The GOP’s opposition to preventative measures, like mask-wearing and vaccines, didn’t begin with COVID. Ten years ago, they weaponized another vaccine in a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, and recast themselves as the Death Cult Party
[…]
The controversy not only showed that politicians could capitalize on a distinct separation in the conservative base between “pro-life” and policies that would save lives; it showed they could build upon people’s preexisting discomforts with certain kinds of government mandates and a growing interest in “parental rights” and anti-capitalist rhetoric.
*Megan Carpentier is a writer and editor whose work has been published Glamour, Esquire, Rolling Stone, The New Republic, The Week, The Baffler, Ms., the Washington Post and the comic book Bitch Planet, among others. She’s probably the only person to have simultaneous bylines in Foreign Policy and Us Weekly.
attribution for the thread’s title “free dumb” describing a certain group goes to others such as the writer of this last year:
The American idiot is, by now, a figure that’s the stuff of myth and legend across the world. Nobody else is really quite sure: are Americans really like this? This…well…laughable? Yesterday, they were the kind of people who made their kids do “active shooter drills,” meaning masked men burst into classrooms…and pretend…to kill them. What the? Today, they’re the kind of people who happily congregate in parks and on beaches during a global pandemic…when the lunatic fringe amongst them isn’t protesting for “liberation” in the first place. What on earth?
I don’t use the term as an insult — the American idiot. I mean it in a precise way, as I try to remind people. For the Greeks, “idiot” carried a precise and special meaning. The person who was only interested in private life, private gain, private advantage. Who had no conception of a public good, common wealth, shared interest. To the Greeks, the pioneers of democracy, the creators of the demos, such a person was the most contemptible of all. Because even the Greeks seemed to understand: you can’t make a functioning democracy out of…idiots.
Now, I’m going to generalize. But I don’t mean that all Americans are idiots. I mean that, for example, more or less everyone who wants to carry a gun to Starbucks, deny their neighbours healthcare, make people beg for medicine online, and not let anyone in society ever retire…all of those people in the world, by and large, are Americans. Nobody else — nobody in the whole world at this point in history — thinks such things are remotely desirable. Hence, the American idiot. It means: the world’s largest and most hardened subset of idiots at this point, in the Classical Greek meaning of the word, is largely American.
well, seems not all GOPers are free-dumbers about the covid vax
Gov. Spencer Cox is counting on stories from Utahns who skipped the COVID-19 shots and then became gravely ill after catching the virus to encourage more vaccinations in the state, warning that opposition to the vaccines is “literally killing” people.
“I promise you the disease is worse than the vaccine. I can’t make it more clear than that. The disease is far worse than the vaccine, and we desperately need you to get vaccinated,” the governor said Thursday during the taping of his monthly news conference on PBS Utah in Salt Lake City.
COVID-19 cases are continuing to climb in the state, as are hospitalization and deaths from the virus, something Cox said is “unnecessary” since more than 95% of Utahns struck down are unvaccinated and those who do experience what are known as breakthrough cases after getting the shots seldom suffer serious illness.
[continues]
Bink, your comment from yesterday is worth repeating.
If there’s some yokel with kids, and a job, limited education, and peers all in the same circumstance, i understand and empathize with how they could be suspicious and vaccine-hesitant. Patience and compassion among the more enlightened could help outreach to such populations, but i’ll be honest, any inroads made would likely be negated by their first family dinner after that, or a visit to church, or around the water-cooler with the proudly misinformed.
Welcome to WV (but the water coolers have given way to coffee pots.)
A close friend of mine who is as proudly liberal and progressive as I am finally agreed to get vaccinated for COVID. Finally. Over a year after vaccination started in the U.S. I pointed out that several hundred million people have been vaccinated around the world. People are not dying, people are not giving birth to deformed babies, people are not setting off metal detectors or ruining listening to over the air radio. That does not matter. Going to travel in January does. I informed her we are going places which will not let you enter without proof of vaccination. Finally.
Judge was at the All Star Game earlier this week. Now all baseball teams’ biggest stars are having to get tested for Covid because of this bonehead…
wapo excerpt from “I alone can fix it” a moment in history that’s sadly been under reported but which will make a great scene in any upcoming movie about the insurrection:
On Capitol Hill, most of the senators, along with about 50 staff members, were in a large undisclosed room secured by Capitol Police. Tensions were high. Romney was as upset as he’d ever been. He went up to Josh Hawley and Ron Johnson, two of the dozen Republican senators objecting to the certification.
“This is what you have caused,” Romney told them.
At 4:05 p.m., Biden delivered remarks from Wilmington, Del. The senators stopped what they were doing and silently watched on television screens. Trump still had not appeared on camera since the siege began, but the president-elect stepped in to try to calm the nation.
“At this hour, our democracy is under unprecedented assault, unlike anything we’ve seen in modern times,” Biden said. He added: “This is not dissent. It’s disorder. It’s chaos. It borders on sedition. And it must end now.”
Biden said, “The words of a president matter, no matter how good or bad that president is. At their best, the words of a president can inspire. At their worst, they can incite.”
Watching from their secure room, the senators stood and applauded — Republicans and Democrats alike. “It was like, wow, we have a leader who said what needed to be said,” Romney recalled.
A shocking YouGov poll found that 66% of Republicans in southern states want to secede from the United States.
A similar poll was conducted just weeks after the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and results were similar. https://t.co/aycjJGTctE
A shocking YouGov poll found that 66% of Republicans in southern states want to secede from the United States.
Shocking but could be the beginning of a solution. I say let them go and fulfill their potential to be petty chiefs in banana republics I would not miss them.
The Dems need a better pr initiative The child care tax credit sounds kind of boring when the result of itis most certainly is not boring. It will lift 40% of children living in poverty above the poverty line. It is a very good start.
That YouGov poll makes me feel like singing
Or in a more leisurely fashion
just how many people and what percentage of the u.s. population are we talking about in that “66% of republicans in southern states”?
in april gallup said only 40% of all the adults in the country identified as GOPers. how many of those 40% are in the south, 20%? maybe 12%+/- of the u.s. adult population as a whole want to secede. that 12% probably represents about the same people that won’t take the vaccine and will die – soooo the question then becomes which happens 1st, secession or death?
pogo, you may want to read what wonkette is saying about your senator today
Trump supporters are killing themselves by not getting vaccinated. OK
It’s pretty nice not having smallpox. Thanks, all!
…not having polio is pretty sweet, too- do recommend👍
KGC – a lot of them have not yet surrendered in 1865. They continued the resistance which is why the battle flag is still around and all those bronze lumps (which are finally going away). They really thought Lee only did the surrender thing to divert Yankees away from the deepest of the white supremacists.
A mask mandate and a vaccine mandate would promote the general welfare of we, the people. Stubborn-ass idiots will keep us in this mess for another 18 months, cost a lot of money in productivity, rack up healthcare bills, and, kill more folks.
Man oh man I’d like to have a video of one of his hitleresque breakdowns……
Bink…..it was the least we could do…….(our parents forced us against our will….we didn’t have a damned thing to say about it. One morning sweating in the classroom like all the other mornings watching all the interesting shit Dick, Jane, and Sally can get into, when the principal comes in over the wall speaker above the blackboard……”Attention! You vill all NOW report to the auditorium!” which we do and like good little soldiers we pass one by one before the very efficient nurse as she pokes her way thru the student body. And just like that, no more smallpox or polio. It was like magic.)
There’s nothing quite like watching 30-40 kids ahead of you get their shots while yours awaits and you’re like in the 3rd grade or so.
Actually my 2nd polio shot was a sugar cube……talk about ominous and foreshadowing………
If there was a 1 in 100 chance of death for flipping on the light switch, I’d light a candle…but, TG for that smallpox vaxx.
“The strain involved in this week’s case is much less deadly, killing perhaps 1 in 100 people, the CDC said. The smallpox vaccine can protect people from monkeypox, but the global vaccination campaign ended when that virus was eradicated, so access to the vaccine is limited.“
“The individual is a City of Dallas resident who traveled from Nigeria to Dallas, arriving at Love Field airport on July 9, 2021. The person is hospitalized in Dallas…”
Patd, Manchin is where the money was in WV – fossil fuel extraction. It doesn’t surprise me that he makes a lot of money on coal. If he wasn’t a Democrat, at least nominally, I never would have voted for him.
I wish they had developed the measles vaccine when I was a kid. Don’t remember the measles but I definitely remember the shingles that came to visit decades later. Stupid fucking anti-vaxxers. Let them swap the virus and kill each other. They’re mostly red state republicans anyway, so politically I’m ok with that.
And I grew up with “Save your confederate money. The South will rise again.“ Secession doesn’t strike me as a huge stretch.
Yep, polio booster was a pink sugar cube.
Maybe if Pfizer teamed up with Cheetos…
Patd, aside from the title that Wonkette piece doesn’t even mention Manchin making money.
“Sen. Joe Manchin, key Democratic holdout on federal voting protections, coming to Texas for fundraiser hosted by several GOP donors“
“The host committee includes titans of the Texas oil and gas industry — many of whom donate almost exclusively to Republicans.”
“ is the chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the most powerful perch on Capitol Hill when it comes to oil and gas policy. He will be up for reelection in 2024.”
“Among the hosts are oil billionaires like Jeff Hildebrand, who cofounded the energy company Hilcorp, and Richard Kinder, a cofounder of Kinder Morgan, an energy infrastructure company. “
I never missed a trick
I caught the measles and the mumps
Every time I play an ace
My partner always trumps
Everything happens to me
A lollipop for anyone able to name the now out of date lyrics by Matt Dennis
I even may have contracted polio but there is no way to confirm. In 1952 My step sister was paralyzed from the neck down and died during spinal surgery three years later. I had the “flu”. So the antibodies may be from that or the Salk vaccine injection Received in 1955.
My generation had to get MMR to attend school
…and attending school was mandatory, none of this “home-school” nonsense
I just watched the last segment of Netflix’s “Heist”, about the great bourbon thefts of a few years back, “Pappygate”. Set in the beautiful Frankfort, Kentucky, I thought of Craig when Wild Turkey was mentioned. That was my brand of course when I still allowed myself 2 fingers straight up neat. I never even heard of Pappy Van Winkle bourbon until a year ago; later I noticed that was James Carville’s brand last election as he was having a tiny sip every time a blue state checked in for Joe. Night Watchman punching the last clock checkpoint and heading for the rack for some zzzzs. 🙂
and they call themselves “PRO LIFE”?
megan carpentier* in dame mag 2 days ago:
*Megan Carpentier is a writer and editor whose work has been published Glamour, Esquire, Rolling Stone, The New Republic, The Week, The Baffler, Ms., the Washington Post and the comic book Bitch Planet, among others. She’s probably the only person to have simultaneous bylines in Foreign Policy and Us Weekly.
attribution for the thread’s title “free dumb” describing a certain group goes to others such as the writer of this last year:
How Freedom Became Free-dumb in America | by umair haque | Eudaimonia and Co (eand.co)
here’s an excerpt:
well, seems not all GOPers are free-dumbers about the covid vax
Spencer Cox says COVID-19 vaccine opposition ‘literally killing’ people – Deseret News
Bink, your comment from yesterday is worth repeating.
Welcome to WV (but the water coolers have given way to coffee pots.)
A close friend of mine who is as proudly liberal and progressive as I am finally agreed to get vaccinated for COVID. Finally. Over a year after vaccination started in the U.S. I pointed out that several hundred million people have been vaccinated around the world. People are not dying, people are not giving birth to deformed babies, people are not setting off metal detectors or ruining listening to over the air radio. That does not matter. Going to travel in January does. I informed her we are going places which will not let you enter without proof of vaccination. Finally.
patd… great cartoon!
Aaron Judge among 6 NY Yankees to test positive for Covid-19.
Judge was at the All Star Game earlier this week. Now all baseball teams’ biggest stars are having to get tested for Covid because of this bonehead…
wapo excerpt from “I alone can fix it” a moment in history that’s sadly been under reported but which will make a great scene in any upcoming movie about the insurrection:
A similar poll was conducted just weeks after the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and results were similar. https://t.co/aycjJGTctE
A shocking YouGov poll found that 66% of Republicans in southern states want to secede from the United States.
Shocking but could be the beginning of a solution. I say let them go and fulfill their potential to be petty chiefs in banana republics I would not miss them.
The Dems need a better pr initiative The child care tax credit sounds kind of boring when the result of itis most certainly is not boring. It will lift 40% of children living in poverty above the poverty line. It is a very good start.
That YouGov poll makes me feel like singing
Or in a more leisurely fashion
just how many people and what percentage of the u.s. population are we talking about in that “66% of republicans in southern states”?
in april gallup said only 40% of all the adults in the country identified as GOPers. how many of those 40% are in the south, 20%? maybe 12%+/- of the u.s. adult population as a whole want to secede. that 12% probably represents about the same people that won’t take the vaccine and will die – soooo the question then becomes which happens 1st, secession or death?
pogo, you may want to read what wonkette is saying about your senator today
By Sheer Coincidence, Joe Manchin Made Half A Million Dollars Last Year Off Of Coal – Wonkette
Trump supporters are killing themselves by not getting vaccinated. OK
It’s pretty nice not having smallpox. Thanks, all!
…not having polio is pretty sweet, too- do recommend👍
KGC – a lot of them have not yet surrendered in 1865. They continued the resistance which is why the battle flag is still around and all those bronze lumps (which are finally going away). They really thought Lee only did the surrender thing to divert Yankees away from the deepest of the white supremacists.
A mask mandate and a vaccine mandate would promote the general welfare of we, the people. Stubborn-ass idiots will keep us in this mess for another 18 months, cost a lot of money in productivity, rack up healthcare bills, and, kill more folks.
Man oh man I’d like to have a video of one of his hitleresque breakdowns……
Bink…..it was the least we could do…….(our parents forced us against our will….we didn’t have a damned thing to say about it. One morning sweating in the classroom like all the other mornings watching all the interesting shit Dick, Jane, and Sally can get into, when the principal comes in over the wall speaker above the blackboard……”Attention! You vill all NOW report to the auditorium!” which we do and like good little soldiers we pass one by one before the very efficient nurse as she pokes her way thru the student body. And just like that, no more smallpox or polio. It was like magic.)
There’s nothing quite like watching 30-40 kids ahead of you get their shots while yours awaits and you’re like in the 3rd grade or so.
Actually my 2nd polio shot was a sugar cube……talk about ominous and foreshadowing………
MIT predicted society would collapse by 2040. New data tells how we’re doing | TheHill
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/16/health/monkeypox-case-import-dallas/index.html
If there was a 1 in 100 chance of death for flipping on the light switch, I’d light a candle…but, TG for that smallpox vaxx.
“The strain involved in this week’s case is much less deadly, killing perhaps 1 in 100 people, the CDC said. The smallpox vaccine can protect people from monkeypox, but the global vaccination campaign ended when that virus was eradicated, so access to the vaccine is limited.“
“The individual is a City of Dallas resident who traveled from Nigeria to Dallas, arriving at Love Field airport on July 9, 2021. The person is hospitalized in Dallas…”
Patd, Manchin is where the money was in WV – fossil fuel extraction. It doesn’t surprise me that he makes a lot of money on coal. If he wasn’t a Democrat, at least nominally, I never would have voted for him.
I wish they had developed the measles vaccine when I was a kid. Don’t remember the measles but I definitely remember the shingles that came to visit decades later. Stupid fucking anti-vaxxers. Let them swap the virus and kill each other. They’re mostly red state republicans anyway, so politically I’m ok with that.
And I grew up with “Save your confederate money. The South will rise again.“ Secession doesn’t strike me as a huge stretch.
Yep, polio booster was a pink sugar cube.
Maybe if Pfizer teamed up with Cheetos…
Patd, aside from the title that Wonkette piece doesn’t even mention Manchin making money.
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/07/15/joe-manchin-texas-fundraiser-republicans/
“Sen. Joe Manchin, key Democratic holdout on federal voting protections, coming to Texas for fundraiser hosted by several GOP donors“
“The host committee includes titans of the Texas oil and gas industry — many of whom donate almost exclusively to Republicans.”
“ is the chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the most powerful perch on Capitol Hill when it comes to oil and gas policy. He will be up for reelection in 2024.”
“Among the hosts are oil billionaires like Jeff Hildebrand, who cofounded the energy company Hilcorp, and Richard Kinder, a cofounder of Kinder Morgan, an energy infrastructure company. “
I never missed a trick
I caught the measles and the mumps
Every time I play an ace
My partner always trumps
Everything happens to me
A lollipop for anyone able to name the now out of date lyrics by Matt Dennis
I even may have contracted polio but there is no way to confirm. In 1952 My step sister was paralyzed from the neck down and died during spinal surgery three years later. I had the “flu”. So the antibodies may be from that or the Salk vaccine injection Received in 1955.
My generation had to get MMR to attend school
…and attending school was mandatory, none of this “home-school” nonsense
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jO93iNoAXdA
Gotta have your Dip-Tet.
I just watched the last segment of Netflix’s “Heist”, about the great bourbon thefts of a few years back, “Pappygate”. Set in the beautiful Frankfort, Kentucky, I thought of Craig when Wild Turkey was mentioned. That was my brand of course when I still allowed myself 2 fingers straight up neat. I never even heard of Pappy Van Winkle bourbon until a year ago; later I noticed that was James Carville’s brand last election as he was having a tiny sip every time a blue state checked in for Joe. Night Watchman punching the last clock checkpoint and heading for the rack for some zzzzs. 🙂
jamie, that was too easy
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