Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
The wisdom that is Peggy Noonan
http://www.salon.com/2014/10/17/peggy_noonans_plan_to_save_america_think_like_an_eleven_year_old/Peggy Noonan has taken stock of the Ebola crisis in America and she’s devised a solution, an answer, a panacea, if you will. Peggy is angry. She’s upset. She’s insulted. The Centers for Disease Control thinks that she is a fool. That we are all fools. She thinks they don’t trust this great nation and its common-sense native intelligence in the realms of virology and epidemiology. Why? she asks. Why won’t these government officials and public health experts defer to the infallible collected wisdom of the people of this storied land, this shining beacon of freedom?
...
The government won’t institute a travel ban for West Africa, she observes. But why? The people in charge – the “authorities” – they speak in nonsense words, in “double talk, runaround and gobbledygook.” They say things that don’t make immediate sense and thus aren’t worth taking seriously. “We cannot ban people at high risk of Ebola from entering the U.S. because people in West Africa have Ebola, and we don’t want it to spread. Huh?”
...
We need a travel ban, Ms. Noonan observes, drawing deeply from her vast reservoirs of disease-control expertise. “If we don’t momentarily close the door to citizens of the affected nations, it is certain that more cases will come into the U.S.” It is certain! They will come here with their disease. They will come to America. You may be inclined to note that the broad consensus among public health officials is that closing off West Africa will only make the epidemic there worse, which will in turn increase the risk of transmission to America. The petulant naysayers among you may be wont to point out that imposing a flight ban will only make it harder to track the movements and contacts of potentially infected persons.
But that’s just more gobbledygook, more amphigory, more hurbledy-burbledy. That, as Ms. Noonan writes, is how the government talks, and “everyone who speaks for the government on this issue has been instructed to imagine his audience as anxious children.” No … instead of speaking like children, writes Ms. Noonan, we should be thinking like children:
...
The government won’t institute a travel ban for West Africa, she observes. But why? The people in charge – the “authorities” – they speak in nonsense words, in “double talk, runaround and gobbledygook.” They say things that don’t make immediate sense and thus aren’t worth taking seriously. “We cannot ban people at high risk of Ebola from entering the U.S. because people in West Africa have Ebola, and we don’t want it to spread. Huh?”
...
We need a travel ban, Ms. Noonan observes, drawing deeply from her vast reservoirs of disease-control expertise. “If we don’t momentarily close the door to citizens of the affected nations, it is certain that more cases will come into the U.S.” It is certain! They will come here with their disease. They will come to America. You may be inclined to note that the broad consensus among public health officials is that closing off West Africa will only make the epidemic there worse, which will in turn increase the risk of transmission to America. The petulant naysayers among you may be wont to point out that imposing a flight ban will only make it harder to track the movements and contacts of potentially infected persons.
But that’s just more gobbledygook, more amphigory, more hurbledy-burbledy. That, as Ms. Noonan writes, is how the government talks, and “everyone who speaks for the government on this issue has been instructed to imagine his audience as anxious children.” No … instead of speaking like children, writes Ms. Noonan, we should be thinking like children:
8 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
