askchapo

Dear Aunt Chapo,

From time to time, I encounter self-described "free speech advocates", who make the claim that "sunlight is the best disinfectant". This is usually the most agreeable part of their claims, and so I will respond positively: "yes, the only truly effective treatment is exposure to lethal doses of radiation", but they always react as if that isn't what they meant.

This leaves me confused, because if what they actually meant was that the best way to deal with a dangerous pathogen is to internalise it and every poison it produces, surely at least one of them would have said "phagocytosis is the best disinfectant", but they never do. It's always "sunlight", and the mechanism of action there is definitely deadly radiation.

Now, they're obviously not saying that the appropriate response to an invasive organism set on hijacking the host's systems in order to reproduce itself unchecked with the ultimate result of killing the host is to suppress the immune system, sit back, and let it do whatever it wants, because that's insanely suicidal. Yet I often get the feeling that this is what the advocates do actually want. Like I say, I'm confused.

Are they actually saying that we should send nazis to tanning salons or off on a warm holiday for some UV exposure? They do tend to look pale, you know?

Anyway, I'm sure your advice will be as helpful as ever.

Yours,
Confused in Claremont

Edit: Thanks to all the folks taking the time to read through this and correct my thinking. I'm seeing how I wound myself up into a kinda toxic headspace and appreciate the hand out of it.

Context: I spent way too much time on Reddit this week getting into dustups with people blaming Dearborn, Michigan for everything that's wrong in the world. Turns out I'm too much of a pugilist to agitate correctly and I'm stuck unable to metabolize my disappointment that the libs are refusing to learn anything. I'll get through it. Anyway, one of the discussions centered around users giving up their organ donor status because they don't want their organs going to Trump voters.

My initial reaction was that it was spiteful and petty as fuck to rescind your organ donor status over an election not going your way*, and if I'd had more patience and less moral outrage I probably could've come up with some sort of clever observation that folks who were okay with waiting until after an election for meaningful action to be taken on a genocide were clearly okay with instrumentalizing the lives of others to achieve an outcome, so maybe they were throwing stones from inside a glass house. But, as I chewed on that argument a little more, I started to wonder. I didn't really reflect a whole lot on checking the organ donor box; as a materialist I'm assuming I'm not going to need my organs if I meet an untimely demise and it makes sense to let someone else have them if they can do some good; ethics committees exist to make sure they'll be put to good use. But , at the same time, an ethics committee signed off on a heart for Dick Cheney, a man so famously heartless he couldn't even be bothered to properly thank the family of the kid whose heart he received. If I could add a clause to my organ donor registry excluding Dick Cheney from my organ donation, I would, even if the odds of him continuing to power his unholy grasp on life with my kidneys are astronomically low. If there's anyone in this world who's less entitled to even the organs he grew himself, it's him.

And over the last year I've developed a pretty deep pessimism about Americans in general. I stupidly thought we'd learned as a country from the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan and those of us who hadn't become irremediable chuds could be more thoughtful in the wake of October 7th, but nope, even the progressives bayed for more blood. If there's one thing I've seen in the wake of the election, it's that the people who care are an unwelcome minority.

I know it's not everyone and that I've probably done myself no favors with the amount of time I've spent online since COVID started, but I feel like I'm trapped in a death cult and it seems perverse to allow my body to continue it even after I've died. I'm considering withdrawing my organ donor registration and willing my body to science instead.

tl;dr: you can't have my lungs unless you can recite The Internationale

*Side note: one thing I've discovered is that libs who are loudly proclaiming that they're done helping anyone who didn't vote for Kamala Harris is to express the hope that they don't find themselves in need of help only to find it similarly conditioned. They all assume they're going to be fine and the one in position to lend support and to imply the possibility of the inverse can lead to some really, really angry reactions.

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What does this mean

Hello again, Auntie.

I wrote for advice some time ago [Confused in Claremont], and just getting the problem out there was so renewing, I felt the need to ask a follow-up question that has also been bothering me. You see, sometimes I disagree with the free-speech advocates, and that goes even worse!

For example, to the previously mentioned "sunlight is the best disinfectant" claim, I will just ask the question: "Isn't drowning in bleach actually the best disinfectant?" (The manufacturers always tout its efficacy and, as a believer in free markets, it's important to take every marketing claim at face value. And no one's selling sunlight, are they? So that must be useless.) But they don't like this either; I can't win! And when I also point out that drowning in bleach has the added benefit of wide applicability, the liberal objectors call me "murderously uncivil". But do you know what happens if you don't drown germs in bleach? You get a stinky toilet. And what's civil about that? Or cholera?

And as for the objectors who "lean right", well, they start to shriek in what sounds like German? This is America, buddy. Speak English. I think they call me a "radical extremist", but this is just plain wrong. Like them, I'm an apolitical centrist who just thinks it's important to hear out opposing voices and pave the way to a future in which all the people whose existence irks me have died gruesome, agonising deaths. Really, I'm exactly like them, which they keep saying is important, but when I try putting some contrarian viewpoints out there myself, it always goes badly. Clearly, I'm doing something wrong, but what?

I really do try to stick to the mantra of "facts don't care about your feelings" but these guys always seem really angry whenever I try to join in with any evidence of reality at all. I don't get it.

Yours as ever,
Perplexed in Peoria

And is it Hexenbär or Sechsbär?

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