The conservative mindset is tailor-made for opportunities for paranoia and isolation Amanda Marcotte October 7, 2014 | Of all the issues that you would think would by non-partisan, ebola should be at the top of the list. The disease is just a mindless germ that doesn’t check your race, gender, social class, sexual orientation or party identification before it strikes, suggesting both liberals and conservatives have a stake in treating people exposed to the disease with compassion and care. And yet, to flip on Fox News or turn on any conservative media at all, you’d think that ebola was some kind of plague designed by the Democratic party in order to wipe out Republicans. Blowing the threat of ebola out of proportion and trying to link it to Obama has been a constant theme on the right in recent days. Elisabeth Hasselbeck of Fox News literally demanded that we put the country on lockdown, banning all travel in and out. In a bit of race-baiting, Andrea Tantaros of Fox suggested that people who travel to the country and show symptoms of ebola will “seek treatment from a witch doctor” instead of go to the hospital. Fox host Steve Doocy suggested the CDC is lying about ebola because they’re “part of the administration”. Fox alsopromoted a conspiracy theorist who is trying to claim the CDC is lying when they caution people not to panic. Other right wing media joined in. Tammy Bruce blamed ebola on the “Obama legacy”. Laura Ingraham said Obama was prevented from doing more to stop the disease because of his “core ties to the African continent”. Rush Limbaugh even went as far as to accuse Obama of letting the disease spread because he supposes liberals believe “we kind of deserve a little bit of this”. Even politicians are getting in on the act. Former South Carolina Republican Party executive director Todd Kincannon tweeted, “The protocol for a positive Ebola test should be immediate humane execution and sanitization of the whole area.” Republican presidential hopefuls stopped short of wishing death on people who have the disease, but are nonetheless crawling all over each other to make a bigger deal out of ebola than it really is. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan and Bobby Jindal have all suggested that we ban travel in and out of the country, at least some travel, in order to keep a lid on ebola. None of this is even in the realm of reasonable, of course. There’s only been one case of ebola in the entire country and the CDC has a well-practiced strategy for tracking and containing the disease. PBS science correspondent Miles O'Brien denounced the coverage as “irresponsible” and asked people to “take a deep breath” before fear-mongering about ebola. With the threat being so small, why are conservatives going crazy like this? Part of it is pure political opportunism, trying to hitch their anti-Obama obsession to whatever scary news story is making headlines. Part of it is cynical fear-mongering for its own sake, as conservative pundits know that when people are afraid, the are more open to reactionary ideas. But a large part of it might be that conservatives are just far more prone than liberals are both to getting wound up over the fear of disease and being compelled by the idea that people who are not themselves are undeserving of care. Researcher Jonathan Haidt is the architect of the “moral foundations” theory that suggests that political inclinations, at least in modern times, are rooted in five different foundations: harm, fairness, ingroup, authority, and purity. Liberals and conservatives weigh these five considerations very differently. For instance, liberals are more likely than conservatives to factor in whether an action causes harm when deciding if it’s wrong or not. Liberals also worry more about fairness and have more regard for people that are outside of their “group” than conservatives. Conservatives, on the other hand, put far more trust in authority. Conservatives are also far more obsessed with “purity” and far more likely to get hung up on the idea that the body “is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants,” as Haidt explains. You can see these differences play out with the response to ebola. For liberals, the proper response to ebola patients is to reduce harm by caring for them and to treat the people who got it fairly, by understanding that they didn’t do anything wrong to get it. But ebola touches, for conservatives, two big, red buttons. First, it’s a disease, so of course it’s going to set off the fears of contamination that Haidt demonstrates plague conservatives far more than liberals. Second of all, conservatives associate ebola with people who are different from them---from different countries, often of different races---and they have little regard for people in “out groups”, which is Haidt’s term for people who are different. And because conservatives are less worried about harming others or being fair, it becomes easy for them to demonize people with ebola, demand that they be left to die without care, and simply kept from “contaminating” the rest of us. You see this tension with many other issues. Abortion? Conservatives are grossed out by women who gave up their “purity” by having sex, but liberals are more worried about the harm done women who lose abortion rights. Gay rights? Conservatives see gays as impure and different, but liberals are worried about treating them fairly. Ferguson protests and the Mike Brown shooting? Conservatives love authority and support the police, especially against black protesters that are seen as an “out” group. Liberals worry about the harm done to Brown and the protesters and are angry about the unfairness of a policeman shooting an unarmed man or attacking unarmed protesters. Indeed, the ebola panic quite resembles the way many conservatives reacted in the early days of AIDS, demonizing sufferers as disgusting peoplewho should be isolated and left to die. Once you know these patterns, the conservative reaction to ebola---to panic, to treat the people who have it like pariahs, to demand that we shut off all contact with outsiders, and to even reject the idea of caring for the afflicted---was entirely predictable. Even if they didn’t have cynical political motivations, which many clearly do, their worldview makes it nearly impossible for them to react with compassion instead of fear.
It's official. You, DBphoenix, are a fucking idiot. As the right wing media outlet CNN runs ebola stuff 24/7. The other right wing outlet MSNBC had ultra conservative neocon Chris Matthews talking about how Obama was wrong on Ebola, and how it arrived on our shores. Idiot.
The story that went viral: Are the media scaremongering on Ebola? scaremongering on Ebola? By Howard Kurtz @ Fox News Published October 06, 2014 FoxNews.com I was watching CNN the other day and unless I missed something during a bathroom break, the network did not come off the Ebola story for a single minute. The chatter in the business is that CNN’s coverage has reached Malaysian plane levels. But in fairness, the other networks aren’t that far behind. I’ve been grappling with this question for days: Are the media now playing an alarmist role in covering Ebola as if it were an American epidemic? Or are they carrying crucial information to a worried public? When I see a Huffington Post banner headline blaring “FEAR SETS IN,” I think we’re scaring people. When I see doctors and health officials calmly explaining that it’s not an airborne disease, I think we’re educating people. So here’s where I come down. For the most part, news organizations are trying to grapple with the story in a responsible way. But the sheer volume has become so deafening that it is creating a scary environment. If Ebola wasn’t rating—if stories about the virus weren’t producing larger audiences and more clicks and circulation—the coverage would be a fraction of what it is. So while news executives may talk about their solemn duty to cover this crisis, it’s also in their financial self-interest. Watching CNN for a few hours, I saw these banners on the screen: ARE U.S. HOSPITALS READY FOR EBOLA? EBOLA CASE RAISES AIR TRAVEL QUESTIONS PATIENT WITH POSSIBLE EBOLA SYMPTOMS IN DC CONCERN OVER INTERNATIONAL EBOLA SCREENING And on and on and on. Not that there aren’t a whole panoply of legitimate questions to explore. How did one victim get a visa to come here from Liberia? Why did the Dallas hospital screw things up and release the patient, and lie about what its doctors knew? What can the U.S. troops sent to West Africa accomplish? What about the role of the airlines? Some pundits want to turn this into another Obama failure. That seems a tad premature, although the administration will ultimately be judged by its response to the crisis. The story hit home for the news business when an NBC freelance cameraman contracted Ebola and had to be sent home from Africa. He was working with Dr. Nancy Snyderman, who is voluntarily quarantining herself and her crew even though they have no symptoms. What’s ideal for cable news is that there’s a daily dose of new developments, from new cases to official press conferences, that can be covered minute by minute. There are human-interest sidebars. There is a constant barrage of questions to be posed, many without easy answers. The story is international in scope. And above all, there are life-and-death stakes and an air of mystery. Can Ebola be stopped? Will Ebola be stopped? As George Washington University’s Frank Sesno said on Sunday’s “MediaBuzz,” fear spreads faster than a virus, and in the media, fear sells. None of this is meant to minimize the story’s importance or the huge public interest. At the same time, the media have crossed a line and are now milking the tragedy for what it’s worth. I think it’s time we took it down a couple of notches.
+1 But what did you expect other than another slanted cut & paste? One could have stopped read her drivel after this .... "And yet, to flip on Fox News or turn on any conservative media at all, you’d think that ebola was some kind of plague designed by the Democratic party in order to wipe out Republicans."
+ 2 It's clear that douche bag phoenix is seething with visceral hate of anyone not brainwashed by the progressive narrative. So far as I can tell every US citizen including conservatives would love to see Ebola contained. Despite the indisputable incompetence of the Odumbo regime. Worrying about and taking measures to prevent your house from catching fire while your neighbor's burns. Is NOT paranoia. It's common fucking sense. A trait all but extinct in the liberal persona.
Amanda will no doubt be among the first to care for ebola infected individuals in the US. No doubt volunteers will be needed. Or maybe she should hop on a plane and go help where the outbreak is underway. She would be wise to consult this man first...maybe before she opens her mouth again. Or is he just another conservative? "Scientist Who Discovered Ebola: 'You Can't Overprotect' Against It" "One of the scientists who discovered Ebola said Tuesday he was not surprised a Spanish nurse contracted the deadly virus, stressing it was impossible to be too careful when dealing with the disease. "This should be a lesson for everybody that you can't overreact. You can't overprotect," Peter Piot said after tests confirmed a 40-year-old nurse at a Madrid hospital had become the first person to contract Ebola outside Africa. "Dealing with patients with Ebola .. is very risky business, and the slightest mistake can be fatal," said the Belgian scientist who co-discovered the Ebola virus in 1976. "It's better to be accused of overreacting than to not take all the measures," he told reporters in Geneva..."