I believe what drives the Herman Cain Award goes back long before COVID.<p>COVID denialism has a lot of overlaps with other anti-intellectualism, such as climate denial and evolution denial. But you can deny climate change and evolution without it ever really affecting you. It doesn't matter if the arguments are absurd and easily refuted: the conflicts are too distant to really come back and bite you. At least, not in any way you can directly connect.<p>I believe that this is about more than just the difficulties that come from a disease we should have been able to beat. It's about a longstanding series of overlapping arguments where no amount of argumentation -- no matter how kind, reasonable, or thorough -- can ever make the slightest bit of progress.<p>These are in areas not of value judgments or different interpretations, but where the science is absolutely overwhelming. And there have been social arguments, such as same-sex marriage, where the continued to make utterly baffling arguments and would not be persuaded by any amount of reason.<p>At last, here is an argument they can't Gish Gallop away from.<p>Many people (including me) would agree that the schadenfreude is unworthy and unhelpful. But it's been a very, very long time coming, and that's going to make it hard to resist.
For anyone who isn't aware, it's a subreddit that takes the posts of people who brag about COVID being harmless and their lack of precautions and how they're voting against safety measures, and puts them side by side with announcements of their deaths.<p>A common format is:<p>[Person makes a post about how they aren't wearing a mask or getting vaccinated because their immune system is great] [Person's relative makes a post about how person died]<p>It's literally just a COVID-themed Darwin Award. There's nothing special or particularly horrific about it. It's just a vaguely boring place for people to vent their anger.
I was disgusted but not surprised when I learned about the HCA subreddit. It’s petty, brutish and childish. It reminds me of when Bin Laden was killed in 2011 and they televised a stadium full of Americans cheering and celebrating. I thought it was unbecoming of a nation to cheer someone’s death no matter how justified. And my opinion hasn’t changed.
Reddits un-logged-In default home page is full of violence and death, and as long as the perpetrators of violence and hate match the political (Bernie bros left), economic (upper middle class), ethnicity (lily white) and religious status (none) of reddits bubble, the violence is glorified and amplified by the magic of fellow travelers and algorithms.<p>This is why the violence didn’t go away with trump and will only escalate from here until ultimately it rips this country apart. Forums like this serve to dehumanize any who might disagree. It differs only from alt-right forums in size and scale.<p>Politicians are both the seed of this problem and using their social network to fan the flames. The current Vp said that she would not take the vaccine if President Donald Trump recommended it. Trump has refused to be vocal about vaccines despite funding and accelerating them.<p>The problem at the end of the day isn’t the “in” or the “out” populations. It’s the mechanism drawing us into ever greater hatred of “the other”..<p>In the future, maybe we will named genocides and political violence as Facebook or Reddit awards.<p>Lest someone think that I am being overly dramatic - it has already happened once.<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...</a>
Coincidentally I found that subreddit this morning and it was a stark reminder of why I don't visit that site much anymore.<p>It detailed the gradual death of a woman from her perspective and then her husband's perspective based on Facebook posts.<p>Someone took the time to screenshot each of them and create an image gallery, then everyone went wild laughing and denigrating these people. "Bible study is OVER" was one that stood out to me as petty and cruel.<p>I couldn't help but think of how ironic it was that these people railed on about others' deficiencies (of which, if they were present at all, were clearly not a deliberate choice or desire of the victims) were clearly revealing their own different yet still disturbing deficiencies.<p>I think I'd prefer a vaccine-avoiding person with misguided convictions over someone who publicly denigrates the deceased about their culture, appearance, family, etc. over poor decisions about a vaccine.<p>I refer to a couple quotes when ignorance in others is a problem:<p>> Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All of these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill... I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no man will involve me in wrong, nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him; for we have come into the world to work together. (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations)<p>> For if one shows this, a man will retire from his error of himself; but as long as you do not succeed in showing this, you need not wonder if he persists in his error, for he acts because he has an impression that he is right. (Epictetus, Discourses, II.26)<p>While we may be physically injured by ignorance of vaccines (through unnecessary spread of sickness), I think the general point stands. There's no need whatsoever to pour hate on these people after they've suffered and even died.