What is most striking with critics like Rubin is how much they engage in the same conduct that they denounce in Trump. Rubin regularly engages in twitter tirades and has been regularly denounced for false statements and personal attacks. In this latest incident, she is suggesting that a team of distinguished doctors should be stripped of their license and calls them all cowards. The message is that either they are quacks or political stooges or both. This is because Rubin believes that they should somehow order the confinement of the President of the United States at a hospital despite meeting criteria for release.
Both Trump and Rubin show the benefits and costs of fear. Fear has a benefit when it prompts people to be cautious in the face of an imminent threat like Covid-19. That is why the President was wrong in issuing that statement. Fear also has a cost when it unleashes panic or hysteria. That is why Rubin and others are wrong to savage the medical staff and hospital. Call me old-fashioned but I like the old FDR fearful moments.
