We're COVID's worst place? — using Business Insider as an example of Establishment mindlessness

25 July 2020

Mood caveat

My impatience with brainlessness continues today.

One can float Abysmal Stupidity into the untutored American air space, and it will consistently fly.

The sheep below seem unable to detect sappy bullshit from Approximated Truth's radiance.

Below is a 'typically US' brain-mush example.

Brain-mush from Business Insider

Reporter Aria Bendix wrote that:

The US has by far the largest coronavirus outbreak in the world . . . .

Oh, really?

And how do you (and we) know this?

Does anyone realistically think that the less economically developed world has the resources to test its populations for COVID-19 — or even to track their deaths and impairments of function?

Do we estimate that China, Russian and other authoritarian regimes — perennially worried about prestige — are testing and actually being honest about what is going on in their rigidly autocratized domains?

Does no one in the Media get it that tracking COVID's true numbers is epidemiologically (gargantuanly) challenging — regarding not just properly designing methodological means, as well as applying necessary resources?

Is everyone in the Lamestream mentally short-circuited?

Yes, I am impolitely . . .

. . . picking on Ms Bendix and Business Insider.

They are conveniently representative of our ignoramus-run, always propagandizing American news scene.

I don't mean to imply that Ms Bendix is not a very bright and capable person.

Indeed, it is her probably highly respectworthy capacity that has me irritated with the intellectual sloppiness of this one episode on her and Business Insider's parts.

Below are Ms Bendix's posted credentials

Her Business Insider bio blurb labels her as an "Innovation Reporter".

Her bio backs that New Age-ish title with the following non sequitur support — notice that there's no emphasis on innovation in its listed elements:

Aria Bendix is a Senior Reporter at Insider, covering urban and environmental science.

She writes about the environment (nuclear energy, climate disasters, environmental toxins), urban inequality (housing, homelessness, basic income), and agricultural technology (water shortages and eliminating food waste).

She was previously an Assistant Editor at The Atlantic and an in-house journalist at New York University.

She holds a bachelor's degree from Harvard and a Master of Fine Arts from The New School.

Notice that the nature of Ms Bendix's bachelor's degree is withheld

But her MFA is blazingly promenaded.

That leaves us with the picture that Ms Bendix is not noticeably trained in science or medicine.

So why would Business Insider assign someone, who is apparently talented in other fields, with interpreting and writing about what she is — given the absence of bragged about credentials or explanations — probably not?

And for that matter . . .

What the heck is the MFA-granting "New School"?

Should I be impressed with the School's relevance to scientific and medical matters?

Maybe not . . .

The New School boasts about itself this way, on its website:

Discover a new kind of university in New York City, one where scholars, artists, and designers come together to challenge convention and create positive change.

Our university takes full advantage of its location in one of the most vibrant and diverse cities in the world.

Our colleges include Parsons School of Design, Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, the College of Performing Arts, The New School for Social Research, the Schools of Public Engagement, and Parsons Paris.

Since our founding in 1919, The New School has redrawn and redefined the boundaries of intellectual and creative thought as a preeminent academic center.

Our rigorous, multidimensional approach to education dissolves walls between disciplines and helps nurture progressive minds.

At our university, students have the academic freedom to shape their unique, individual paths for a complex and rapidly changing world.

With leading-edge faculty and world-renowned alumni, we are committed to developing students who will have an impact on the world and solve the most pressing social issues of our time.

This is elite level, jargonistic — going-nowhere — babble-bullshit.

It is typical of everything American, including our military.

I suspect that SARS-CoV-2 has more wit in its impactful tiny virion, than this whole school has displayed across its entire history.

My point is that

We will not beat or contain Reality by continuing to view it through stupidity's opaque lens.

Those who are actually gifted, presumably like Ms Bendix, should be on continuous alert in our efforts to overcome Homo sapiens' naturally accorded sheepy complacence.

The moral? — In the void created by American Government's intentional refusal . . .

. . . to scientifically investigate COVID's epidemiology, our propagandizing Lamestream happily roams.

A nation populated with illiterate monkeys might act, and speak, less bullshit-irritatingly.

We can do better.

PeteFree.com

We're COVID's worst place? — using Business Insider as an example of Establishment mindlessness