One Week Before the Election, the New Yorker Mentioned the 25th Amendment — But Only for Donald Trump; With Joe Biden, There Is Nothing to Fear

We May Need the 25th Amendment, wrote the New Yorker one week before the election, but only for Donald Trump; with Joe Biden, there is nothing to worry about. (Welcome, Instapundit  readers.)

Before getting to Sleepy Joe, needless to say, Jeannie Suk Gerson spends eight long paragraphs discussing why 25 applies primarily to Trump, who is a psychopath comparable, she suggests at one point, to… Hitler and Stalin. Furthermore, her history of the 25th "in temporary and limited ways" invokes Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and George W Bush, but not a single Democrat. 

As it turns out, Joe Biden's health, mental or otherwise, is nothing to worry about. All the fears you may have about him are due to nothing more serious than a "lifelong stutter."

The only reason to fear for a candidate's mental health is if — as expected (sic) — Trump loses, Jeannie Suk Gersen says, because then

the period between November 3rd and Inauguration Day, on January 20th, is likely to be “the most dangerous moment” in his Presidency. “What does a malignant narcissistic person do when they’re enraged?” [John Gartner, a Duty to Warn psychologist] said. “They want to act out in an aggressive and sadistic way, to regain their sense of power.”

If you can stomach reading them, here are some excerpts from the New Yorker article:

Throughout the past four years, there has been chatter about Donald Trump’s mental health and stability, but little political will to make use of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which allows Congress to deem a President “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” and remove him from power. … The news that he was medicated with the steroid dexamethasone, used for seriously ill covid-19 patients, also alarmed many because its known side effects include aggression, agitation, and “grandiose delusions”—behaviors that, judging from the President’s Twitter account, at least, he already seemed to exhibit.

 … Section four of the Twenty-fifth Amendment provides two distinct avenues for removing a President against his will. In one, the Vice-President joins with a majority of the Cabinet to send Congress a written declaration that the President is unable to serve. In the other, the Vice-President does so along with a majority of “such other body as Congress may by law provide.”

 … The questioning of Trump’s fitness has persisted throughout his Presidency, as members of his party and his close associates fed the narrative of a deteriorating mind. In 2017, then Senator Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee who was then the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, called the White House an “adult day care center”; he went on to say, “I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him.” In “A Warning,” published in 2019, an anonymous senior Trump official reported: “He stumbles, slurs, gets confused, is easily irritated, and has trouble synthesizing information, not occasionally but with regularity.” Similarly to Corker, the Administration official added that working with Trump was “like showing up at the nursing home at daybreak.” Other senior officials have said that Trump, who is seventy-four, appeared to be suffering from some form of dementia. Trump’s former White House adviser Omarosa Newman stated in her book “Unhinged,” in 2018, that Trump’s “mental decline could not be denied.” Trump’s former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci said, in 2019, that Trump “has declining mental faculties.”

Others, including Trump’s niece Mary L. Trump, a clinical psychologist, have said that Trump’s behavior shows the symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. A number of mental-health experts have also suggested that he may suffer from malignant narcissism, a term that was coined by the psychologist Erich Fromm, in 1964, in order to describe Hitler and Stalin. John Gartner, the psychologist who spearheaded the Duty to Warn movement in 2017 and has advocated removing Trump through the Twenty-fifth Amendment, told me that malignant narcissism is a “psychiatric condition that makes you evil,” combining narcissism (which features the extremes of poor self-esteem and distorted self-enlargement), paranoia (which Gartner sees in “the crazy conspiracy theories, sense of victimization, and demonization of minorities”), psychopathy (“lying and exploiting people”), and sadism. The condition is considered dangerous because the combination of aggression, suspiciousness, lack of empathy, and a fragile ego might result in vindictive and destructive acts when the sufferer is wounded. Shortly before Trump’s impeachment trial, in February, more than eight hundred mental-health professionals signed a letter to Congress, warning that “failing to monitor or to understand the psychological aspects” of humiliating Trump “could lead to catastrophic outcomes.”

Trump has repeatedly flipped the conversation about mental deterioration onto his opponent, who many have claimed also shows signs of senility. At a March rally, Trump said, of Biden, “They’re going to put him in a home, and other people are going to be running the country.” Talk of Biden’s mental decline began during the Democratic primary campaign last year, as other candidates observed that Biden garbled sentences, misspoke, and failed to finish trains of thought in some debates. (Biden has spoken about having a lifelong stutter.)

Last spring, Bernie Sanders’s surrogates and supporters promoted the hashtag #WhereIsJoe, implying that Biden’s campaign was keeping him out of sight to hide mental infirmity. Glenn Greenwald, founder of the Intercept and an outspoken Sanders supporter, tweeted that “the steadfast, wilful refusal of Dem political & media elites to address what is increasingly visible to the naked eye — Biden’s serious cognitive decline — is frightening.” Biden, who has said he would not seek a second term as President, released his physician’s report that he is healthy and “fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency” but offered nothing specific about his cognitive health.

 … As Frank Bruni put it, in the Times, “Please tell me why I should care whether Joe Biden is declining mentally when Donald Trump bottomed out morally long ago.”

Trailing Biden in polls, Trump has continually triggered shock waves around election integrity, claiming election fraud, attacking confidence in the process’s legitimacy, urging his supporters to “go into the polls and watch very carefully,” and, most alarmingly, at times refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. (When pressed by NBC News’s Savannah Guthrie in mid-October, he did commit to a peaceful transfer of power.) If, as seems likely, voters deliver a loss for Trump, the Twenty-fifth Amendment comes into different focus, as an essential support to the democratic electoral process rather than an end run around it. In the event that the President’s mental state leads him to try to circumvent the election result in order to stay in power, having Congress remove him via the Twenty-fifth Amendment as “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” would be as legitimate a function of constitutional democracy as can be imagined.

John Gartner, the Duty to Warn psychologist, told me that, if Trump loses the election, the period between November 3rd and Inauguration Day, on January 20th, is likely to be “the most dangerous moment” in his Presidency. “What does a malignant narcissistic person do when they’re enraged?” Gartner said. “They want to act out in an aggressive and sadistic way, to regain their sense of power.” He compared the voting public to “the abused spouse” who finally says to the abuser, “We’re going to leave you. We’re kicking you out of the house. Come January, we’re packing your bags. Well, what does he do then?” During that transition, it might be most important to have the Twenty-fifth Amendment at the ready. As for Biden’s mental health, Gartner declined to say that there were no signs of cognitive decline. But, referring to Donald Winnicott’s notion of the “good enough mother,” he deemed Biden “the good enough President.”

What Nobody Tells You About the Alamo and the Texas Revolution of the 1830s

Between Bryan Preston, Stephen Green, and Mark Tapscott, along with Mark Pulliam, Instapundit has had a field day — and rightly so — defending the Alamo against woke history.

The Texas State Historical Association’s chief historian wants us to forget the Alamo and view its defenders — and their supporters now — as racists. Walter Buenger, Ph.D. and TSHA chief historian, recently slammed the Alamo as an insignificant battle then and a monument to white supremacy now. The facts don’t support that at all.

Indeed. As it happens, I should like to add my voice by reprinting here my answer to a question on Quora (What is the most little known fact about the Battle of the Alamo?). 

Actualización: Bienvenidos, lectores de Instapundit.

Here goes:

The problem with the Left, international as well as American, is that they obsess so much over every sin, real or alleged, of the United States, going berserk over American/Western guilt, that they leave other nations — and their citizens — totally unscathed from the minutest amount of criticism, all the while ignoring basic historical facts. 

In the leftist telling, for instance (as well as that of La Raza), Mexico is seen as the sacred territory of the Mexican people, the target of the greedy eyes of los gringos who were allegedly nothing but despicable traitors to their country (Mexico), while single-minded Mexicans living in perfect peace are seen as the blameless victims of the Texans (and the imperialistic Anglo-Americans) wishing to introduce slavery to their region. 

That simplistic picture is leaving out a whole lot of information. 

La revolución started in 1835, but not in Texas alone, and — can you answer this question — following what event? There is this little overlooked detail of a Mexican leader overthrowing the constitution (yes, that would be the… very document outlawing slavery) and becoming a de facto dictator. 

Why is that important? Because what do you think happened after news of the revolt reached Mexico City? Did Antonio López de Santa Anna gather his legions and march north — while patriotic Mexicans throughout the country cheered or gleefully joined the army as it marched northward to put down la revolución? 

No, el padre de la patria did not march north, on the (self-declared) Republic of Texas. He marched North-West, towards… the (self-declared) Republic of Zacatecas — where his army put down the first, the very first (!), of the revolts that broke out throughout Mexico upon his seizing of power. Like the Alamo and Goliad later on, the city of Zacatecas became a bloodbath. 

In fact, like its neighbor up North, Mexico has always been a federation of constituent states (the United Mexican States is the federation’s official name) — and in the 1830s, there were 19 to 20 estados in los Estados Unidos Mexicanos (just like there were 24 to 26 states in the neighboring United States of America at the time; FYI, 180 years later, there are 31 estados in Mexico while there are 50 states in the USA). 

In 1835, there was not a revolt only in Tejas, but in as many as 11 (!) of Mexico’s estados (some striving for a return to la Constitución of 1824, others striving for full-out independence), i.e., more than half of them. 

After the plunder of Zacatecas, Santa Anna indeed marched northward — putting down more or less small revolts all along his path to Tejas. One reason for his relatively easy victories was… the lack of weapons in the hands of the citizenry. (In 1834, the civic militia had been — conveniently — disarmed by… guess which Mexican leader; si, señoras y señores, t’is none other than Santa Anna prior to his coup d'état…) 

All the attempted revolts failed, except one: those of the Yanqui English-speakers in the future Lone Star state. (Gracias, Second Amendment.) 

Within three or four years of the Battle of San Jacinto, where the Texans prevailed, at least two more secession movements would break out within the Spanish-speaking parts of Mexico: the (self-declared) Republic of the Rio Grande and the Republic of Yucatán (the latter of which actually managed to survive as an independent nation for seven years or so). 

South of the river, three other estados bordering (the by-then independent nation of) Texas — Coahuila, Nueva León, and Tamaulipas — tried to follow the neighboring Republic of Texas in seceding from Mexico in order to establish an independent country, but the revolutionaries in la República del Río Grande were put down by the Mexican Army as well. 

To conclude: 

These are the problems with the leftists’ facile criticism of the Texas revolution, or that of their equivalents in La Raza — based on their obsession with race, racism, and slavery in addition to other sins (albeit only when and if they are American): 

First, as we have seen, revolts had broken out throughout the country, all by Spanish-speakers with no relation to slavery wishing either to secede outright from Mexico or return the nation/the federation to democratic/republican rule. (That’s a whole lot of “traitors” to a dictatorial régime that “only” wished to, uh… stamp out democracy (!) just as much as if not more than among the Gringos up North, killing (fellow?) Mexicans to prevent them from creating independent patrias.) 

Second, as far as the 1824 constitution’s abolition of slavery is concerned — which is supposed to demonstrate the superior morals of the Mexican people and government — to what extent did it really benefit the Mexican people? It should remind you of the Tsar’s abolition of serfdom in 1863: to what degree were Mexico’s peones, like Russia’s serfs, really free, other than on paper, and how had their conditions really been improved after their countries’ respective flamboyant declarations? 

Third, the praise bestowed on Mexico for outlawing slavery turns out to be moot in view of the fact that the whole reason why Texans — along with their fellow Mexican citizens in a dozen other states — revolted, it was because a dictator had seized power in the first place, overthrowing the celebrated constitution banning slavery in the process. 

Overthrown by Santa Anna, who turns out to be the fellow who declared: 

A hundred years to come my people will not be fit for liberty. They do not know what it is, unenlightened as they are …/… a despotism is a proper government for them …/…

Related: Wondering Why Slavery Persisted for Almost 75 Years After the Founding of the USA? According to Lincoln, the Democrat Party's "Principled" Opposition to "Hate Speech"

• Why Does Nobody Ever Fret About Scandinavia's — Ghastly — 19th-C Slavery Conditions?

Update: Again, when voiced by leftists, the whole affair becomes "The Mexicans showed how generous they were and look at the scandalous way in which those perfectly civic gentlemen were repaid by the ungrateful Anglo-American ruffians who settled in Texas" (i.e., by the treacherous (former) inhabitants of the racist USA).

Those leftists — American or foreign — never bother to ask why the Mexicans would invite foreigners to settle in (part of) their country in the first place. The answer is provided in an Instapundit post linking to a similar No Pasarán historical article as this one, but on Indians (What Nobody Tells You About Indians and Other Native Americans), where one mdmusterstone makes the following comment:

I'm surprised no one has mentioned "Comanches" by Fehrenbach, just finished it for a second time and have to say it seems to be the definitive volume on the subject.

• For 200 years the Spanish (and to a lesser extent the French) tried missions offering gifts and Christianity for the Amerindians--an utter failure. They invited Americans to migrate into Texas to act as a buffer to the yearly raids into Mexico.

• Thousands of Texans were murdered and tortured in unspeakable ways for amusement. The Comanches were savage and the Texans returned the favor but most Texas Rangers, stated at some point that they regretted what they did.

It occurred to me that the savage treatment of enemies by the Amerindians had no parallel in written history. Genghis' Khan's men for example would commit mass murder but wouldn't stick around for several days to enjoy the screams of someone staked face down on an anthill. The Amerindians were stone age savages and their ways of treating whites and red captives was, after 30,000 years, stone age norms of behavior unchanged and unchangeable.

Of course, this quotation is not meant to "return the compliment" i,e., to counter "No, the Mexican were the treacherous ones" (because in the minds of leftists, it always boils down to finding guilt and to vilify, to demonize, and to punish).

Everybody involved— the Mexicans, the Anglo-Americans — were perfectly open about and aware of Texas's status as a buffer zone with Comancheria and the dangers involved in settling there.

CPAC Attendees Interviewed by Mediaite Which Leaves Out All their Reasoning, their Arguments, and their Explanations

 
Mediaite dispatched its editor-in-chief into the lions' den (or the devil's den), sending Aidan McLaughlin to CPAC at Orlando's Hyatt Regency, where he proceeded to conduct interviews with various attendees. 

My interview lasted 6 minutes and a half, but leftism being what it is, they leave out all the reasoning and all the arguments to focus on a one-line statement — which they have already proclaimed as akin to insanity.

Result? All their readers chuckle as they are confirmed in their conviction that conservatives are "deluded" by their "baseless" beliefs.

For instance, the mainstream media invariably portrays Trump supporters as brain-washed. As I have explained, it is quite through reason and thought alone that I look at the Republican candidates, and at the presidential candidates. In 2016, I didn't think much of Donald Trump (as one can see in some of NP's 2016 posts), and preferred, say, Ted Cruz and Ben Carson to Trump. Likewise, it was entirely through reason that I preferred Cruz and Carson, as well as Trump, to Hillary Clinton.

Having seen (and been highly impressed by) Trump's record over the next four years, I preferred Trump to Joe Biden or to any of the other Democratic hopefuls, as well as — in the Republican camp — to Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, and, yes, even Ted Cruz and Ben Carson.

But when they simply put up who we would like to run in 2024 and the answer seems invariably to be Trump, it is to make us sound like thoughtless Neanderthals.

Likewise, I am quoted as making fun of the masks, full stop. 

Erik Svane, who on Sunday walked around the Hyatt Regency convention center in an American flag shirt and a gas mask (“it’s to make fun of all the people believing in the virus”)

Actually, my thoughts on the subject are far more extensive (as you can read in the 7 Basic Points about Covid-19 that You Need to Know).

As I write in Here Is the Key Question Regarding the Coronavirus:

Here is what would convince me, drama queens. 

Here is what would make you cross over to your side: 

Can you name a single article in a single newspaper, in any newspaper of any country in any language — the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Epoch Times, The Daily Signal, The Economist, Le Monde, Le Figaro, Berlingske Tidende, whatever — in which a writer makes a lengthy and detailed comparison between the pandemics of 2002 and 2009 on the one hand and the 2020 outbreak on the other? Showing, in the process, why the Covid-19 epidemic is far worse (or at least different)?

Indeed, can your direct me to the hyperlink of a single article showing a difference, vast or otherwise, in the death toll of Covid-19 and that of an average flu season?

I recorded the entire interview; if my voice is sometimes hard to hear or to decipher, it is because I am wearing the gas mask in question throughout.

PS: I keep going back to the YouTube studio, editing subtitles, and hitting the Publish button. To no avail. If any reader can figure out why closed captions are not appearing on the video (I copied them and pasted them below the video), I would appreciate the explanation…

Aidan McLaughlin: So there's a lot of 2024 hopefuls speaking at CPAC this weekend, who's your pick? Who's your pick for 2024? 

Erik: Well it wouldn't be, uh… [fake hesitation] Mitt Romney, it would probably be… Donald John Trump… 

Are you excited for his speech? 

I'm very excited, we don't know what's going to happen… 

Yeah. Do you think there is a place in the republican party for Liz Cheney, Mitch McConnell, the politicians who have rebuked Trump for his actions after the election? 

Well um there would be if they attacked Democrats just as much as they attacked Republicans but they don't! They just attack Republicans, y'know, and so I wonder why do they always attack only the members of their own party instead of the opposite — which the Democrats never do! You know, they always stand [together]… 

A lot of Trump supporters turned on Fox News after the election, do you still watch Fox News? 

Much less, much less but every time that— now they've started going back to the way they were, kind of, a little bit, but not too much, y'know, and it's the same thing with the Washington Post in 2008, they said, the ombudsman came out and said "Yeah we weren't very fair towards uh McCain, we were too, we were too much in favor of Obama" [except he said so] after the election! So they always come out and do [the right thing] but [only after] it's too late, y'know, so [they want to have their cake and eat it too]… 

So you think Fox News has not been supportive enough of Trump? 

I don't know, I don't think they've been supportive of the truth! Y'know? the truth is you need to show what the Democrats say, you need to show what the Republicans say, and you don't use double standards!

Are there hosts on Fox News that you still like? 

Of course! 

Who are they? 

Tucker, Tucker Carlson. he always drives the liberals mad, and they always want to shut down speech! No Republican wants Democrats to, to shut down Democrats' speech as the mainstream media, [as] they want to shut us down… 

Do you believe the election was stolen? 

Do I believe the election was stolen? No! I don't! I think we should stop talking about all this cheating and we should accept who the winner is! I'm not talking about the White House, I'm talking about the Tour de France! And we need to accept that Lance Armstrong is the winner of the Tour de France, and anybody who said that Lance Armstrong cheated must be silenced as a conspiracy theorist and as a seditionist! 

So you're you're a big Lance Armstrong fan, I take it? 

No, I'm being, I'm being very facetious. [Laughter] For 12 years (!), everybody thought that he had won a record seven Tour de France prizes, and it was only after 12 years (!) that they discovered he had cheated! Now, after half a dozen days (!) the New York Times, the Washington Post, all the [social media] Twitter, Facebook, all said "oh no no there's no cheating!" How do they know?! What made them God?! When did they become all-knowing?! 

What do you think about the courts, including Trump-appointed judges, tossing out election challenges? 

What do i think about them tossing them out? Well, they didn't say "there was no cheating," they just said "we're not, we're not going to judge this…" This is again the the left always using so-called "experts" to, to silence people. Well, first it was "oh well, the journalists say there is no cheating." Oh, okay, we don't believe the journalists, and [then] they say "the politicians say there was no cheating" now it's "the judges." You know, I don't understand how (what's his name) Joe Biden could win more people, more votes than Barack Obama, when [he is much less eloquent]. He is he's kind of old, y'know, he was never a superstar like Obama was, and we've never seen a president win more votes in his re-election and yet lose the presidency. There are questions that are [odd] and the the media should be looking at them! 

Last question: what is the deal with the gas mask? 

Well, this is about the virus, the coronavirus… 

That's another protection? 

Well it's more to make fun of all the people believing in the virus…

Are you not concerned about the coronavirus? 

I was in the beginning! I was for the first two or three weeks. You know a quarantine means 40 in French, 40 days where you stay away, where you keep yourself away — and only if you're sick! not if you're healthy! You know, it's been going on for a year! And I'm asking people, "Is this pandemic worse than 2009, 2002, 1968, 1957?" I'm willing to believe it, if you give me the proof. But I haven't seen any dead people in the street. I haven't seen rotting corpses in the street. I haven't seen sick people collapsing and start uh throwing up black vomit. 

Do you not trust the the death numbers, the half a million deaths that they recognize? 

I [am willing to] believe the death numbers but I don't know, are they worse, or are they better, than 2009 and 2002 and 1968?

I think they're worse than 2009. 

They may be, but who do they concern? Are they only old people in uh in, what do you call it?… 

Nursing homes. 

Very good: nursing homes. Y'know, I think the average age in Denmark — I have Danish blood in my veins — the average age of the dead in Denmark and Sweden is 82. I mean, okay. We don't need to close [down], to refuse to go out for a cappuccino because people are dying. And that would be my grandfather or my father: they wouldn't ask us to [ruin the economy] either. 

Great. That's amazing. Thanks so much for doing that again. I really appreciate it. 

Thanks. What's your name again? 

Aidan McLaughlin. 

Okay. 

Mediaite. That'll go up, appreciate it…

COVID-19: Here Is the Key Question Regarding the Coronavirus

When President Donald Trump was diagnosed with Covid-19 almost six months ago, I used the event as an opportunity to write that

A close study of the Coronavirus — as well as of the various government responses thereto around the world since the epidemic erupted in January and February [2020] — ought to lead to the following seven main conclusions

Check out Here Are the 7 Basic Points about Covid-19 that You Need to Know. (Or: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Covid-19, But Were Afraid to Ask.)

Today comes an eighth point — perhaps the most important of all (if you are pressed for time, it starts five paragraphs down):

After attending CPAC in Orlando, I took a week's holiday in the Florida keys. Key West, especially, is a leftist stronghold, and over and over again, I was asked/ordered to wear my mask and pull it over my nose. I also got backlash (instead of laughter, or at least a chuckle) for wearing my World War II gas mask (that's not funny!). 

Even so, I was surprised while (semi-) wearing my (regular surgical light blue) mask at a post office in Key West, when the young man standing behind me in line started shouting to the postal employee, "Ma'am, Ma'am, this man has to leave; he won't wear his mask over his nose!"

When I gave my invariable deadpan response ("You're absolutely right; after all, we don't anybody to die today"), used both in America and in Europe, he said forcefully, that's exactly right!, and I quipped that so far today, we were lucky, since I hadn't yet seen a single dead body in the streets. (Sometimes, my ironic bent takes me in the opposite direction, agonizing, in a voice full of melodrama, "yes, it's horrible; on the way to these premises, I have already come upon half a dozen rotting corpses!"…)

The young man (who, for what it's worth, may have been gay, not that it matters one way or another) started hyperventilating and stammering stuff like "I, I don't believe it! I can't believe I, I am hearing this!" (By this point, my mask was, for the sake of general peace, firmly in place.) The middle-aged woman behind him chimed in, saying to him (about me), "Don't let him get to you, he's ignorant" and, claiming to be a nurse whose policeman husband repeatedly — sigh — has to deal with skeptics like me, started explaining why masks are necessary and good for you. Then she added: "Everybody in here agrees that masks are necessary." And the five or six women in line behind her nodded and agreed…

There is just one — major — problem with that line of thought, and here it is:

How come it is that during the 2009 and 2002 epidemics, everybody "agreed" that lockdowns were not necessary, that — utterly unhygienic — face masks were not necessary, and that attempts to bankrupt thousands of businesses and impoverish millions of fellow citizens were not necessary?

Of course, we didn't actually "agree" to do nothing, we just simply did not do anything…

What is different from 2009 and 2002, where the epidemics ended up disappearing within a year or so thanks to the populations gaining immunity, which they gained precisely because there were no lockdowns and no (unhygienic as well as counter-productive) face masks, along with no impoverishment of any part of the citizenry?

In other words, in what way(s) is Covid-19 worse? 

I have asked this question to any number of people on both continents, and the answer I often hear is that of course 2020's Chinese virus is worse — as in it must be worse, because of the lockdown requests and because of the face mask requests.

But think about it: doesn't this explanation amount to putting the cart before the horse and isn't the deduction backwards?

Here is what would convince me, drama queens. 

Here is what would make you cross over to your side: 

Can you name a single article in a single newspaper, in any newspaper of any country in any language — the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Epoch Times, The Daily Signal, The Economist, The Australian, Le Monde, Le Figaro, Berlingske Tidende, whatever — in which a writer makes a lengthy and detailed comparison between the pandemics of 2002 and 2009 on the one hand and the 2020 outbreak on the other? Showing, in the process, why the Covid-19 epidemic is far worse (or at least different)?

Indeed, can your direct me to the hyperlink of a single article showing a difference, vast or otherwise, in the death toll of Covid-19 and that of an average flu season?

And my request is a bit of a trap, I will admit. Because no such article exists. 

Again: the articles do not exist.

I know that for a fact. Wait a minute! How? How can I be sure? After all, how can I know, or prove, a negative? For this reason, dear reader: Because if there existed, say, an October 15 article in the Washington Post by John Doe proving that the CCP virus is worse than previous outbreaks and/or an average flu season, all the leftists, and all the Democrats, and all the world's leftists would be citing (not without reason, au contraire) said piece over and over again, day in and day out. 

For the very reason that no comparative article is ever quoted, the article is nowhere to be found, i.e., it has never been written.

And yet, what with the urgency politicians took on this "calamity" it is pretty clear-cut that the word went out: and mainstream media editors across the globe called in their science reporter(s), needless to say, and told him (them) that, in order to make readers aware of how perilous the situation is, it was necessary to prepare a comparison between the earlier viruses and the present Coronavirus. 

(For the record, the only times that a significant difference has been observed between the current epidemic and past pandemics, has been between the (admittedly higher) death toll of Covid-19 and the (admittedly lower) death tolls of 1968 and 1957; however, those were readily explainable — by the growth of the world's populations in the intervening half century or so.)

When, after several hours, days, or weeks, the reporter(s) brought up nothing of importance, they were told to drop the matter — instead of… writing an article about… the lack of significant differences. 

Why? Because that would have proven that the melodrama of the face masks, the lockdowns, and the bankruptcies was — way — overblown, — way — unnecessary, and, as it happens, nothing less than a case of mass hysteria.

As I concluded my October piece,

Offer the elderly, and those with weak immune systems, quarantine, and break the chains of the rest of the population.

Related: Here Are the 7 Basic Points about Covid-19 that You Need to Know
• Is There 100% Irrefutable Proof that the Covid19 Pandemic Is Overstated?
• Anti-Americanism in the Age of the Coronavirus, the NBA, and 1619