Tioga Herald

Dear Mr. George Will:
My reading of your column has existed from the days I was in the 7th grade and a teacher/border purchased a subscription to Newsweek. My partner and I do a great deal of reading today and  we are happy to have the ability to learn from news and information sources beyond just broadcast media, but from newsprint. During all these years, Mr. Will, I have read your columns and found many to be in agreement. If so, I don’t reply. When I do reply, it is usually when I am in contention with what you are saying and have questions and solutions which, perhaps, you have overlooked. This is the case with your recent op-ed with your opinion that government should not regulate and force vaccinations. I wish to address this op-ed and try to be as kind as I possibly am able to be.
First of all, big business forces us to do things the way the big fat pigs and the stock holders who own the largest share of the stock wish to force upon the demand-side of a capitalist market. I am still fighting (I hate to use that word) the fact that Gannett Newspapers have mis-managed the local Press & Sun-Bulletin, forcing us in rural areas where we had the print newspapers delivered to our homes in a timely basis, to read the newspaper digitally. It is not a government forcing us in the manner of “deregulation” king, Reagan said about “government being the problem.” No. It is fat pigs forcing their changes upon all of us and doing so by making claims that “nobody reads newspapers.” That is false when considering the mis-management which meant the local Gannett office on Sherry Lipe Road was closed just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Any excuse will due, so we have heard things like, “the fault is with the pandemic.” Oh? What is that, then, that Gannett had a self-fulfilling prophesy about COVID-19? The Press & Sun-Bulletin which was once more than a newspaper, but a basis for news, op-eds of various sides of the political spectrum, local columnists, information and games and puzzles.  Some of it still exists, but a large portion of it has been condensed so that no one takes an interest in it anymore. Smart move for a leadership which wants “change for the sake of change” so as to pull in more money and not caring for the demand side one bit. The delivery problems have declined since the office closed. There are now less advertisements for local chain stores than what exists in the Scranton newspaper, which charges, in a truly capitalist market, $1.00 less per newspaper for a newspaper which is NOT as condensed as the Binghamton Gannett version of USA Today and has far more advertisements with some of the same local chain stores which exist in the greater Binghamton area. Advertising, not circulation subscriptions, make more money for the newspaper. Circulation helps determine what can be charged for the advertising. If a newspaper can charge zero dollars and cents for each issue and can reap a better profit from the advertising dollars, due to an expanded number of readers, then so be it. That is how it works. Now Binghamton Gannett USA Today has announced they will no longer publish and distribute the newspaper on holidays. Again, they use any excuse possible so as to bolster the lining of the pockets of the fat pigs at the top with their hedge fund investors and what not.
Took me quite a paragraph just to explain this part. But Gannett is one of several big fat pig corporations which FORCE its customers – the DEMAND SIDE of the market – to accept what the fat pigs at the top wish to impose. Yet, we hear from you, Mr. Will, about a government, with an interest in the collective, not individual, liberties of the people, which should not impose vaccination rules upon people and thus end up removing the INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS of people like me who wish to get back to days of being together in crowds, including performing music for crowds, whether in church or otherwise. Seems as if we get the bad side of the stick in both these situations. Mr. Will, why don’t you speak out against big business monopolistic style supply side economics, rather than a government which you have been mesmerized by the stupidity of the “deregulation” king, Ronald Reagan? Big business fat pigs are the problem, not government. The U.S. Supreme Court gave big fat pigs more license to screw the demand side of the market with “free markets” which monopolize the supply side of the market and line the pockets of so many politicians with their lousy PACs which should be banned, as well as all lobbyists within the doors of the U.S. Congress and the elimination of a stupid filibuster which helps a minority put obstacles up for solving America’s problems.  Now, it is war with the Anti Antivax lunkheads and we lose our individual rights and liberties because, with the proof that vaccinations work, we are forced to accept variants and the spread of such virus among the population and not see it go away.

I have news for Mr. Will and the Antivax lunkheads. Vaccinations imposed by government are NOT communist. Instead, I say that centrally planned economics by fat pigs imposing change upon the people are more closely related to how a communist government works. Nice deal, though, because these lunkhead fat pigs can say that “government is not controlling the economy.” Government is not controlling it, but the fat pigs have positioned themselves to control the government, with the help of Alito and company with PACS and allowing huge contributions. Makes it easy for lunkheads like Rubio, Scott, and DeSantis of Florida, as well as others, to make a claim that it is NOT communism. Sure. It is indirect communism with a flavor of a centrally planned economy. 

Our government and the ingenuity of the American government has helped us win wars in the past. This battle with a pandemic is a war. What about rationing of sugar or gasoline during wartime? I have heard those in the World War II generation who were unhappy with such rationing imposed upon them when they were in their childhood. But ultimately, they found it to be pertinent for fighting a war. My father told us about a shortage of gasoline when driving a Jeep in the American occupation forces of Japan. American ingenuity got them through it, rather than complaining like a bunch of people who impose politics over science.

A friend recently wrote on Facebook about how science is not meant to be a part of politics, while addressing the situation with vaccinations.

American ingenuity and working together helped Americans like my father and so many others get through that terrible war. Development of primitive forms of radar among former U.S. Marines and a Lesbian named Hedda Hopper (see the story on the Smithsonian website) helped us develop such radar. Repeat. American ingenuity. American ingenuity also comes with accepting the vaccination, irregardless of whether one gets sick or not from a dosage. I know I got sick from the second dosage. Some from both. Some from the first one. Some with no sickness at all. At the end of the day, all of us are still alive. In comparison, I know more people who refused to get the vaccine who died of COVID-19 than the numbers I knew in nursing homes who died of COVID-19, before there was a vaccination. Sad about those who died before the vaccination, but there is no excuse for those who died because their pastor or those who complained about getting sick or some stupid conspiracy theory with no evidence what ever, convinced them otherwise.

There are also so many untried capitalist investment solutions which have been used to fight a war. For instance, those during World War II who converted factory production of household goods to armaments for war. They did so to join with the war effort in which the invasion of Normandy helped us end the war, as well as the forces in the Pacific who fought long and hard to end the war in the Pacific. Also, war bonds were sold as a means of earning money for the war effort. I have yet to hear Trumpicans or Antivax people come come up with such solutions, but only trash any ideas the Democrats have, especially for “human infrastructure” advancement.

Mr. Will. How can you ignore such ideas and solutions and simply side with the Antivax, fundie evangelical religionists, and conspiracy-theory lainbrains? you have written some good essays in the past. But when you are entrenched, such as you are in the Washington Post and accepted by big guy, Bezos at the top, you get to put the crap out there, too. Your antivax support is nothing but trash, to put it very bluntly.
—

Professor Douglas Willet Cornwell (Retired)

Newark Valley, NY

bibsinger@gmail.com

———————————“Love your neighbor as yourself.” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” “The problems of the world are not that some people love in a different way. The problems are that so many people don’t know how to love at all (CGA, 1970).” A Puritan is someone in fear that someone, somewhere, is having a good time. “Liberty and justice for all [not priorities on individual and selfish rights].” “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union [and overall wealth of American society]…” 
Benjamin Franklin: “Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are affected.” Stacey Abrams: “Compromise about actions, but not about values.”  Oscar Wilde: “I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.”  Oscar Wilde: “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” Benjamin Franklin: “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”  Whoopi Goldberg: “To handle this COVID-19 pandemic effectively, we all need to get on the same page.”  Note: To be clear, I do not like being patronized. I do not express my disdain over what happens to my fellow humans just for my own sake and to pursue favors and handouts. I do it in order to gain R – E – S – P – E – C – T for me and for millions of other Americans of any race, ethnicity, religious belief, or sex and sexual identity who try to walk in integrity as they attempt to achieve, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  PERIOD.  One nation under God [our Creator] with liberty and justice for all. “Seek wisdom, not certainty; seek practice, not purity; seek traditions, not traditionalism” (Diane Butler Bass in book, Christianity for the Rest of Us).