Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/07/28/trump-jr-blocked-from-tweetin.html
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Expect the hydroxyquinone debate to heat up again even more. It showed up on Newsweek last week.
I would love to be wrong and the stuff work, but the evidence cited seems to be heavily anecdotal and uncorroborated. Which isn’t enough for me, but is going to sound like a proven cure to a lot of people.
But you know what is proven to be effective? Masks. And they help my allergies! 
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They need to ban him and his idiot father forever.
ETA: the signatories of that Harper’s letter from a couple of weeks ago were asking for the preservation of the same privilege that Biff and son enjoy: to enable dangerous and fascistic charlatans and to behave like arseholes without consequence as long as you’re a member of an elite in-group.
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They want a magic bullet, they want it all to just go away with no effort.
The only shown way to get the virus under control is what some states and countries are already doing: mask mandates, contact tracing, distancing, certain businesses remaining closed or open with limited use. It’s not perfect, it’s not going to make the economy magically boom again overnight, it’s not fun, but it’s still the best option we have.
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It’s also needed for the diseases that it actually is effective at treating. I have a friend with lupus, and while her supply wasn’t interrupted this spring, it was a close call. It’s not just that hydroxychloroquine is ineffective for COVID and dangerous; it’s also that it’s needed elsewhere.
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I remember when I first learned about Lysenko, and I was baffled by the madness of the Soviets watching seeds rot and people starve while insisting that reality bend to ideology. Lysenkoism doesn’t seem so hard to understand any more.
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Twitter told the BBC: “We are taking action in line with our policy.”
Our randomly-enforced, toothless policy that will never, ever ban Trump Sr. no matter how many rules he breaks.
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I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately also. My hypothesis is that there’s a combination of getting in so deep that you don’t know how to get out, and a need to “save face” that is more powerful than any other aspect of your personality. Like, if your entire identity hinges on your own belief that you’re never wrong about anything, your brain will do heroic things to prevent cognitive dissonance around that.
Or maybe some people are just delusional chuckleheads. I dunno.
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It’s the sunk cost fallacy, applied to the human psyche, writ large.
It isn’t related to intelligence, IMO, but to mental agility. I’ve seen very intelligent people just keep digging in deeper when reality starts going against their stated beliefs. They align themselves emotionally to a conclusion and have difficulty separating it from their own identity.
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Ever since the Cheney Regency I’ve noted a real tendency for certain people who run in elite circles (not just conservatives, and not just politicians and officials) to insist that they could force reality to reflect whatever model they championed, in clear contradiction to the purpose that a model is supposed to serve. Rove’s dig at the “reality-based community” emerged from this, but I started seeing that everywhere starting in the late 1990s. Your “sunk cost” hypothesis is a valid explanation for what motivates them.
[jinx. I owe @DukeTrout a Coke]
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I wonder if what we’re seeing isn’t a combination of the kind of sunk-cost fallacy you (and @VeronicaConnorand @DukeTrout) are pointing to, and the weird, toxic brand of post-modern trolling that Trump is so incredibly good at harnessing and amplifying. What I mean is that its just as important for the libs to be wrong as it is for Trump to be right. I think it dovetails with the bedrock appeal he has with his base in not so much benefiting them, but in punishing their enemies.
So if the swamp/libs/cucks tell us that it’s not a good idea to take contraindicated medication, then by goofus we’re going to insist that we do it. If for no other reason than just to piss them off.
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He makes Billy Carter look like a member of the Algonquin Roundtable.
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I would like to learn more. Suggestions?
Oh sure his brain is broken, but just look at that smile!
Sarcasm.
Anything to own the libs, no matter the cost. As they say in Syria, “Assad or we burn the country.”
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I wish I could remember the Russian history book to recommend but it’s been a million years and google fails me to find the cover, but The Atlantic had an article not too long ago.
Like a hundred other aspects of Soviet Russia, it would have been comical had it not involved death and suffering on such a scale.
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I’m sure there are more recent works that benefit from the opening of the Soviet archives, but Zhores Medvedev wrote the classic work on the topic back in 1969 from a unique POV.
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There’s also Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science by Valery N. Soyfer a former Soviet scientist who met him.
It will all sound chillingly familiar.
Also see: Dr. Phil
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