I saw this photo and thought: “I have to write about this!”

Some things people do are absurd and must be contemplated, digested, and understood. Especially when the people who do them are not only taken seriously but also considered thoughtful leaders we all should listen to.

Not entirely clear how the parody version of this would be different pic.twitter.com/r9EyqrqqoV

— Curt Mills (@CurtMills) December 26, 2023

The Tuesday edition of the Washington Post had a front page that is worthy of contemplation.

This front page deserves to be preserved in a time capsule for future academics–assuming that there are any sane ones in the future–can marvel at how one small piece of paper can reveal the psychoses that dominate our age. Psychologists, sociologists, historians, and political scientists will be able to look back on our decade and shake their heads.

You have climate change hysteria. Scary emerging diseases. Vaccine skeptics. Russia Russia Russia. And, of course, the alphabet people.

First page, above the fold.

You can tell that Ukraine is no longer a top concern–as I pointed out the other day the Post has dropped its “Ukraine” tab on its website, marking the end of the Ukraine obsession. Now it is alphabet people in Russia we are to weep for. Putin is still evil, just differently evil than before.

What exactly a “climate disease” is is a mystery until you realize this term was invented to make a snappy headline. In non-headline speak, these are diseases that are spread by more frequent interactions between people and wild animals driven out of their natural environment due to climate change. Or they are diseases we are to believe are made more common due to climate change.

Color me skeptical. Malaria, Dengue fever, and other diseases have been with us for millennia, and new diseases have been springing up throughout human history. Not to mention that climate has been anything but constant throughout the lifetime of the human race. It wasn’t that long ago that no human beings had made it to North America because the entire northern half of the continent was a mile deep in ice. The British Isles were part of Europe, and people had villages in “Doggerland.”

And what of the vaccine skeptics that WaPo writers are so worried about? Perhaps this is the influence of Taylor Lorenz–she who refuses to celebrate Christmas because of the sociopaths who don’t wear hazmat suits around her.

Good evening, today is December 23rd, 2023 and Taylor Lorenz is missing Christmas for the FOURTH time because of Covid. She then accuses people who don’t wear masks in Dec, 2023 of being “selfish” pic.twitter.com/C0gWcvl9en

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 23, 2023

“Social murder of disabled people.” You can’t make this up.

One thing that struck me is that the arrangement of the stories in the printed version of the newspaper doesn’t mirror that on the website- stories that get the front page treatment in the print version are hardly prominent online.

This suggests something interesting: only a small slice of the population gets the print version, and that group is our capital city’s political and cultural elite. Is the Washington Post catering to their interests and prejudices, or does the Post shape those interests and prejudices by how they present the “news” to that small, elite group?

In either case, what the Post considers not only newsworthy but so important that it belongs on the paper’s front page above the fold is striking. None of those stories reflects the concerns of the average person–in fact, the average person is voting for those anti-vaxxers.

As you can see, however insane the Washington Post you see online is, the version they dish out to the glitterati of Washington is so much worse. It reflects an obsession with the most bizarre fears that almost nobody in America cares about.

Queers in Russia? I have thought not once about “queers in Russia” and only briefly a few times about how gays and lesbians are treated there. It’s just not something that comes up in daily life. I have probably thought more about the fate of great apes in Africa, and trust me, that comes up fairly rarely in conversation unless there is a massive wave of poaching.

As for “climate diseases?” Well, enough said.