This embarrassing thing has over 5,000 “likes” on Facebook, including many from friends of mine who I will henceforth have a hard time looking in the eye.
The mug, which is available free of charge “for a limited time only,” annoys me more than the “In this house we believe” signs with their fatuous virtue-signaling, generalizations (“Love is Love”) and rationalizations (“No Human Being Is Illegal”). because the game it plays is more sinister and confusing to the intellectually handicapped. It is a political propaganda device that deliberately uses false equivalencies in order to ridicule and denigrate legitimate dissent from current progressive cant.
The smug mug’s three statements of the obvious (“The Earth is not flat,” “Chemtrails aren’t a thing” and “We’ve been to the moon”) contradict fringe wacko conspiracy theories that don’t require debunking, since only a tiny and insignificant percentage of the public believes in them or ever has, and almost all of that group breathe through their mouths. However, mixed in among those topics as if they are in the same category are reductive generalizations about two public policy issues involving serious and valid controversies. That’s dirty pool, and worse, the statements aspire to end debates that they don’t even fairly reference.
Nobody sane denies that “climate change is real.” The valid questions are whether present day climate change is predictable enough to justify draconian and speculative measures intended to control it, whether the current doomsday projections are fearmongering tactics to justify a massive government infringement on individual rights and industry, and whether the various measures proposed by cliamte change hysterics relying on scientific theories and studies they don’t understand are practical, affordable, and realistic. The makers of the mug, essentially a bumper-sticker you can drink from, would have sentient citizens ignore such details on the theory that everyone should “Stand up for science.” The mug apparently didn’t have room for “Always trust experts.”
The “Stand up for science” slogan is about as meaningful as “ramalamadingdong” or “Black Lives Matter.” Stand up for what science? Adolf Hitler (and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes) “stood up” for the science of eugenics. Those who assume that whatever a scientist (or a “consensus” of scientists) concludes at any single point in time must be blindly accepted and followed are easily manipulated dupes who understand neither science nor much of anything else besides “follow the mob.”
“Vaccines work” is as intellectually bankrupt as “Climate change is real.” Yes, everybody but Robert Kennedy Jr. (now running for President as an Independent; good: condign justice for Democrats) and Jenny McCarthy knows that: it’s why we have been largely free of smallpox, polio, diphtheria, and other dread diseases for generations. But simply calling something a “vaccine” doesn’t guarantee that it is a safe or effective vaccine, and the speed with which the Wuhan virus vaccines were rushed into production raises, again, legitimate questions about their efficacy and safety.
This is especially true since, as with so much of the health establishment’s —experts, scientists—conduct during the pandemic, various statements and assertions about the vaccines turned out to be exaggerated, deceptive, or false. The mug-makers, nonetheless, want anyone raising rational objections to government edicts on mandatory shots to be considered as the equivalents of Flat-Earthers.
Such is the favored approach of the totalitarian Left to honest dissent in 2023.
If I see anyone actually using this mug, I will have to conclude that the individual is a partisan ideologue, an ignoramus, or both.
Ethics Alarms 
I’ve been vacationing this past week in Seattle and Olympic NP (which is gorgeous), but, surprisingly, haven’t seen this mug. Now I’ll see it everywhere. I did make a trek up to Fremont, which bills itself as “the Center of the Universe,” and saw its big statue of Lenin (which pairs nicely with the bust of Karl Marx I saw on the Karl Marx Allee in Berlin some years ago). Lenin is noteworthy for coining the “useful idiots”— his only truly valuable insight. This is their mug.
Per Wikipedia, however, Lenin never used that phrase. Still, it fits.
I had to laugh when I saw this mug because I literally just (this morning) had a conversation with an acquaintance who announced that, due to the Wuhan flu shutdowns/vaccine debacle, politicized and otherwise questionable conduct of US intelligence officials and the DOJ/FBI/BATFE, etc., the recent military revelations about UFOs, and the Democrats trying to demonize half the country that rejects their agenda, he was rethinking his dismissal of many “so-called conspiracy theories,” specifically mentioning the chemtrail issue and deep distrust of the pharmaceutical industry. This guy is not a kook, but I don’t think he was kidding.
Growing distrust of the government and other institutions in multiple spheres is a predictable consequence of those institutions consistently violating the public trust (and often lying about it). Such distrust often causes people (rationally or irrationally) to question even the most basic motives and objectives of organizations that are perceived as working at odds with the public interest.
I anticipate that mug being soundly mocked.
Interesting. I had never heard of the “chemtrail conspiracy theory” or whatever, and from what I gather or infer from this post I wouldn’t subscribe to any such thing. On the other hand if Bill Gates were to get his way and disburse silver oxide, sulfates, or whatever into the atmosphere, wouldn’t that entail a “chemtrail’ or something akin?
Maybe, just maybe, if a multibillionaire whack job promotes an idea of spreading stuff in the air, it’s not crazy for some to say, essentially, “hey, is that one there”.
This has nothing to do with “wokeness”
Of course it does: blind acceptance of climate change ideology and the entire Wuhan virus hysteria, including forced vaccinations, are prime tenets of current progressive cant. “Woke” as used here—correctly—is knee-jerk acceptance of progressive agendas and ideology without applying critical thought or considering other points of view objectively. That’s the EA definition, that’s what it is used here to describe. If you use the term here, use it correctly.
It doesn’t have anything to do with wokeness though.
Wokeness has to do with someone being “awake” to the realties of race in America, like social injustice and discrimination.
It has nothing to do with science. Which is what the mug is about.
“Wokeness has to do with someone being “awake” to the realties of race in America, like social injustice and discrimination.”
Yes, I know, Jordan, that’s the current dodge of embarrassed progressives—returning to the original meaning of the term and denying how the word has been used for at least as decade to describe a much broader range of ideological agenda items. And the post is about the use of “science” to justify and insist upon politically driven policy positions.
My blog, my definitions.
It’s not the “original” meaning. It’s THE meaning.
General progressive ideology like believing in climate change/Covid restrictions/the earth revolves around the sun has nothing to do with wokeness.
Labeling every progressive idea that annoys you as being woke doesn’t actually make it “woke” I get that’s a cool fad occurring in conservative circles these days, but that’s just because, as usual, conservatives like to bury their head in the sand. Like this quote here by a recent Trump voter:
“My blog, my definitions.”
That’s…that’s not how definitions work.
I’m not bickering with you on this. You just declaring that it is THE meaning has no authority—the word is used every day now to mean something far broader, and that use has been useful, because the phenomenon it describes is both relatively new and absurdly widespread. The slogan “Get woke, go broke” makes no sense with the origibal meaning of the word, for example. In the Bud Light nonsense, there were no racial issues at all. By the original meaning, a white or Asian person could not be “woke.”
The very definitions of “ethics” and “morality” have evolved and expanded over the centuries, and there is considerable confusion over the terms and when best to use them. Same thing: I have to define them for use here. That is EXACTLY how definitions work.
You can accept it or bite me. But I don’t want to read any more complaints about it. If you have another term for what this post and others discuss, swell..,
Is Jordan justification for reviving the old “The _____’s (2010’s?) called; they want their definition back.” ?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/woke
I believe resistance to vaccines has more to do with the adjuvants and preservatives within it than the amount of antibody stimulating molecules; specifically Thimerisol. Thalidomide, once used as a injectable preservative, was found to cause serious birth defects. The son of one of my father’s colleagues was born with a clubbed hand because of Thalidomide
The jab for Covid-19 is not a vaccine at all it is more of a therapeutic as it does not prevent getting sick it just reduces the symptoms. Immune responses vary between vaccines but there is an expectation that the jab will actually prevent a virus from replicating for a relatively long time. The Covid shot was actually less effective than a yearly flu shot.
I always point to Galileo and Copernicus when people tell me to trust the scientific consensus.
Thanks Chris!
The Wuhan shots are NOT vaccines. Never have been, maybe will be someday. People who receive vaccinations for smallpox, diphtheria, and polio don’t get those diseases. There are tens of thousands (probably hundreds of thousands) of cases where people who got shots still got the virus.
Calling it a “vaccine” is just one of the many lies around the virus.
“Calling it a “vaccine” is just one of the many lies around the virus.”
Even the CDC itself understood this well enough. Let’s not forget that they changed the definition of “vaccine” because the Wuhan shots didn’t actually qualify under the definition that had been in place for decades.
And yet the governments at all levels treated it as if it actually WAS a vaccine as we’ve always understood them.
–Dwayne
I’ve been resisting calling it a vaccine since late 2021/early 2022 because it just doesn’t fit the normal definition of a vaccine — vaccines keep you from getting the disease, period. The flu shots also don’t really qualify as vaccines for the same reason. By a funny coincidence I believe they both belong to a similar family of viruses.
Resistance to the Covid shots was politicized during the 2020 campaign by the Democrats, who told the public they wouldn’t trust a vaccine developed under Trump. And, quite possibly, by Pfizer in delaying the original announcement until after the election.
Once Biden was inaugurated, the Democrats kept it politicized by taking ownership, denying that there could be any possible side effects, and insisting that it was the only way to get protection from the disease. Oh and demonizing anyone who asked questions or declined to get the shots.
I do wonder what would be the demographics of vaccine resistance if Trump had won the election and his administration had been the one to handle the rollout. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in that instance, many or most Democrats would have been skeptical of the Covid shots. One of many counterfactuals where we’ll never know the answer.
Democrats would likely be emphasizing all the side effects and deaths rather than ignoring them. They would be characterized as “vaccine-related” as President Trump would be blamed for all of it.