A local politician in California’s city of Antioch (east of San Francisco along the waterways) said in his personal social media account that maybe letting Chinavirus do its thing would be the appropriate thing to do. Ken Turnage has now been fired by the City Council (he worked in city planning; was not an elected official).
And it got me thinking, why was he opposed so strongly?
He has a more masculine face than a lot of Gay Area bureaucrats. Not fat, either. Determination lines between the brow. Lots of right angles in the face so a very rational mindset. He’s a native of his city and owned a construction business prior to public service, a promising background for a Planning Department drone. No drug-fueled psychosis or passive-aggressive delusion here.
East Bay politician under fire for saying let coronavirus kill the elderly, weak and homeless
East Bay politician under fire for saying let coronavirus kill the elderly, weak and homeless
By Judith Prieve, 29 April 2020
He was fired on 1 May, probably a local record. But this article documents what I found interesting, which was peoples’ responses to his comments.
The chairman of Antioch’s planning commission is catching a lot of scorn for suggesting in a Facebook post that society should adopt a herd mentality by letting the coronavirus take nature’s course and kill the weak, elderly, homeless and others.
In a long post April 23 on Facebook, commission Chairman Ken Turnage II compared the spread of COVID-19 to a forest fire that burns off all the “old trees, fallen brush and scrub-shrub sucklings” that drain resources. The nation and planet “would strengthen when this is all settled,” he surmised.
“We would have significant loss of life, we would lose many elderly, that would reduce burdens in our defunct Social Security System, health care cost (once the wave subsided), make jobs available for others and it would also free up housing in which we are in dire need of,” Turnage wrote. “We would lose a large portion of the people with immune and other health complications. I know it would be loved ones as well. But that would once again reduce our impact on medical, jobs, and housing.”
Typical “survival of the fittest” philosophy. I’m not a fan because I’m Christian, but it’s what he was taught in school so not a surprise. What was surprising was his fellow atheists opposing him so harshly. They can’t be doing it for moral reasons..?
The comments offended many people, including City Councilwoman Monica Wilson, who along with several residents called for Turnage’s resignation during Tuesday’s City Council meeting. They also drew some support.
“Except we are not trees, and dead human beings do not fertilize the living,” one person commented on Turnage’s Facebook post. “This is very callous and sad. Even still, I hope you and yours survive this, just as I hope we all do.”
Absent a soul, dead humans really are fertilizer in the cycle of life, with a utilitarian value to society comparable to that of a tree. Ashes to ashes and all that. Why should we go to heroic efforts to extend the lives of the useless? As every socialized-medicine administrator knows, most of the health care a person consumes after infancy is in the last three years of his life.
This objection has no merit.
“This was a favored position of the Nazis,” another wrote. “Getting rid of the ‘useless eaters’ they called it. Before the Nazis went after the Jews and Gypsies and the Polish they decided it would be a good idea to get rid of the useless eaters: the old, demented, disabled, mentally ill, physically ill and institutionalized.”
Hindbrain-reflex thinking. Somebody should point out to social justice warriors that Nazis breathed oxygen… and you don’t want to act like a Nazi, do you?
Councilwoman Wilson said Turnage’s comments “undermine the great work our city is doing to protect our citizens,” noting that lifting shelter-in-place orders just for the benefit of the economy is “contrary to our shared values.”
Fuck you, Wilson. Leadership decisions are not automatically good decisions and it goes without saying here that not everybody shares your values. That male-based economy that you’re so eager to be rid of might become important, come the day the Federal Reserve can’t print money fast enough.
Ken is smart enough, and male enough, to know that a government should cultivate a tax base just in case something happens to Moscow.
“My ancestors already died for the sake of our economy through a marked period in our time called slavery,” said Wilson, who is black. “He is entitled to his opinion as I am to mine. However, as a member of the Planning Commission, his words are merely not consistent with what we are doing and how we are caring for our citizens.”
And that was a good thing, right? Enslaving the blacks for the good of the economy? Because now she’s enslaving everybody! To not do productive work.
Either she’s not giving a reason at all or she’s claiming that not opposing Chinavirus is rayciss. Which… is actually possible:
Segue
Black People Are Dying From COVID-19 at Higher Rates Because Racism Is a Preexisting Condition
Black People Are Dying From COVID-19 at Higher Rates Because Racism Is a Preexisting Condition
By Edwin Ross, 9 April 2020
Please be joking, please be joking, please be joking…
A few weeks ago, a thought woke Camara Jones up in the middle of the night. It was about the coronavirus. That’s commonplace these days, but Jones is a family physician and epidemiologist who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where among other things she studied racial bias in the medical system. Her thoughts on a pandemic are anything but commonplace.
The coronavirus had revealed something essential about the workings of race in America. “The thought that woke me up,” she told me over the weekend, “is that the most profound aspects of racism operate without bias and without stigma.” What she means is that racism in its most pernicious form slides by on deniability, without any of the telltale oafishness with which more ordinary forms of prejudice announce themselves. Left in its wake are lopsided outcomes that are made to look like the natural order of things.
Nothing illustrates that dynamic better than a pandemic that is wrongly said to be “the great equalizer.”
Nobody calls it that. Some call it the “Boomer Remover” but grievances over ageism instead of racism won’t put green in the black wallet.
“This disease,” she says, “is not an equal-opportunity disease.” Black people are contracting the coronavirus and dying from the disease at higher rates than other people. This disproportionate effect is a social issue in the guise of an epidemiological one.
Surprisingly, she’s right. The ethnic groups that live in their own filth are clearly more affected by plague than German National Socialists with their penchant for tidiness and order, which makes the spread of any disease a (partly) social issue.
Fight the Power of Clorox!
Black Americans, particularly in the Southern states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, are more likely to be uninsured. They’re more likely to work a low-paying job. They’re more likely to suffer from heart disease, asthma, cancer, and other conditions, not—as Jones takes pains to emphasize—because of biology. It’s because of straightforward social choices such as where toxic dumps get sited, where new highways get built, and where Black people have historically been permitted to live.
I take it back. She’s not right at all, especially in the head.
End segue.
Reached after the meeting, Turnage, 47, said he has no intention of stepping down. The Antioch native is a general contractor who owns K2GC Inc. and ran unsuccessfully for City Council in 2016, finishing fourth. He was Antioch’s 2015 “Citizen of the Year with Most Impact.”
He said his post was “not malicious, or racist” and had “nothing to do with money or business.” Rather, he was simply stating what he believed was happening to the Earth through the global pandemic.
Councilman Lamar Thorpe meanwhile said he shared Wilson’s concerns and called Turnage’s comments “inexcusable.”
Why were Ken’s comments inexcusable? Why would he need forgiveness for posting a “maybe this isn’t the right thing to do” argument?
Mayor Sean Wright, who appointed Turnage in 2017, called the commissioner’s comments “abhorrent,” though he noted everyone has a right to speak his mind.
Wright then called a special meaning of the City Council at which he voted to fire Ken for having wrongthink opinions off-duty. (Vote was unanimous.)
Sean, American rights are restrictions on government authority. Not statements of obvious fact. People in Communist East Germany had the same “right” to speak their minds, after which they disappeared in the dead of night.
Lardball. Weak chin (low testosterone?). Pale skin from too much indoor life. Quite the contrast to Ken’s tanned visage.
“We do and need to hold ourselves to high standards as councilmen and commissioners who represent the city, so there is a discussion to be had as far as that goes,” he added.
Mayor Pro Tem Joy Motts agreed that city leaders need to “act with professionalism.”
Why is it unprofessional and “low standards” to propose NOT destroying the healthy in order to protect the sick?
“It’s absurd to think that one person’s life is more valuable than another’s,” she said. “I am sure this staff and this City Council is doing everything it can do to save as many lives as it possibly can.”
That’s not absurd. Absurd is my government prioritizing disease-spreading hobos over tax-paying citizens.
Motts says Ken is wrong because all human life is equally valuable… but he says nothing to support his claim. Ken did:
Turnage later said his comments were misunderstood.
“I believe in ecological balance,” he said. “Our species is out of symbiosis with the rest of the planet. We have a disease … a virus, that if it ran its course, it would bring us back into a closer balance. I didn’t say people should go out and get infected.
“It’s our world’s way of balancing itself. It’s like a volcano going off,” he added. “It brings the temperature of the Earth down.”
Turnage also said that while he does value life, he does not do so over the greater good of the planet, country and species. He noted that if unchecked, the virus would run rampant through the homeless community.
“I’m not saying let’s kill the homeless, but because of what this virus is attacking, these are the sectors that it would affect the most. … I’m sorry but that would be one of the side effects,” he said. “Yes, that’s a harsh way of looking at it — I know people aren’t going to like this — but this is just reality.”
Interesting that I can reach his same conclusion by a very different path. The phrase was “acts of God” before it was “natural disasters”. Chinavirus being artificial doesn’t change that calculus. High-speed international travel meant we were inevitably going to suffer some kind of a plague. C-Virus was as tame a wake-up plague as we could have hoped for.
Although he disagrees with the need for sheltering in place, Turnage said he is honoring the order and does not encourage people to disobey the rules.
“People need to protect themselves,” he said. “… (But) it is my belief that when something is out of balance, there will be something that brings the balance back (possibly a virus) or the scales may tip and then there is no return.”
Reached Wednesday, Wilson said she stands by her call for Turnage to resign or for the council to consider ousting him.
“I am looking out for the best interests of everyone in my community,” she said. “Who is he to decide who lives or dies? “All of us are vulnerable at this time. We all need to look out for each other.
That’s not what he said and not what you said, you racist black fraud.
“You have a right to post, but sometimes there are consequences to what you post.”
Thus disproving the notion of a “right to post”, if one can be punished by the State at will for posting.
I give big credit to Ken, he knew to NEVER APOLOGIZE.
htt ps://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-calif-official-who-said-coronavirus-could-fix-society-may-lose-job-20200501-crcpsikwejbnvpahwo5racbdgm-story.html#rt=chartbeat-flt
In an email to the Daily News, Turnage doubled down on his position and shared the comments he planned to submit for the special meeting.
“It is disheartening that I am being removed due to a personal opinion that has nothing to do with the city or my position on the planning commission. My opinion that I opened for debate is based on the theory of Ecological Balance which is science,” he wrote.
“Yes, I do understand that it is a difficult topic and even prefaced that if people are unable to handle an alternate opinion don’t read any further,” he said.
Eh, mostly-big credit to Ken. “Don’t read further if you don’t want to be offended”, really? The smart move, as usual, would have been to post anonymously.
“The idea of letting nature run its course was practiced by Sweden and at first The World Health Organization was strictly against it! Now as of yesterday, The World Health Organization says we should learn from Sweden! Ironic isn’t it?” he wrote.
“This virus is targeting certain sectors of the World. I did not decide these sectors or create this virus. I merely spoke on what could potentially happen to those sectors plus others including myself,” he said. “Yes my analogies in hindsight could have been different to make the same point, for that I am sorry but hindsight is 20/20.”
Well spoken. Unlike his opponents who punished him for badthink. Which tells us what their motive truly was.
Protecting the frickin’ Narrative.
For all their claims of loving science and living in balance with the environment, what most atheists desire more than any of that is a government that will keep them safe at all costs… even the costs of repeating its self-serving lies.
Honest men with independent opinions are hard to find. Most people just want a deity to care for them and will invent that deity if they don’t think one exists. Ken would have made a much better Councilman than the current asses in those seats.
