t have a serious discussion about a serious thing without reflexively devolving into high-stakes dichotomization. Now we have a dynamic where individual and institutional guardrails cease to function.

@DouthatNYT on the new American exceptionalism: nytimes.com/2022/04/13/opi…

Why us? Is this just the endpoint of our new social media-mediated reality, in a liberal-progressive context? Constantly performing support, being supportive enough, and not wanting to be perceived as “unkind,” to the extent it chills critical debate?

Especially in a two-party system (along with only four other countries on the planet!) where one party—whose members comprise all major academic and medical institutions—explicitly brands itself as having the monopoly on empathy? Is that driving this dynamic?

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