On 6/1/2022 12:58 PM, Technobarbarian wrote:
>
>
> Life Is Cheap in America. That’s What Makes Us Exceptional.
>
> "The American homeland has never been a modern wartime battlefield. That
> distinguishes us from all other major participants in two world wars.
> And yet the homeland is now the scene of far greater human carnage on a
> daily basis than any other rich nation would find tolerable—not just
> slaughter by guns, but by the misuse of drugs and the mismanagement of a
> virus.
>
> If you are looking for a real definition of American exceptionalism,
> this is it.
>
> Somehow we have become accustomed to living with a deadly trifecta. Just
> look at the numbers.
>
> In 2020 (the last year for which the CDC has complete data) more than
> 45,000 Americans died from gunfire, a 25 percent increase from 2010.
>
> In 2019, according to the Department of Health and Human Services,
> 70,630 people died from a drug overdose, and more than 10 million people
> “misused” (a euphemism for overdoses, both fatal and non-fatal) opioid
> prescriptions.
>
> Between June 2021 and March 2022, according to the Kaiser Family
> Foundation, there were 234,000 preventable deaths from
> COVID-19—representing 60 percent of the deaths since vaccines became
> available. “Preventable” includes many people who died because they
> chose not to be vaccinated.
>
> Each of these scourges has its own pathology. But what makes them
> egregious—on top of the numbers—is that together they represent a
> peculiarly American breakdown of what in other advanced democracies are
> considered norms of behavior.
>
> If these were the numbers of deaths on a battlefield, witnessed and
> recorded as such, the total of 349,000 over no more than a year, would
> rank as horrific. (The total of American military deaths in four years
> of World War II was 405,399, and that was drawn from a far smaller total
> population.)"
> [snip]
>
> TB

I think I've finally figured out how the retrumplican mind "works". Here
are some examples that should make it clear to you, too.

1. We can't stop all gun violence so why try to stop any?

2. We can't make everyone wear a mask to slow Covid so why try?

3. We can't stop all speeders so why stop any?

4. We can't stop all abortions so why stop any? (Oh, wait. That's
different, isn't it?)

HawHawHaw!