Thread by @JuliusGoat

Where I Live, Nobody Cares About Anybody But Themselves

I’m from West MI and I can attest that the proud lack of regard for human life is quite normal here. 800,000 have died in the US—1 in 100 elderly. Schools and hospitals here are near the breaking point. He says caring makes you out of touch.

The Atlantic should be ashamed.

He should be ashamed, too, but he won’t be. He fully expects to not only be permitted to go on sharing his community’s selfish degeneracy, but to be preferentially accommodated. He thinks caring is for urban snobs.

800,000 and counting.

The Atlantic should be ashamed.

There's a word for the conservative reaction to this pandemic: depravity.

Imagine if all of Boston was killed in an earthquake—every human being dead—and smarmily bragging that nobody where you lives cares.

That's almost as bad as the depraved conservative reaction to Covid.

Almost as bad, of course, because the event isn't over—it's ongoing, and their unconcern—their depraved unconcern—keeps it going.

They're proud of their performative sociopathy—not despite the fact that it distresses the rest of us, but because it does.

More, they take our quite natural distress as an indicator of their own righteousness. They expect their ability to let us go on dying to be honored as their natural right, as much so as their right to go on menacing us about it without having to suffer our disapproval.

And yes, their numbers are many. But their numbers don't justify them, and none deserved a national platform.

800,000 are dead and this is who you let talk? This is what you publish? This is the perspective you accommodate?

The Atlantic should honestly be fucking ashamed.

Here's another recent story. One of many.

In times like these, Where I Live, Nobody Cares is something to say with a horrified hush, not smugly proclaim in a national publication.

My question for conservatives, finally: where is your humanity?

time.com/6111902/covid-…

Someday, if and when we are past this moment, they'll tell themselves and us they didn't know. They'll say nobody knew.

But everybody knew. They knew. They bragged they didn't care, and expected to still be considered good.

Conservatives: what the fuck is wrong with you?

And my question for The Atlantic's editor in chief @JeffreyGoldberg:

For what other national human tragedies with a death count past 800k, for what other global tragedies with a death count past 5 million, would you promote a perspective of smug collective unconcern, and why?

What is valuable in this moment about the depraved conservative perspective? What do they offer in this time of trouble but exacerbation? What is it about their intentions and beliefs that deserve our accommodation, or anything but appropriate disgust and total opposition?

1) This is a false dichotomy. An op-ed is, very specifically, not reporting; it is literally promoting a viewpoint.

2) The given example is bad anyway. Gibson isn’t some world leader; he’s a movie star with movies to promote. Interviewing him literally counts as promoting him.

https://twitter.com/alex_tolle/status/1470771935017644032