I have not republished one of Dr. Woods pieces in some time. In this one he talks about “preaching to the choir.” This has reminded me about that fact that “preaching to the choir” is not a bad thing.
Dr. Woods’ article:
Within the past week someone who’s more or less on our side of all this stuff took a bizarre swipe at your host here.
He thinks I’m saying that our political elites are innocently making mistakes and that showing them some mask charts will change their minds.
I have never said or even thought such a thing, obviously.
What, then, is the point of my charts?
Number one, to reassure you — yes, you, dear reader — that you’re not crazy, and that you are correct to think the “public health” establishment has no idea what it’s doing. And also to help raise doubts in the minds of your friends.
By the way, is this “preaching to the choir”? I suppose so. But I’ve never understood why that’s supposed to be bad. The choir needs to be preached to! Have you ever been to a church where the pastor tells the choir they may as well just go outside and smoke while he delivers his sermon?
Number two, to show people who aren’t strongly committed one way or the other that the morality play being pushed on us — “good behavior” makes the virus go away, while “bad behavior” makes it spread — does not in any way reflect the experience we’ve had with the virus.
But no, there’s no changing the minds of the power elite, because for them this is all a golden opportunity to expand their power, portray themselves as indispensable saviors, and set the stage for future large-scale interventions.
So for example, the chart below won’t make Joe Biden change course, but it can make a normal person wonder.
Today on Twitter a New York Times reporter shared a map of the United States that depicted rates of active COVID in the various states. He was asking why the South would be doing so well despite its governors having ignored the CDC.
Since some people cannot give up the CDC religion no matter what the data tells them, one woman chimed in that the South probably isn’t testing as much, because they don’t really believe in COVID. So she’s convinced that COVID must be bad in the South. It just has to be. Her religion requires her to believe this.
She doesn’t know, apparently, that Florida’s daily hospitalization numbers are lower than they’ve been in about a year and a half. How would she know that, even if she were a reasonable person with an open mind? Who’s going to tell her?
And one of my Twitter acquaintances pointed this out: if it’s a question of a lack of testing, that lack of testing must be incredibly well coordinated across the southern states to produce such strikingly similar outcomes everywhere:
Let me close with this:
If my inbox is any indication, I’ve succeeded at changing quite a few minds. I haven’t convinced Joe Biden, but I wasn’t really trying.
And again I emphasize:
There is nothing wrong with “preaching to the choir.”
Amen!