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[–]rdh2121 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

doesn't the cartoon present a valid point about government overreach and the destruction of civil liberties?

Absolutely not. Brandolini's Law is in full effect here, but I guess I've got nothing better to do with my afternoon than break down just a bit of how biased and misleading this comic is.

rant about globalist Illuminati

This is absolutely misinformation, but it's critical to note that the comic assumes the existence of the Illuminati and their responsibility for mask policies as a presupposition. This starts off the entire argument on a false premise, and by setting it up as a presupposition, it makes the false premise more difficult to target with a rebuttal (check out the semantics of presuppositions for how they can't be targeted by negation).

The comic has started off with a false assumption, and we haven't even started talking about the content of the comic yet. This comic is already clearly conspiracy theory nonsense, and yet here I am still having to spend my time debunking it on a Subsaidit with like 10 users.

Citizens drawing the line (this isn't your quote, but this is how I'm quoting the comic)

What citizens?? The vast majority of citizens supported mask regulations until talking heads started making it a political issue that the sheeple were too stupid not to fall in line with. Even now the majority of citizens want mask requirements, at least by private businesses. The comic has started off by misrepresenting the number of people who agree with its premise, which is disingenuous and troubling.

Not to mention the fact that the vast majority of the country has no legal requirement to wear masks, and private businesses are well within their rights to require mask use, just like they can require shirts and shoes. Some of the larger, more troubled cities do have regulations (which I agree is an unconstitutional overreach), but for the slippery slope argument presented in the comic to hold water, its initial premise should have to hold for at least a bit more than a tiny percentage of the country, don't you think? Especially since its endpoint is so dire, far-reaching, and dystopian?

Mandatory vaccines

This is already a bridge too far, and the slippery slope has already broken down. There has been zero indication that Covid vaccines will be mandatory - this is pure speculation and fearmongering, and we're only in the second panel of the comic so far. It's not looking good for the "valid point about government overreach and the destruction of civil liberties". Not to mention that the step of mandatory vaccines depends on the prior step of mask regulations, which as we've already shown is entirely blown out of proportion by the assumptions of the comic, which are hyperbolic, purposefully exaggerated, and overwhelmingly false.

This step along the slippery slope is already unwarranted and we can safely ignore the rest of the comic (though we should have ignored all of it the moment we saw "Illuminati").

Biometric ID chip

2 huge problems here.

  1. Yet again, there has been zero indication that "biometric ID chips* will ever be mandatory, and since this step along the slippery slope is based on the already flawed prior step of mandatory vaccines, which also has zero evidence in support of it, this panel can be rejected out of hand. You've already mentioned how ridiculous any assumption of Bill Gates' involvement in any of this is.

  2. The government already has all of this information!! A "biometric ID chip" would give the government practically zero information that they don't already have. Your cell phone tracks your location to within one meter at practically all times. All of your medical information, personal information, relationships, fetishes, etc. have already been leaked online, and you have literally nothing left to lose. So, if you want to do something useful, stop fearmongering about conspiratorial what-ifs with literally zero support, and start advocating for the consumer and citizen privacy and information rights that we've already lost as the Information Age has so quickly outpaced the (purposefully) slow progress of our judicial and legal processes.

quarantine camps, I guess? or something??

I have literally no idea where in his ass Ben pulled this from, so based on the complete lack of support for literally anything else he's said in the entire comic, I'm going to assume that the US probably isn't Nazi Germany.

There. A full half hour of my life wasted debunking idiotic shit that nobody should have spent more than 2 seconds looking at before they rejected it out of hand. Ben Garrison is a hyperbolic, fearmongering hack, not only profiting off of, but stoking the fear and doubt that surrounds an international pandemic, and helping to ensure that our response to the virus is disunified, insufficient, and partisan, so that he can profit even further off the spiraling cycle of fear. Some in this sub will likely call this an ad hominem, but as the old saying goes, "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me tens of thousands of times, in a row, with literally everything that has come out of your mouth for decades being an incendiary lie, shame on me".

Maybe I should thank him for keeping my expectations about my species nice and low.

[–]JasonCarswell[S] 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

"Clogging up a subreddit that could be used for, y'know, actual useful information."