Arthur Saginian | Gaze Into the Abyss

Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor
Share on facebook
Share
Share on twitter
Tweet
Share on email
Email

I don’t know Gary Horton, but when I read the title of his column this morning (“Vaccination, Do Your Duty for All of Us,” May 5) I thought to myself, a man who has the audacity to dictate moral obligations on the masses needs a closer examination. And what an article! Wow! By the way, that was not meant as a compliment. After reading the article to the end I wondered what Mr. Horton had against what he called “wide-eyed crazy guys.” I think if he had looked in the mirror right after writing this article he might have found that he closely resembled one of them.

Horton speaks as if we are in the fight of our lives and that beating COVID, whatever that means, is the demarcation between the success or failure of our species. He also wasted a lot of words attacking irrational or “magical” thinking by branding those who aren’t getting vaccinated as being anti-science. Being a licensed mechanical engineer, I can calmly tell Horton to his face that it is not my lack of faith in science that is holding me back from the clinic, as science is the basis of my profession. No, Mr. Horton, it is in fact the failure of science to convince me that getting this particular vaccination is going to solves the world’s problems. I’m not ignoring the science. Quite the contrary, I am hyper-focused on it and highly critical of it, and as such I find it wanting. 

In short, it’s simply not good enough for me to “go get the jab.”

I can understand Mr. Horton’s impassioned plea, especially in light of the loss of those close to him, but his reaction in what amounts to a diatribe, a near-tirade, is as irrational as the reasoning he claims is behind those he condemns for not getting vaccinated, which is very presumptuous of him. 

Gaze long into an abyss, Mr. Horton, and the abyss also gazes into you. Or, more precisely, he who fights with monsters should be careful, lest he thereby become a monster. That’s Nietzsche. 

Arthur G. Saginian
Santa Clarita

Related To This Story

Latest NEWS