Thread by @ajcdeane

(As a vaccinated person, I still say…)

This looks suspiciously like “ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE” territory.

Look at those awful people over there! Yes, THEM! They’re responsible for our ills! Label them! Shame them!

Always ends well.

https://twitter.com/stigabell/status/1467447812396929027

I’ll be off for my booster soon… but, as I go, I’ll still lament the astonishing willingness of some to demonise and attack a minority of whose motivations and lives they know perhaps little, in a fashion they’d decry if applied to some other group.

Those smokers there! The obese over there! They are drains on our society! They selfishly take resources from others! We will be purer without them! And as for those people different to me over there…

And so on.

After all, the principle of universal healthcare is that it’s - er - universal. I accept that others may use it much more than me, and don’t object, in part on the basis that - who knows? - I may do the same one day. Stig’s position undermines that.

Once you’ve destroyed that basic fundamental, you go to a dark, dark place, very quickly. After all, who do you think uses healthcare most? “Drains” it? The elderly. The chronically sick. At present, we support them unquestioningly. Rightly. But on Stig’s logic…

As for those injured in sports they undertook willingly - let them suffer! They selfishly chose it! And so on.

I suppose what I mean is that it’s a position that, thought about even briefly, is collectivist and compulsion-based in a way that most those espousing it would find antithetical to the liberalism and kindness they likely ostensibly think to be at their core.

They avoid this by not thinking about it. Instead, if disagreed with, shout louder, abuse the other person, get personal, accuse them of wanting people dead, ask how they can sleep at night.

After all, it’s easier than wondering if you’re the baddie, and feels a lot better.