First Read’s Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Carrie Dann are smart people, and at least they are not accusing anyone of racism, but their Tuesday morning attack on Obama’s critics is equal parts smug, factually-challenged, filled with false choices, and clueless.  Nothing is more ridiculous, though, than the premising of this piece on the anti-science basis that eventually Obama’s response to the Ebola crisis was “vindicated.”

From Ebola to Paris: Fear and the Political Freak Out

Americans are frightened and suspicious of foreigners entering the country from abroad. The political press is blaming President Obama for not doing enough. Rival politicians with presidential ambitions are seizing on the issue. Sounds like the political aftermath after Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris, right? But those same descriptions — fear, suspicion, blame, and political opportunism — apply to what happened just a year ago during the Ebola scare.

While it’s difficult to compare the 129 who died Friday in Paris to the handful of U.S.-based deaths due to Ebola, remember the overall political environment in the fall of 2014 right before the midterm elections. Politicians were demanding a shut down of the U.S.-Mexico border due to Ebola concerns. The political press was criticizing Obama’s too-cool crisis management. And New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was quarantining that American nurse who had returned from West Africa even after she tested negative for Ebola. Bottom line: Panic and fear don’t bring out the best in our super-charged, highly polarized political system right now. …

[T]he Ebola story later vindicated Obama’s response[.]

First off, what NBC News and First Read arrogantly describes as “frightened and suspicious of foreigners” is factually untrue. The fear was of a deadly virus, not of people, and it wasn’t fear, it was caution.

Moreover, if the fear was of “foreigners” from Western Africa, where is that fear today? Foreigners still exist, correct? Foreigners are still traveling into America from Africa, right? Where’s the outcry against these same African foreigners?

There is none because it was never about foreigners, it was about a virus — a deadly virus.

This is especially egregious:

Bottom line: Panic and fear don’t bring out the best in our super-charged, highly polarized political system right now.

How absurd.

This so-called “panic and fear” forced the government to focus like a laser on the Ebola threat. NBC News seems to have forgotten that what caused the public outcry was CDC Director Tom Freidan’s “What, Me Worry?” press conference. His chilling lack of urgency did not create an urgency in the “What, Me Worry?” media that protects Obama. The urgency was created by a public outcry that gave the DC Media no choice other than to give the Ebola issue the appropriate focus.

From that point on, the federal government was under a microscope. How is that a bad thing? Therefore, it is preposterous for NBC News to say that “the Ebola story later vindicated Obama’s response.”

‘The simple fact is that we have absolutely no idea what the outcome of Obama’s “What, Me Worry?” response would have been because the American people found his response lacking, rose up, demanded more accountability and focus, and got more accountability and focus.

Nevertheless, NBC News apparently sees an abundance of caution and a demand for government accountability from the American people as the unsophisticated rubes engaging in a “freak out.”

My guess is that were it not for us rubes, the Ebola outbreak almost certainly would have been worse than it was.

And now NBC News is slamming us rubes for  worrying about Obama’s “What, Me Worry?” attitude towards importing 10,000 Syrian refugees that ISIS itself has promised to infiltrate with terrorists.

I guess it works like this: In order to gain favor with our NBC Betters, we are supposed to shut up and blindly trust the same federal government that gave us the IRS, ObamaCare, and the Veterans Administration failures to handle the refugee vetting.

Gee, I’m sorry NBC News, that us yokels questioning our government and taking ISIS at their word makes you uncomfortable.

If we roll over for the government, will you say nice things about us?

Overall, look at what NBC News and the rest of the DC Media are doing. Just like Obama does, everything is being reported as a false choice: We either accept 10,000 poorly vetted refugees ISIS has promised to infiltrate, or leave them in the hellhole of Syria.

The OBVIOUS solution here is for America to build and to protect Syrian refugee camps in the area. This is how we can protect the innocent without risking our own security. No one opposes this. Except, of course, Democrats and the DC Media that protects them.

You see, refugee camps in the region ARE the solution. But that solution doesn’t keep Americans divided. That solution doesn’t keep Republicans on defense over insinuations of racism. That solution doesn’t distract from Obama’s catastrophic failures in the war against ISIS.

If it’s Black Lives Matter or a bunch of spoiled crybabies at a Missouri University, the DC Media treats them as though they represent all that is good and wise in the world.

But if you’re a taxpayer from the Middle America hinterlands, you best shut up and do what your government tells you.

 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC