The High Priestess of the Cult of Selfishness

"Dumber than a box of rocks" might be an insult to rocks

I don’t expect to win every debate I engage in. Sometimes I’ll even enter into a debate knowing full well that my position might not be not the most solid or defensible. I’m not afraid of losing an argument or even of being proven wrong. Sometimes I’m hoping to learn a thing or two. I figure that if I can leave a debate smarter- even if I “lost”- then I’ve come out ahead.

What I don’t understand is the idea of going into verbal combat with an unarmed opponent. I sometimes wonder if Conservatives like Tomi Lahren even bother to check their facts. Or are they convinced that the fact of believing and verbalizing them renders them incontrovertibly true?

Yes, COVID-19 has “a high survival rate for most people,”- but that doesn’t mean what Lahren thinks it means. This attitude, which holds that COVID-19 is only a little worse than a bad case of the flu, ignores the reality that more than 600,000 Americans have succumbed to date. But even beyond the deaths are those left with long-term effects. Clearly, “a high survival rate” is only a small part of the story, and Lahren is ignoring the death and devastation COVID-19 has wrought in America and worldwide.

As for her contention that “[l]awlessness and thuggery in our streets” DOESN’T have a high survival rate, she’s offering a deliberately vague argument. Not only does she not define “lawlessness and thuggery,” she offers no hard evidence to support whatever her argument is.

She conveniently ignores- or is completely unaware of- that while there were 462 murders in New York City last year, 30,000 people died from COVID-19.

I won’t even get into the fact that murders aren’t an airborne contagion….

And if Lahren won’t define “lawless and thuggery in our streets,” I have a suggestion for where we might start.

Despite what Lahren what have us believe, the COVID-19 vaccines aren’t about freedom. Nor are they about evil, capricious Big Government bending the “little guy” to their will. No, this is about convincing Americans to think about something bigger than themselves. It’s about persuading people from all walks of life that we’re all in this together and that we all have a part to play. It’s not just about protecting oneself; it’s about protecting those around you. It’s about protecting your community.

Tomi Lahren has long been the High Priestess of the Cult of Selfishness, the prophetess of “I got mine, you can damned well get your own.” Her definition of freedom is that being an American means that a free citizen owes nothing to anyone. But, unfortunately, it’s a dog-eat-dog world…and we’re all wearing Milk-Bone underwear. We get to where we are in life independently, and we owe nothing to anyone else.

What a depressing and tragic outlook on life.

The sad reality for Lahren and people who think like her is that the ONLY way out of this pandemic is together. In a world where something like 99.5% of all COVID-19 deaths occur among the unvaccinated, it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to figure out what needs to happen.

The bottom line is simple: We’ve been given a tool and a way out of this horrible pandemic. Yet, despite this, some folks are too arrogant/ignorant/suspicious to seize the brass ring.

I truly feel sorry for people like Tomi Lahren, who go through life angry, suspicious, and default to assuming the worst of others. What makes it even worse in this situation is that there are so many times in our history when Americans have pulled together to defeat a common enemy.

Sadly, we no longer trust one another enough to pull together for the common good. Because of this, history will never compare us to the “Greatest Generation.”

We really should be better than this.