The word “debunked” gets thrown around an awful lot by the leftist media, and it’s amazing how often it really boils down to “we said it’s false and that’s all you need to know.”
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Now, if the media were trustworthy, that might be enough. If someone is worthy of trust, you can take their word at face value. The phrase “trust me, bro,” isn’t needed when someone is trusted.
But I came across a story earlier today that, frankly, highlights how the leftist media’s myths can, in fact, be prophecy.
In 2009, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin created a sensation when she claimed that government-run healthcare would inevitably lead to the creation of bureaucratic boards responsible for deciding who should and shouldn’t receive treatment.
It’s from this charge that we got the term “death panel,” which became a near constant reference during the congressional debate over the passage of the Affordable Care Act.
Palin was called a loon and a crank.
Even today, a simple search on Microsoft’s Copilot for the date when the former governor coined the term “death panel” carefully notes that her accusation quickly became a viral talking point despite “being widely debunked as a myth.”
Fifteen years after Palin’s remark, disability advocate Krista Carr testified before members of the Canadian parliament that her organization receives weekly reports of medical assistance in dying (MAID) services being suggested unprompted to disabled individuals during routine, non-terminal care visits.
Who could have predicted that government-controlled healthcare, combined with legalized euthanasia, would eventually lead to the sick and uncomfortable being told to kill themselves?
Where does Palin go for her apology?
Palin was a flawed candidate, whom I mocked at the time as well, but on this, she was right. While there may not be an express panel simply deciding who lives and who dies, the fact that Canada, with its socialized healthcare system, finds it cheaper to kill patients rather than treat them, so they suggest suicide.
How is that better than simply denying treatment so people can waste away slowly? Is it a bit more humane? That depends on your perspective, but the point is that they’re still trying to use MAID to rid their system of people who require more care and, as a result, cost more money.
This was “debunked as a myth,” but that “myth” was nothing of the sort.
It’s like how the media keeps trying to claim that gun bans aren’t on the table simply because a candidate isn’t expressly talking about them at that particular moment.
When anyone on the right makes a logical inference on the result of a given policy, even if it’s not expressly spelled out as such in the proposals being discussed, the media turns to the text and calls BS, even if anyone with half a brain can see where that’s coming from.
It’s not that different than CNN calling Minnesota day cares and reporting that the one that answered the phone said it was legit, so everything Nick Shirley uncovered was debunked.
To call it asinine is too mild a term for this level of vile.
The truth is that while I’m a big fan of pointing out when the Law of Unintended Consequences rears its ugly head, there are many times we can see those consequences coming from a mile away.
Like “death panels” being the ultimate result of state-run healthcare. Like gun control’s failures eventually leading to a proposal for banning firearms almost entirely. Like making fraud easy results in fraud.
The difference between the mythology of Palin’s warning and what we can now see was clearly prophecy is a matter of time.
Meanwhile, there’s absolutely no mainstream coverage of the supposed prophecies of how the Bruen decision was going to lead to more homicides on our streets, which has now been debunked not by the media but by history.
Violent crime is down. Homicides are down. “Mass shootings” are down. Everything is down compared to where it was when Bruen was decided.
Nothing they said would happen actually happened, but they don’t talk about that being “debunked.” That would mean acknowledging that their buddies were wrong, that they didn’t know what they were talking about.
It’s like the prophecies of climate change. Every model is, in essence, an attempt at prophecy, though one based on supposed science rather than mysticism. Yet those models have a track record that would only be improved if they relied on pig entrails or tarot cards.
Those are never framed as “debunked,” either.
Weird, isn’t it?
The difference between mythology and prophecy, at least in this context, is nothing more than the media’s continued fixation on advancing leftist policies, downplaying anyone on the right, and otherwise being anything but the journalists they want us to believe they are.