Political correctness’s unspoken role in Northern Italy’s COVID-19 disaster | Rooney

By Matt Rooney
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Italy is a modern, wealthy, “universal health care” European state. It didn’t matter. Its death toll from the China-born coronavirus surpassed China’s own death toll on Friday. This grim milestone is a scary indictment of coronavirus’s deadly potential for pandemonium, Save Jerseyans.

It’s also – in a small but significant way – an indictment of political correctness, at least in one legendary Italian tourist destination at the heart of the Italian health care meltdown. 

Florence is like the rest of Northern Italy right now: a medical war zone.

Rampant sickness. Supply shortages. Socialized medicine. You’ve read/heard it all from the news reports (except for the socialized medicine tie-in; the mainstream outlets are careful to leave that storyline out of the discussion).

What you likely haven’t read/heard:

Back in February, when the threat of coronavirus’s spread was growing and clearly evident but panic had not yet set in, Florence’s left-wing mayor launched a “hug a Chinese” (#AbbracciaUnCinese) campaign. Yes, you read that correctly! Right as medical authorities were beginning to coach “social distancing,” Florence’s mayor was urging people to hug one another all in the interest of proving that he and his city were NOT racist.

He even posted an uncomfortably campy video of himself on Twitter hugging a Chinese man.

That was February 1st. The more recent replies to his tweet say it all:

“People are dead, but at least they aren’t racist!”

The official #woke slogan!

But no one in Trenton is urging hugs at the moment; even the most deranged, hard-left New Jersey politicians now have the benefit of hindsight. N.J. Attorney General Gurbir Grewal (the Sanctuary State guru) nevertheless cut a quick video of his own this week, and the accompanying AG office release warned employers that they could be breaking the law by allowing their employees to call it the “China virus.”

Look: only a wicked and ignorant dirtbag of a human being would harass someone of Asian descent/origin over this pandemic. That’s an uncontroversial opinion.

The decision by President Trump to call it China virus has nothing to do with racial politics. The only “racism” at play here is the racism Trump-obsessed Leftists project on others

Grewal (left) and Trump (right)

In reality, our president’s choice of label has everything to do with (1) factual geographic accuracy (it arose in China for Christ’s sake, and that’s how we’ve traditionally named diseases) and (2) smart geopolitics. #2 is the crucial, under-reported point. China is a menace and a threat to free peoples everywhere and is actively blaming the U.S. (???) for all of this to cover its own tracks. China cannot be allowed to escape culpability for its cover-up of this disease which deprived the world of valuable time to prepare for a pandemic.

The Trump Administration isn’t obsessed with race. It isn’t encouraging racists or racism. It’s laser-focused on protecting Americans from this disease AND from a communist, bellicose, human rights-abusing nemesis which is presently taking the world and its global economic system to the brink. 

Meanwhile, by way of contrast, we can find a CRYSTAL CLEAR example in Florence, Italy of what the political correctness movement can accomplish taken to its fashionable unhealthy extreme.

Answer: human carnage. 

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Save Jersey’s Founder and Blogger-in-Chief, MATT ROONEY is a nationally-noted and respected New Jersey political commentator. When he’s not on-line, radio or television advocating for conservative reform and challenging N.J. power-brokers, Matt is a practicing attorney at the law firm of DeMichele & DeMichele in Haddon Heights (Camden County).

Matt Rooney
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MATT ROONEY is SaveJersey.com's founder and editor-in-chief, a practicing New Jersey attorney, and the host of 'The Matt Rooney Show' on 1210 WPHT every Sunday evening from 7-10PM EST.