Yes it’s a conservative publication.
Since I’m conservative leaning, I’ve been interested in what other conservative’s thoughts may be.
Because Twitter, Facebook, Google and others have made a habit of, as Mark Zuckerberg recently told Joe Rogan, Significantly reducing article views… The places where one can see what conservatives are thinking have become increasingly rare.
This is why freedom of speech is such an important thing. We should be able to see and read anything, then be adult enough to choose what is factual and what is hyperbole.
Twitter had become an echo chamber of vitriol and extreme leftist ideologies so I left. Facebook had become a Russian Nesting Doll of weekly privacy updates that required an inordinate amount of time on my part to manage. How many privacy updates or resetting of my privacy settings should I have to endure per week to see the latest cat photo or “Curated News” feed? For this reason, I left Facebook many years ago.
We all know Google had forsaken it founding motto, “Don’t be Evil” for a more progressive motto of sell everyone to everyone else, privacy or accuracy be damned.
So, I read a fair number of articles from their sources. I don’t pay for any subscriptions because what’s on one publication behind a pay wall is probably available on another site for free.
American Thinker had been known to me for interesting takes on events. Andrea Widburg is a writer whose articles on American Thinker I’ve found particularly engaging. Much of her writing is light, gets the point across, and often there’s a certain wryness that helps a bitter truth go down easier.
I’ve enjoyed most of the posts on American Thinker over the past 4-5 years. I don’t recall when I stumbled up them or when I became a regular reader.
Lately however, the tone of American Thinker has changed for the worse. A recent article Why are Children Coming down with Monkeypox? By Mark A. Hewitt is a prime, if extreme example of the tone I’m referring to.
I can understand the author’s outrage at attempts to have pedophiles normalized. I can understand the author’s fear, or annoyance, at the LGBT community at large for fueling the monkeypox spread. I totally get why the author is pissed off and annoyed at the endless messaging about LGB and specifically Trans people and their endless silly pronouns.
My personal thoughts on pedophiles are that they should be shot if found guilty, possibly after brutal disfiguring torture. I’m very pissed at the LGBT community for not stepping up to do what they can to curb the spread of monkeypox.
In these very pages I’ve written my thoughts, here, here, here, here, and here, and elsewhere in this blog. The Hewitt article above, for me personally, is beyond the pale. He draws conclusions that demonstrate the kind of religious zealotry the Taliban is known for.
I’ll defend Mr. Hewitt’s right to speak, but I don’t have to read his material. Had he done 30 seconds of research by going to the CDC.gov website and looked up smallpox and monkeypox then read and comprehended the associated articles he’d have realized that both have pretty much the same transmission routes. As I’ve said elsewhere in this blog it looks like the Smallpox vaccine also covers Monkeypox.
Mr. Hewitt jumped to the conclusion, that has been, to some extent reinforced by the media, suggesting that monkeypox can only be spread via sex. In point of fact, smallpox and monkeypox can be spread by prolonged contact such as kissing or cuddling. Or coming into contact with bedsheets or other items contaminated with secretions from one of the pox pustules.
What child doesn’t heedlessly jump into their parent’s arms if they’re upset or have a boo boo? Would Mr. Hewitt suggest that a child getting smallpox from a parent had obviously been sexually molested? Would he say the same of a child who got a staph infection from a parent recently in the hospital?
Anyone who has ever had a child in their house knows that keeping a child out of specific areas such as dirty laundry, or the parents bed or even the household pet’s bed can be challenging. Additionally whatever is on a child’s hands inevitably ends up all over them and other nearby items.
I’m not discounting Mr. Hewitt’s entire theory about potential pedophiles having access to children. I do dispute his apparent assertion that all cases of children contracting monkeypox, are evidence of child molestation.
The problem for me is that it’s not just Mr. Hewitt’s article. This tone, in a more subdued fashion seems to be permeating the entire publication.
It is for that reason, American Thinker is off my personal reading list. Right next to Twitter, Facebook, and many services provided by Google. I choose to be selective in how I spend my time. I choose not to waste any of it on extremists of any persuasion. Left, Right, or Religious.
Perhaps the editorial staff of American Thinker should send out some style/content guides that inform their contributors to stick to facts in articles, and present opinion in their blog area. They probably won’t, in this regard American Thinker appears to have become like every other publication. Money and Advertising clicks versus measured, reasoned, dissemination, or discussion, of verifiable facts.
It’s too bad, I’ll miss Andrea Widburg’s articles.