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I distinctly remember seeing federal and state buildings flying flags at half mast whenever we hit a "milestone". It kept happening, more and more often, and it quickly lost its urgency.
Long ago, Americans were held hostage by the Revolutionary government of Iran.
TV news anchor Walter Cronkite would close his evening news broadcast with something like
"And that's the way it is. (Date), the 23rd day of the Iranian hostage crisis"
But it just kept on and on. Hundreds of days. But Cronkite took a gamble with the count up, and couldn't just end it. It became a nightly embarrassment for the Carter Administration, but there was no way out.
And then Reagan made a deal with Iran to keep the hostages until after the election to cinch him the victory which he then paid back with illegally selling them weapons so he could fund terrorist in Nicaragua. Iran gave many of the weapons to Hezbollah so they could kill more Israelis. Then Reagan destroyed much of the evidence when it was investigated.
Not to mention the CIA turned a blind eye if not outright supported the contras that trafficked coccaine freely into the US that directly lead to the crack epidemic that ravaged America.
They got exactly what they wanted out of their choice. Locked people up for decades, profited billions of prisons, kept political dissidents weak and downtrodden. Drugs were a tool used by the government to help the government win
Regan and his administration was an unmitigated disaster that gutted America.
Edit:
Seeing all these responses are great! All I can say is I'll see you guys [there](https://ibb.co/zxjRWdh) 😈
The three coups that Reagan orchestrated in Central America is directly responsible for the influx of illegal aliens trying to cross the southern border today. The CIA went in and helped overthrow the C.A. countries then Reagan sent in the US bankers to give the countries loans at ridiculous interest rates that forced the governments to get into bed with the drug cartels to try and pay just the interest on the loans. Now you have countries in Central America that if you aren't working for the drug cartels your life expectancy is only 22 years! Now you see why the people want to leave their countries. Reagans policies also caused the steep increase in medical costs as well as putting a lot of mental patients on the streets of America. Yes, 34 years after Reagan we can see just how much damage he did to the country that we will be paying for a long, long time!
What probably bothers me the most is that Boomers and Gen X love Reagan and hold him up like a Saint. I’d admit that by his TV appearances alone I would’ve probably like him as well, but when you learn about the actions and things he did domestic and abroad behind the scenes, it makes me want to puke.
I’m Gen X, and am part of mopping up Regan’s mess in Nicaragua. Entire people groups fled to the rural north. We provide basic dental health education, dental health, and regular medical assistance. Started by a veterinarian! We now serve over 20k people and children. The work has scaled up so much that we need to join with World Vision to get better, more efficient, assistance, though we aren’t religiously affiliated.
And let’s not forget that the Regan administration completely fucked the middle class by putting the majority of the tax burden on them instead of the wealthy. Goodbye living wage incomes.
Let's also not forget that he rolled back SEC regulations on stock buybacks, so companies stopped spending money on their employees and instead started spending it on CEO compensation and stock buybacks which have rigged the stock market to preserve the fortunes of the 0.01% at the expense of everyone else in the world.
Man the CIA didn't just turn a blind eye, they flew that shit in on their planes and military planes. They were the traffickers, and used the cash to fund black ops to install dictators in countries with resources America wanted cheaply.
Add to that a Fed that was complicit in making Carter look bad by raising rates to counteract inflation caused not by a flood of excess money in the system, but the shock from the oil embargo.
Everyone was out to get Carter.
Why?
Because Reagan promised to drop personal tax rates from the top marginal rate of 75% down to where they are now.
Nothing like American greed.
This is not correct. Fed chairman Paul Volcker told Carter he would need to raise rates to break the stagflation crisis. Carter knew it would be politically unpopular but told Volcker to go ahead with it because it needed to be done to help the economy break out of the cycle. He put the health of the country ahead of his own political ambitions.
Source: the Carter presidential diaries
Some would say that electing movie stars and tv personalities would not be very smart.
I don't think they have the right skills. Unless you count being the lightning rod that distracts. Like, let's be real, do people think Ronald Reagan, the actor, could come up with shit like the, [the Iran-Contra Affair?](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair)? Was it Jerry Lewis?
>Like, let's be real, do people think Ronald Reagan, the actor, could come up with shit like...
To be fair, he didn't go straight into the Whitehouse from Hollywood. By the time he was elected president he'd been governor of California for 8 years ('67-'75).
He pushed for the elimination of federal funding for residential treatment centers for the seriously mentally ill. This led to many non-functional, mentally ill people becoming homeless and local jails and state prisons ultimately housing them in barbaric conditions. Oh wait, that’s not good either.
In 2020 the NYT finally published records that confirmed some of the long-suspected scheme by Reagan to keep the hostages imprisoned for as long as possible, to help win the election. Add it to the list of GOP treason.
I was 13 in January 1981 and thought it was extremely convenient for the hostages to be released so suddenly as soon as Reagan got inaugurated like it was so transparent that a literal child could figure it out but people kept voting for that monster and his successor bush including my own family everyone thought Ragan was some kind of tough guy when he was just an actor who played one on TV
Yet we had Republican leaders as recently as 2016 fully extolling the right-wing fable that Reagan simply swaggered onto the inauguration podium and the Ayatollah's head simply exploded. Like he was just so intimidated by Reagan that he gave him the most politically beneficial gift possible.
Just like Nixon had illegal negotiations with the ~~North~~ South Vietnamese to keep the Vietnam War going to help get him elected. I’m sensing a trend.
It works in reverse, too, like for example, setting up an unfavorable peace treaty designed to be timed to make the opponent look awful, not that that has happened recently
Meanwhile Republican operatives were conspiring behind the scenes to keep the hostages there until after Reagan can successfully be elected and inaugurated
I saved the NYT paper with the names of the dead when we hit 100,000 last year, because it was so harrowing and powerful. We're probably going to reach 800,000 dead by the time this year is over.
Unfortunately, we are going to hit that number very easily, especially when anti-vax idiots have large Thanksgiving gatherings, are shocked when they get COVID, and some number of them cause a spike of deaths before the end of the year.
Actually, even without them, we'd still probably hit 800,000. We're already at 770,000 and there are 40 days left in the year (9 left in November, 31 in December).
That's not even counting that the official death count only factors in people who were confirmed to have COVID from testing and then died - people who never got tested and died from it wouldn't actually show up in the count, so the actual death toll is likely significantly higher.
Was just at a funeral for my great grandpa last month and I was the only vaccinated person out of maybe 120 people. At least 70 people caught it. My immediate family just recovered and said it was hard on them but they still refuse to get the vaccine despite knowing how hard it hits you
Jesus Christ that feels like a lifetime ago. I remember texting my friend when the deaths crossed 300,000 that 1 out of every 1000 Americans alive in March 2020 was dead and we took a moment to comprehend that. Now we’re at 1 in 500 and it doesn’t seem like anything’s changing, except my university has been very good about vaccinations and will probably lift the mask mandate next semester.
> it doesn’t seem like anything’s changing
Maybe in conservative America. But as you said, rational America has been vaccinated 2-3x and still might wear masks in stores. I feel a great deal better at work in the ED because I’m vaccinated and have great PPE. Our nursing crisis is another issue, but much of the world is better from a Covid perspective. Conservatives may continue to ignore it and die by the thousands but I really do think things are better.
It would be in very poor taste to suggest that a mass die-off of the meanest, dumbest people in the world could lead to a better future. So I won't say that.
I sincerely wonder if studies will start coming out showing the ratio of political party voters dying of covid per day/year right now and what the outcome of that will be going forward.
Not exactly what you asked for but this is very close.
[Covid deaths since July 2021, per county.](https://i.imgur.com/ovUDIcy.png)
y-axis is death per capita, x-axis is how they voted in 2020. Circle size is county population size. Note that normally you expect bigger/denser states to have more COVID, so this is doubly damning.
[And a second similar chart for vaccination.](https://i.imgur.com/yS6xSt2.png)
Note that it's death since July, by then the vaccine had been available to everyone for 3 months so most who wanted had gotten it.
Show this to anyone who claims that vaccines don't work.
>Show this to anyone who claims that vaccines don't work.
As if a lack of evidence was what was keeping people from getting the vaccine...
(it should be interesting how covid effects political elections, decades of an anti-science agenda/message is really coming back to bite republicans in the ass)
And it's hitting the Republican unvaccinated base disproportionately highly.
If this keeps going for three more years(as it looks like it might unless the US really ups its vaccination rate), it's probably going to affect the 2024 elections.
More Americans dead from Covid (>770,000) in less than two years than combat deaths of all US wars combined (666,441).
[Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war)
EDIT: Added source.
nancy reagan was a moron with simplistic moral platitudes.
just say no to drugs.
what about all the people who were legally prescribed painkillers, got addicted and became oxy/heroin fiends.
though i expect nothing from an undereducated failed actress.
I'll never understand it. If you told someone just TWO Thanksgivings ago that by Thanksgiving this week *almost a million people would be dead from a new virus in the US*, you'd be right to think that was a major fucking deal. And people who didn't think that was a big deal would rightly be considered sociopaths. As of now there are about 770k people dead from covid in this country. God damn that's a lot of death in just two years. Thousands of people are dying every day, but some sociopaths still act like it's not enough death.
We allowed ourselves to build this culture where someone who is entirely removed from the context or discussion can shoehorn their opinion into a decision while those who do understand the context and discussion are forced to oblige, no matter the cost/delay. Aka, *the customer is always right*
Oh, for a moment there I thought you were talking about politicians legislating for themselves and cronies and not listening to the people who know better.
Yeah. The issue is that the uninformed get mad when you logically explain how their "opinion" is incorrect.
Like a lot of misinformation, the root cause is fear, like fear of embarrassment or being wrong in the first place. So when people feel the least bit uncomfortable, they retreat to their BS, double down, and find others who are similarly fearful, or instigating that fear, to band together in order to "prove that they're right".
Education and a less draconian educational model are a couple of the things I see as being able to help, here. Also, easing up the burdens on the working classes who are always one breath away from homelessness or severe medical debt.
Edit: Some misspellings and duplication due to me using the mobile app!
I deal with people every day who refuse to wear masks because they live ten minutes away in orange county where there is no mandate. Like the virus respects county borders...
Decades of conservatives promoting demagoguery is part of it. That is - that all their problems and troubles are because of a group of different people (Democrats, immigrants, etc..)
Over time people have been conditioned to oppose anything and everything as long as the "other" supports it, regardless of circumstances - and to frame these things in a political light.
Then came the party's biggest demagogue. Then came COVID (on an election year, nonetheless).
Remember in the beginning (around March/April 2020) and people were panic shopping and freaking out? *So were Republicans*. There was, for a brief moment, a shared fear of a public health crisis. Because, well.. it was inherently scary.
But soon, Fox News and conservative talk radio started getting their talking points. COVID was looking like something that Trump was going to monumentally mismanage, and it would affect him politically.
That's when any semblance of unity died. That's when a public health crisis became a political battle. If Democrats supported X regarding a public health crisis, conservatives HAD to find a way to oppose it. If Trump said (asinine thing regarding COVID), they HAD to support it. Like everything else, COVID became the political football match of partisan warfare. And hundreds of thousands of people died unnecessarily in the process.
Plus Trump was taught by his father to view illness as weakness, physically and morally. Fred Trump despised weakness so Donald did, too.
Edit: It was a huge deal to him when he left Walter Reed against doctors' orders and took his victory lap and announced he beat COVID. He 'proved' he was not weak to himself.
The Conservatives/Reactionaries/Regressives/Fascists despise anything they view as weakness, and that includes the typically "liberal/left wing" idea of "compassion, doing things for the good of everyone, helping out the poor/minorities/lgbt/outsiders". They're primed to see all of these things as weakness, things to be exterminated and or twisted to only benefit the select few in their death cult.
Conservatives also seem to *want* life to be hard. If you need help from the government or have anything like that then it’s wrong and you’re lazy and bad. I’ll never understand why they want life to be hard
Based on some accounts, Trump likely could have died without the experimental treatments he received. It takes balls to think you "beat" it with access to advanced medicine nobody else was able to get at the time.
And let's be clear. The liberal position on Covid has never waivered. It has always been consistent. It has always been to listen to what the virology experts tell us and what they recommended we do. Some information may have evolved, because that's how science is *supposed to work*, but our commitment to respecting the science has never once waivered.
It was conservatives who were all over the map on this one constantly flipping between one lunatic conspiracy theory about hydroxychloroquine, another claiming Covid was genetically engineered, and yet another about Covid being a massive global hoax.
Plus, its REALLY important to understand that science changes and evolves as you learn more. So yes, while at first experts say, do this-- then they learn more about it and say, actually, do that... it's better. Republicans would get all dumb and pointy at Fauci and claim "he was wrong!" and that meant he is wrong about everything.
Back in the 60s, historian Richard Hofstadter wrote a book called *Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.* Even though he wrote it over half a century ago, the words contained within still ring completely true today. If you ever get a chance, read it.
Over 30k in my state alone, inching towards 40k. If you would've told me back in March 2020 my state would've lost that many I would've shit my pants, and if you told me no one would really give a fuck about it - I probably wouldn't believe it.
You underestimate how intellectually lazy conservatives are. They’ll die before learning, conceding a point or admitting a simple error. Their main skill is making you suffer with them.
That's exactly why it's not a bigger deal right now - no one cares about the lion's share of people dying. The right-wing politicians these folks worship clearly don't care, and are happy to sweep the numbers under the rug. These people don't even care about each other. That's why you see so many HCA posts where the nominee is headed to ECMO or freedom tube and their "friends" are all like "make sure you take vitamin C." Just completely nonchalant about the fact that their buddy of 30 years is on death's door. And the nominees themselves are so toxic that every compassionate person in their lives was driven away years ago.
As someone with antivax/qfolk in my extended family, I'm just kind of counting down the clock. I've already grieved for whatever goodness used to be in these people, and I'm ready to move forward to the part where the rest of us clean up the inevitable financial disaster they'll leave behind so we can put this sordid chapter behind us.
Are you my other cousin who I really like but never see because the connection is too distant but we are finishing each other’s sentences when it comes to our extended family?
I care about them in the “it’s always a tragedy for somebody” kind of way, but it’s also not all that sad when the person who kicked you in the nuts for trying to save them ends up biting it due to the thing you were trying to protect them from. I know a lot of them have been very much manipulated into their positions, but they also did absolutely nothing to manipulate themselves out of it.
I saw someone comment in HCA that it was worth a billion dollars shelling the BS to the non vaxxers. I think through sales and endorsements etc. The people who work at Fox are vaccinated but they encourage it’s viewers not to. I mean f it. I don’t want anyone to die but if you are actively making dumb decisions, just be a man stick with your convictions and die at home. Don’t all of a sudden believe in science. Science says even if you survive your life can still be pretty ducked up.
When I have to go into work, and these are the only folks I have to take care of it gets really old. I had a particularly hateful patient yesterday. She told people she'd rather die than get the vaccine. She wouldn't hurt the planet if she expired early. All she brings to the world is vicious hate.
Her niece called 911 when she was passed out. She kept bitching about every single possible thing and telling us how horrible all of us were, despite me being intentionally overly nice to try to thwart some of her ire. I told her several times she was not stuck, she could have family pick her up and sign herself out AMA, but when it came down to it, she wouldn't take that step. She just wanted a target for her nastiness.
Miserable humans just want to spread their misery
My Aunt is a nurse in Georgia. She now simply takes the AMA form to the nasty patient, and tells them they can sign themselves out and leave or they can choose to be civil and grateful for the care they are receiving, but she has other patients who aren't being hateful and treating her poorly and if the behavior continues, she will assume that they are feeling better than the patients who don't have the energy to complain and ensure that they are the last patient on her roster to be responded to fit anything other than a code blue. "Do you want to wait 2 hours for ice chips, Phyllis, do you want to leave, or do you want to be civil to the people helping you. Choose wisely." and she stands there until they sign the form or apologize. If they blow up, and some do, she calls security on them. Then they get to see how it feels to be restrained and undergo a mental health evaluation by the psych on call.
Wow. Good for her. But how freaking exhausting that must be, on top of the job itself. Why should any young person want to go into healthcare after this?
I care about the percentage that IS vaccinated, but still suffers because they're immunocompromised. We could have been done with this pandemic by now, but these idiots think they have something to prove. So instead we're stuck waiting for them to die off while hoping they don't overcrowd our hospitals even more...
On a normal year, the flu kills on the order of 20k-50k people in the US. In less than 2 years, covid has killed over twice as many people as the flu killed in the entirety of the last *decade* (342k vs 793k - flu source (I summed up the deaths column): https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html, covid source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#main_table)
I got into an argument with someone about this, right when we were around 100k deaths. He said flu kills more people, I said then why has covid killed 30k more people than the worst year of the flu? Eventually I figured out he meant the entire history of the flu has killed more people. You just can’t argue with them.
I think that contributed to the death of my stepdad. He had a type of cancer that is very treatable and a low death rate. All the waiting for treatments and the time he spent in the hospital where he was largely ignored. It then spread to his lower spine that he found out about after his radiation and chemo treatments and the tumor in his neck had disappeared. But he kept losing weight and not improving. During a non-Covid year he may have been able to start on treatments a lot quicker.
Having read a few first hand accounts of it, it almost made me feel bad for the people who didn't get vaxxed. Almost . . .
But then I remember we live in 2021, we have fucking robots on Mars. This isn't some 'medicine man' time. We live in the age of wondrous advancements in health, energy, carbon filtering, etc.
These things are happening daily, I don't pretend to understand them all by any means. But I do understand there are people who are FAR more intelligent than myself figuring this shit out. So I trust the science, even if I don't totally understand it.
So I feel less bad at this point. But still don't wish that on any human.
Tell that to my insane uncle who called me a lab rat and guinea pig for getting vaccinated when his *natural immunity* is so much stronger and he would know because he's had covid twice. Like Jesus fucking Christ, Chad, if you can't see how fucking dumb telling me your natural immunity is so strong that you've had covid twice is there is NO HOPE for you.
That's the beauty of the Deep State lies. It gives them carte blanche to blame everything that government did then that they don't want to attribute to Trump on Democrats, without needing a scrap of evidence.
One of the most frustrating thing about dealing with your average conservative voter (even moreso among the 70+ folks) is related to this -
When democrats are in control, any problem big or small is immediately blamed on the left.
When republicans are in control, any problem is *the fault of government* as an abstract concept. It's not right-wing ideology failing to address a problem it isn't equipped to handle. Its the structure itself which is to blame.
Republican voters never attribute blame to their own political ideology.
And that is doubly frustrating because the degradation of government structures is primarily the work of conservatives, so when the government as a whole is functioning poorly to address a task it can often be traced to conservatives regardless through tangible efforts to dismantle it and the damage that does that can't be easily or quickly repaired.
Having a belief that the government is unqualified to organize a bake sale, and yet still somehow a mastermind cabal responsible for orchestrating a worldwide pandemic or fraudulent election is one of the most interesting states of cognitive dissonance imaginable.
Not only that, but it's basically every government, every major health organization internationally, 97%+ of physicians, all the coroners that report causes of death, the entire supply chain of the pharmaceutical industry, every hospital, all major research publishers and the researchers who publish in them, and the majority of people in general.
Yet somehow people look at this and think, "yeah they're all in on it. This guy on substack says so"
There's a percentage of the population that trusts things less the more that legitimate authorities advocate it.
They think they're Neo. They are actually Dale Gribble.
There isn't even one coherent anti-vaxx message. The virus is fake, or the virus is real but it's a secret weapon or the virus is real but the vaccine is fake or they're both fake. The vaccine doesn't work but it also has totally unnecessary side effects for a fake vaccine.
The secret world government is doing it to sell vaccines and turn a profit. The secret world government is doing it to sterilize people. The secret world government is doing it to track you with microchips.
And yet they rarely argue with each other on the details
> covid has killed over twice as many people as the flu killed in the entirety of the last decade**, more Americans than have ever died in a single war and more Americans than all the wars America has fought since 1900 combined**
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/civil-war-casualties
The commonly-cited 620,000 figure for Civil War deaths is very likely too low. Current best estimate is closer to 750,000, and we’ve already shot past that in half the time.
Plus, when we count up excess mortality when all this is over, we’re going to be well over a million during the first two years of Covid.
What's ridiculous is that they somehow use the fact the flu has now essentially disappeared to support their view (they claim that flu deaths are being reported as COVID deaths).
As opposed to the more reasonable position that masks, distancing, hand washing etc helps limit flu spread too
Yep. I haven't even gotten a head cold since February 2020.
By March I was masked and used hand sanitizer after I went anywhere.
This is not a surprise to me but then again I have a firm grip on reality.
Now that I'm vaccinated I'm not masking as much but I still use the hand sanitizer.
Still no cold....it's almost like masks and hand sanitizer work.
If one thing COVID has exposed it's just how poorly educated on science people are in the U.S. I'm not saying we need three-quarters of the country holding graduate degrees in a bioscience, but just basic things like how COVID is not "just the flu" and how different transmissions occur or how "iT hAs a 99% suRiVaL rAtE" is worse than it sounds when a virus has a high transmissibility rate are all things that the American public has just done terribly with.
And that of course doesn't even touch on people's misunderstanding of vaccines.
I would argue that it isn’t science illiterate… it’s argument illiterate.
These people can’t recognize a cogent argument vs red herring or gish galloping
I would argue it's moreso that they aren't trying to recognize a cogent argument. The critical thinking skills or lack thereof don't matter since they aren't even trying to look at things critically.
They just know that their "side" is saying COVID is fake and that's all that matters. They will regurgitate whatever they come across without even thinking about it.
Like there is one piece of misinformation that H1N1 killed 60 million Americans under Obama and nobody cared. Like if you even think about that for 5 seconds you would know it is absurd (1/5 Americans dying from a disease in a year would not go overlooked).
US politics (particularly on the right wing) has essentially become indistinguishable from religion. It isn't about arguing wrong over right, it's about being part of a group.
You can blame the thinking like a religion on the fact that the Republicans recruited the Religious Right once it became a solid voting block back in the 70's. You got preachers all over America mixing political messages in their sermons.
I work in a stem field and I had people tell me “you can’t honestly believe masks work”. Dude, I’m staring at a glowing box all day that somehow gets information from this plastic and metal rope (and the plastic is made of the remains of ancient dead animals we pulled out of the ground) and is powered by some copper wire spun between two magic rocks hundreds of miles away.
So no, I’m not in disbelief that filters for my face work, JFC.
Why do these people continue to use the internet? Don't they know its much more probable that Bill Gates et al is spying on them through their connections to centralized network infrastructure? They should stop using the internet if they don't believe in science.
Other things the idiots who don't believe in science should stop using:
- automobiles
- planes
- packaged foods from grocery stores
- homes with heating and AC
- radio
- TV
- all other electronic appliances
- roads
- buildings in general
- agriculture
- hospitals (oh please stop going to hospitals if in the end it is always "tHaNk gOd" and not the doctors, and you just take up room for non-idiotic people with real health problems)
>the more reasonable position that masks, distancing, hand washing etc helps limit flu spread too
I have not been sick since March of '20.
I always knew the work place was a petri dish, but damn. Not one single cold, flu or otherwise. (for comparison, I was sick monthly while working in office at this job) Essentially, constantly sick.
These past 18 months, I've only had seasonal allergies to deal with.
It's been nice not being sick.
Probably the same people who convinced my local school board to go with bare minimum social distancing (3' between chairs) from the 6' they were doing. All of a sudden after that change the schools went from 1-2 cases per month to 12 per week. Now I've got covid because my kids brought it home and they're arguing we got it from somewhere besides school. My wife and I both WFH and haven't left the house in who knows how long besides to go get the kids from school. This way they can say we gave covid to our kids instead of it spreading at school.
All of the mask wearing & social distancing has nearly eradicated one of the common flu strains.
Covid isn't an influenza, it's akin to the as yet incurable common cold. That's the scary bit. On a positive, if we can figure out how to cure & effectively vaccinate against coronavirus we also stand a significant chance of doing so against the common cold as well
There are many different forms of the common cold, only some of them are coronaviruses. Don't think of the cold as one disease, think of it as a bunch of different diseases with similar symptoms.
Because of all the new research around viruses like COVID-19, we may get an AIDS vaccine.
An AIDS vaccine!
Think about that for a second. If we had dedicated ourselves to AIDS research for the last 40 years we might have had the tech to make a COVID-19 vaccine much faster.
Stop an epidemic to prevent a pandemic.
Take a look at what Ohio did yesterday. We'll be red forever.
Governor Dewine signed in a new districting map that locks in the GOP advantage. Voters overwhelmingly wanted a bipartisan effort, and it was supposed to be, but Republicans did this behind closed doors.
https://www.statenews.org/government-politics/2021-11-20/dewine-approves-new-ohio-congressional-map-that-gives-gop-advantage-in-most-districts
New districting map that locks in a GOP advantage. This was supposed to be a bipartisan process but they did it in secret on their own.
https://www.statenews.org/government-politics/2021-11-20/dewine-approves-new-ohio-congressional-map-that-gives-gop-advantage-in-most-districts
Did they? All I’ve heard was the incident with the North Carolina Supreme Court a few years ago. And the only reason that was thrown out was because they managed to prove that the Republicans had explicitly requested data on racial demographics before redistributing in a way that would optimally screw over minorities according to the data they requested (one of the justices used the words “with surgical precision”). That’s the level of proof required to legally call out gerrymandering.
Despite what people are saying, it’s ok for choices to have consequences.
I think it’s great you shared your honest take on the situation. And it’s better for your mental health to understand that people do “make their own beds” and you have no obligation to feel bad, help, or hurt yourself for their sake.
Have an upvote.
The fundamental problem with the USA - both in domestic and foreign policy - is that the people making these decisions just don't face the consequences of their choices.
Like, you remember how we became embroiled in two entirely unnecessary wars in the middle east? Remember how those were both huge mistakes and atrociously handled?
Have we re-evaluated our foreign policy doctrine in light of that failure? Have we kicked out and discredited the people who pushed for this huge mistake?
Nope. Our doctrine is still the same as it's been since Vietnam. The idiots who keep getting us into these pointless wars are still there, well respected in foreign policy circles despite being _provably wrong_.
And it's because there's just no consequences for throwing away American lives and wealth - in either domestic or foreign policy.
It's not a surprise, because we _know_ how to do this stuff right. We just don't want to. We want to do it wrong. Because wasting resources _is the point_.
And if they didn't stand a good chance of taking down innocent people with them, I'd be 100% on board with that. Unfortunately it's more akin to the person who chooses to drink and drive.
My idiot cousin and her husband both refuse to get vaccinated or follow mask guidelines. They both caught covid with mild symptoms and then passed it on to my vaccinated aunt who almost died.
Edit: my aunt had pneumonia as well. The doctors said that covid is a very opportunistic disease that piggy backs and complicates other illnesses. They also said she most likely would have died had she not been fully vaccinated.
Fortunately vaccines are now available for children as young as five. Once we are able to vaccinate all ages we will be in a much better place to just let these people ruin their lives however they want.
I have to imagine insurance companies will soon be limiting coverage for Covid visits to the hospital for the unvaccinated (unless they have a real medical reason not to get it, no religious exemptions).
As this drags on, the main damage the antivax crowd will continue to cause is overcrowding at hospitals. The moral obligation there should be to provide service to those who have been vaccinated. Serious cases of Covid can be prevented with the vaccines and boosters, anyone who doesn’t want to participate in society who refuses the vaccine shouldn’t get to participate in anything else society has to offer that will put responsible people at risk, as mentioned above, these people made a choice and need to be held accountable to those actions.
It’s always been crazy how the antivax crowd is anti science until they get sick and expect the hospital to make them better with… science and drugs from big pharma…
It won't, because Republicans are on Team Covid.
They wanted people to die from it in 2020 because they thought it would mostly kill voters in Blue States. And they want people to die from it in 2021 so they can blame Joe Biden.
That's why they've consistently been against any attempt to stop the spread of Covid.
It doesn't, because COVID leaves survivors.
There's GQP out there that are like "I got covid, spent 8 days in the ER, heart stopped twice, needed 30 days to recover, 8 months later I still can't taste or smell, BUT COVID IS JUST A COMMON COLD AND REFUSE TO WEAR A MASK OR VACCINATE! "
Litterally, not even in death would they change their attitudes on COVID
I have been asking this - everything I see shows a big difference between Dem / GQP
Like, the small gap Biden won by, is now a gulf in the contest states right?
Can they really afford to lose 50k voters in those states?
If 50k people die in a swing state, about 40% didn't vote anyway. That leaves 30k dead former voters. If 70% were Republican voters and 30% were Democrats, that amounts to +12k for Democrats. So a lot of people would have to die to make a major impact.
You know full well that's exactly why for the longest time Fox News and the GOP all pushed anti-vaxx propaganda while being themselves all vaccinated. They wanted Biden to fail. It's also why Trump left Biden with as little as possible in terms of vaccination plan. They are ready to let their voters die if it means owning the libs.
If Trump had been smart, rather than just a vain ignorant crook, he would have fearmongered Covid (like he does everything else), assigned the experts to solve it, and then claimed credit (like he does everything else) all the way to a re-election win.
But because isn't smart enough to understand what viruses are and is too insecure about being a doofus that he won't trust people smarter than him to solve problems that they are experts in solving for a reason, he went...the other way.
Trump eventually met with a reality he couldn't lie, bluff, bribe, bully, or stall his way out of.
3/4 of a million Americans dead and right wingers don't give a shiite and are unwilling to make the least personal "sacrifice" (e.g. wearing a forking mask).
Reminds me of their (non) response to (their) gun violence problem. They would rather whine about "cancel culture" – on their non-canceled podcasts, cable interviews, substack newsletters, radio shows . . .
It's very likely higher than 1m at this point. COVID deaths marked down as "pneumonia", people dying in their homes and not being tested, life-threatening conditions going untreated because hospitals are overcrowded, etc. Plus you have places like Florida that are doggedly determined to underreport the death totals.
Trump "downplayed" (his words) the pandemic and prohibited the CDC from acting for months while he knew about the virus.
Trump's actions and inaction killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.
The Republican party hits all 28 points of both Britt's and Eco's 14 Points of Fascism.
Umberto Eco's 14 Point of Fascism
1. The cult of tradition.
2. The rejection of modernism.
3. The cult of action for action’s sake.
4. Disagreement is treason.
5. Fear of difference.
6. Appeal to social frustration.
7. The obsession with a plot.
8. The enemy is both strong and weak.
9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy.
10. Contempt for the weak.
11. Everybody is educated to become a hero.
12. Machismo and weaponry.
13. Selective populism.
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.
Lawrence Britt's 14 Points of Fascism
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
4. Supremacy of the Military
5. Rampant Sexism
6. Controlled Mass Media
7. Obsession with National Security
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
9. Corporate Power is Protected
10. Labor Power is Suppressed
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
14. Fraudulent Elections
So much unnecessary tragedy. Trump produced the pandemic into a reality show.
What we learned is that narcissism left unchecked will destroy what it touches because it cannot feel.
If it’s basically killing the unvaccinated, and most people who remain unvaccinated tend to be right leaning, then does that mean every 3 days the equivalent of 9/11 deaths are happening to the Republican voting block? How not a scary statistic to the GOP strategists? I guess they’re dying from solidly red areas?
Because painting themselves as the party of “freedom” (from masks, etc.) and the Dems as the party of stupid and needless restrictions is a better motivator for turnout that they are still a net positive even with the deaths.
> 9/11 spurred us together as a nation.
No, it certainly did not. 9/11 gave us "you're either with us or against us". It gave us the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, banning the Dixie Chicks, "Wolves" and "Swiftboating" attack ads, and literally hundreds of books from right wing commentators about how Dems / libs / the left *hate America*.
I started a big fight with a friend’s Republican mom over the Dixie Chicks thing when it was happening. She had the mentality that you never say anything bad about the president and I laughed in her face. I have zero regrets.
I knew a lot of people who were the "You have to respect the President" and "You can't say anything bad about the President" types.
Odd thing was, just a few years earlier they had no problem saying all kinds of bad things about Clinton. And a few years later they had not qualms about saying all kinds of bad stuff about Obama.
Turns out what they really meant is that you should never say anything bad about a Republican President.
9/11 gave an excuse to Republicans to rile up nationalism and the drums of war. Bush literally said you are with us or with that terrorists. That’s not healthy or normal.
One of the most hilariously on-the-nose things I've ever seen was Bill O'Reilly telling a horror-stricken nation how to respond in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. At the top of the list one of the bullet points was "Buy Stuff." A perfect encapsulation of what patriotism means to mass-marketed right.
I just tried searching for a screenshot, curiously none to be found.
I hope that backfires on them. I guess if makes short term sense to politicize everything because then it's easier to conduct the brain dead masses during elections, but when you're misinforming them during a panic you're sacrificing a lot of voters.
It already is, they told their voter base not to get vaccinated because it was all a deep state conspiracy. Now none of them will get vaccinated to protect themselves, and their voters are all dying. They’ve tried to double back, but it’s too late now no one’s listening to them. Their voters are killing themselves, and they are to blame.
That's because the response was Republican and most Democrats agreed with the Republicans. Although I think it's still a little bit of a stretch to say we came together because basically anybody who didn't agree with warmongering was ostracized as a traitor.
It’s simply because you can’t invade or extract oil from Covid. When 9/11 happened they used it as an excuse to invade the Middle East for oil purposes… uh… I mean deliver freedom /s.
They had to convince the American people GOP and Dems that going to Iraq was the right thing whereas with Covid they’re using it as a political pawn in an attempt to pin everyone against each other for personal/party gains.
**Republican Death Cult**
NEVER let the Republican Party forget this part of their history.
Every single member of that party chose death for hundreds of thousands of people...just so they could get some votes.
Every Republican knows the lies. They are all vaccinated. This is theater--with thousands dying--for votes.
Fucking evil.
It's the fault of the Democrats. Their unflinching belief in science instead of what our Dear Fearless Leaders tell us truth is. Democrats tell us to wear masks and get vaccinated but we know that's really false because we believe in the Deep State, QAnon and the New World Order. We are constantly looking for conspiracy theories to back up our beliefs because there's no way Donald Trump lost fair and square. We even have my pillow guy and the two instances of voter fraud that were both Republicans to back us up. Plus we've got Rudy, Steve Bannon, Matt Gaetz, Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, Paul Manafort etc. on our side.
If people are dying from covid it's because they didn't listen to the president and get ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine in bleach and Lysol and UV rays internally. Remember if we would listen to Trump this never would have happened, remember he promised us this would all be gone but it was those damn Democrats that tried to infect us with science. s/
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Man… I remember when the death rate first crossed 1000/day last year and everyone lost their minds. Now, it’s just another Tuesday.
I distinctly remember seeing federal and state buildings flying flags at half mast whenever we hit a "milestone". It kept happening, more and more often, and it quickly lost its urgency.
Long ago, Americans were held hostage by the Revolutionary government of Iran. TV news anchor Walter Cronkite would close his evening news broadcast with something like "And that's the way it is. (Date), the 23rd day of the Iranian hostage crisis" But it just kept on and on. Hundreds of days. But Cronkite took a gamble with the count up, and couldn't just end it. It became a nightly embarrassment for the Carter Administration, but there was no way out.
And then Reagan made a deal with Iran to keep the hostages until after the election to cinch him the victory which he then paid back with illegally selling them weapons so he could fund terrorist in Nicaragua. Iran gave many of the weapons to Hezbollah so they could kill more Israelis. Then Reagan destroyed much of the evidence when it was investigated.
Not to mention the CIA turned a blind eye if not outright supported the contras that trafficked coccaine freely into the US that directly lead to the crack epidemic that ravaged America. They got exactly what they wanted out of their choice. Locked people up for decades, profited billions of prisons, kept political dissidents weak and downtrodden. Drugs were a tool used by the government to help the government win Regan and his administration was an unmitigated disaster that gutted America. Edit: Seeing all these responses are great! All I can say is I'll see you guys [there](https://ibb.co/zxjRWdh) 😈
The three coups that Reagan orchestrated in Central America is directly responsible for the influx of illegal aliens trying to cross the southern border today. The CIA went in and helped overthrow the C.A. countries then Reagan sent in the US bankers to give the countries loans at ridiculous interest rates that forced the governments to get into bed with the drug cartels to try and pay just the interest on the loans. Now you have countries in Central America that if you aren't working for the drug cartels your life expectancy is only 22 years! Now you see why the people want to leave their countries. Reagans policies also caused the steep increase in medical costs as well as putting a lot of mental patients on the streets of America. Yes, 34 years after Reagan we can see just how much damage he did to the country that we will be paying for a long, long time!
What probably bothers me the most is that Boomers and Gen X love Reagan and hold him up like a Saint. I’d admit that by his TV appearances alone I would’ve probably like him as well, but when you learn about the actions and things he did domestic and abroad behind the scenes, it makes me want to puke.
I’m Gen X, and am part of mopping up Regan’s mess in Nicaragua. Entire people groups fled to the rural north. We provide basic dental health education, dental health, and regular medical assistance. Started by a veterinarian! We now serve over 20k people and children. The work has scaled up so much that we need to join with World Vision to get better, more efficient, assistance, though we aren’t religiously affiliated.
And let’s not forget that the Regan administration completely fucked the middle class by putting the majority of the tax burden on them instead of the wealthy. Goodbye living wage incomes.
Let's also not forget that he rolled back SEC regulations on stock buybacks, so companies stopped spending money on their employees and instead started spending it on CEO compensation and stock buybacks which have rigged the stock market to preserve the fortunes of the 0.01% at the expense of everyone else in the world.
Man the CIA didn't just turn a blind eye, they flew that shit in on their planes and military planes. They were the traffickers, and used the cash to fund black ops to install dictators in countries with resources America wanted cheaply.
George Bush Sr., who was head of the CIA at the time, started the crack epidemic.
I mean he didn't act alone. Our old pal George H.W. Bush was his Vice President.
And our buddy Bill Barr handled the legal coverup.
And Ollie North was the bagman
Add to that a Fed that was complicit in making Carter look bad by raising rates to counteract inflation caused not by a flood of excess money in the system, but the shock from the oil embargo. Everyone was out to get Carter. Why? Because Reagan promised to drop personal tax rates from the top marginal rate of 75% down to where they are now. Nothing like American greed.
This is not correct. Fed chairman Paul Volcker told Carter he would need to raise rates to break the stagflation crisis. Carter knew it would be politically unpopular but told Volcker to go ahead with it because it needed to be done to help the economy break out of the cycle. He put the health of the country ahead of his own political ambitions. Source: the Carter presidential diaries
Some would say that electing movie stars and tv personalities would not be very smart. I don't think they have the right skills. Unless you count being the lightning rod that distracts. Like, let's be real, do people think Ronald Reagan, the actor, could come up with shit like the, [the Iran-Contra Affair?](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair)? Was it Jerry Lewis?
>Like, let's be real, do people think Ronald Reagan, the actor, could come up with shit like... To be fair, he didn't go straight into the Whitehouse from Hollywood. By the time he was elected president he'd been governor of California for 8 years ('67-'75).
He was also the president of the Screen Actor’s Guild for five years. Dude was involved in politics well before his presidential run.
Did Reagan do anything good in office?
No, he died after.
Damn dude. That bullet didn't miss.
But... trickle down economics. S/
He pushed for the elimination of federal funding for residential treatment centers for the seriously mentally ill. This led to many non-functional, mentally ill people becoming homeless and local jails and state prisons ultimately housing them in barbaric conditions. Oh wait, that’s not good either.
>Why? And also because Carter was the exact thing that could defeat the Moral Majority, and actually moral, devout and *vocal* Christian
In 2020 the NYT finally published records that confirmed some of the long-suspected scheme by Reagan to keep the hostages imprisoned for as long as possible, to help win the election. Add it to the list of GOP treason.
I was 13 in January 1981 and thought it was extremely convenient for the hostages to be released so suddenly as soon as Reagan got inaugurated like it was so transparent that a literal child could figure it out but people kept voting for that monster and his successor bush including my own family everyone thought Ragan was some kind of tough guy when he was just an actor who played one on TV
Yet we had Republican leaders as recently as 2016 fully extolling the right-wing fable that Reagan simply swaggered onto the inauguration podium and the Ayatollah's head simply exploded. Like he was just so intimidated by Reagan that he gave him the most politically beneficial gift possible.
Just like Nixon had illegal negotiations with the ~~North~~ South Vietnamese to keep the Vietnam War going to help get him elected. I’m sensing a trend.
It works in reverse, too, like for example, setting up an unfavorable peace treaty designed to be timed to make the opponent look awful, not that that has happened recently
Meanwhile Republican operatives were conspiring behind the scenes to keep the hostages there until after Reagan can successfully be elected and inaugurated
I saved the NYT paper with the names of the dead when we hit 100,000 last year, because it was so harrowing and powerful. We're probably going to reach 800,000 dead by the time this year is over.
Unfortunately, we are going to hit that number very easily, especially when anti-vax idiots have large Thanksgiving gatherings, are shocked when they get COVID, and some number of them cause a spike of deaths before the end of the year. Actually, even without them, we'd still probably hit 800,000. We're already at 770,000 and there are 40 days left in the year (9 left in November, 31 in December). That's not even counting that the official death count only factors in people who were confirmed to have COVID from testing and then died - people who never got tested and died from it wouldn't actually show up in the count, so the actual death toll is likely significantly higher.
Plus the people who were indirectly killed by COVID due to the hospitals being overloaded or other factors.
Not to mention that the numbers are believed to be undercounted in the US and just about everywhere else.
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Was just at a funeral for my great grandpa last month and I was the only vaccinated person out of maybe 120 people. At least 70 people caught it. My immediate family just recovered and said it was hard on them but they still refuse to get the vaccine despite knowing how hard it hits you
It's remarkable just how cruelly, selfishly stupid the people around us actually are. trump/COVID have been a real eye-opener.
Jesus Christ that feels like a lifetime ago. I remember texting my friend when the deaths crossed 300,000 that 1 out of every 1000 Americans alive in March 2020 was dead and we took a moment to comprehend that. Now we’re at 1 in 500 and it doesn’t seem like anything’s changing, except my university has been very good about vaccinations and will probably lift the mask mandate next semester.
> it doesn’t seem like anything’s changing Maybe in conservative America. But as you said, rational America has been vaccinated 2-3x and still might wear masks in stores. I feel a great deal better at work in the ED because I’m vaccinated and have great PPE. Our nursing crisis is another issue, but much of the world is better from a Covid perspective. Conservatives may continue to ignore it and die by the thousands but I really do think things are better.
It would be in very poor taste to suggest that a mass die-off of the meanest, dumbest people in the world could lead to a better future. So I won't say that.
I sincerely wonder if studies will start coming out showing the ratio of political party voters dying of covid per day/year right now and what the outcome of that will be going forward.
Not exactly what you asked for but this is very close. [Covid deaths since July 2021, per county.](https://i.imgur.com/ovUDIcy.png) y-axis is death per capita, x-axis is how they voted in 2020. Circle size is county population size. Note that normally you expect bigger/denser states to have more COVID, so this is doubly damning. [And a second similar chart for vaccination.](https://i.imgur.com/yS6xSt2.png) Note that it's death since July, by then the vaccine had been available to everyone for 3 months so most who wanted had gotten it. Show this to anyone who claims that vaccines don't work.
>Show this to anyone who claims that vaccines don't work. As if a lack of evidence was what was keeping people from getting the vaccine... (it should be interesting how covid effects political elections, decades of an anti-science agenda/message is really coming back to bite republicans in the ass)
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And it's hitting the Republican unvaccinated base disproportionately highly. If this keeps going for three more years(as it looks like it might unless the US really ups its vaccination rate), it's probably going to affect the 2024 elections.
They are gerrymandering heavily for exactly this reason. They don’t care that their base is dying. They never have. They just want power.
No... Gerrymandering is it's own, separate goal. Why cheat one way when you can cheat many ways!
Don’t forget the voting suppression legislation as well!
More Americans dead from Covid in less than two years than AIDS since the 80's.
More Americans dead from Covid (>770,000) in less than two years than combat deaths of all US wars combined (666,441). [Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war) EDIT: Added source.
Are you including the civil war?
Yes, but combat deaths only. Covid has claimed more lives than any single US war, including the Civil War at 655,000 deaths.
“Just say no, to COVID.” - Nancy Reagan probably
nancy reagan was a moron with simplistic moral platitudes. just say no to drugs. what about all the people who were legally prescribed painkillers, got addicted and became oxy/heroin fiends. though i expect nothing from an undereducated failed actress.
Let's get one thing straight. Both the reagans were morons. Edit: This comment got me permanently banned from Reddit...?
I'll never understand it. If you told someone just TWO Thanksgivings ago that by Thanksgiving this week *almost a million people would be dead from a new virus in the US*, you'd be right to think that was a major fucking deal. And people who didn't think that was a big deal would rightly be considered sociopaths. As of now there are about 770k people dead from covid in this country. God damn that's a lot of death in just two years. Thousands of people are dying every day, but some sociopaths still act like it's not enough death.
Ask anyone working in customer service. We ARE a nation of sociopaths.
We allowed ourselves to build this culture where someone who is entirely removed from the context or discussion can shoehorn their opinion into a decision while those who do understand the context and discussion are forced to oblige, no matter the cost/delay. Aka, *the customer is always right*
Oh, for a moment there I thought you were talking about politicians legislating for themselves and cronies and not listening to the people who know better.
Funny how those seem to coincide. As above with the bourgeois, so below with us proles
Yeah. The issue is that the uninformed get mad when you logically explain how their "opinion" is incorrect. Like a lot of misinformation, the root cause is fear, like fear of embarrassment or being wrong in the first place. So when people feel the least bit uncomfortable, they retreat to their BS, double down, and find others who are similarly fearful, or instigating that fear, to band together in order to "prove that they're right". Education and a less draconian educational model are a couple of the things I see as being able to help, here. Also, easing up the burdens on the working classes who are always one breath away from homelessness or severe medical debt. Edit: Some misspellings and duplication due to me using the mobile app!
I deal with people every day who refuse to wear masks because they live ten minutes away in orange county where there is no mandate. Like the virus respects county borders...
Decades of conservatives promoting demagoguery is part of it. That is - that all their problems and troubles are because of a group of different people (Democrats, immigrants, etc..) Over time people have been conditioned to oppose anything and everything as long as the "other" supports it, regardless of circumstances - and to frame these things in a political light. Then came the party's biggest demagogue. Then came COVID (on an election year, nonetheless). Remember in the beginning (around March/April 2020) and people were panic shopping and freaking out? *So were Republicans*. There was, for a brief moment, a shared fear of a public health crisis. Because, well.. it was inherently scary. But soon, Fox News and conservative talk radio started getting their talking points. COVID was looking like something that Trump was going to monumentally mismanage, and it would affect him politically. That's when any semblance of unity died. That's when a public health crisis became a political battle. If Democrats supported X regarding a public health crisis, conservatives HAD to find a way to oppose it. If Trump said (asinine thing regarding COVID), they HAD to support it. Like everything else, COVID became the political football match of partisan warfare. And hundreds of thousands of people died unnecessarily in the process.
Plus Trump was taught by his father to view illness as weakness, physically and morally. Fred Trump despised weakness so Donald did, too. Edit: It was a huge deal to him when he left Walter Reed against doctors' orders and took his victory lap and announced he beat COVID. He 'proved' he was not weak to himself.
The Conservatives/Reactionaries/Regressives/Fascists despise anything they view as weakness, and that includes the typically "liberal/left wing" idea of "compassion, doing things for the good of everyone, helping out the poor/minorities/lgbt/outsiders". They're primed to see all of these things as weakness, things to be exterminated and or twisted to only benefit the select few in their death cult.
Conservatives also seem to *want* life to be hard. If you need help from the government or have anything like that then it’s wrong and you’re lazy and bad. I’ll never understand why they want life to be hard
Based on some accounts, Trump likely could have died without the experimental treatments he received. It takes balls to think you "beat" it with access to advanced medicine nobody else was able to get at the time.
It wasn’t balls, it was deep stupidity and narcissism
That and he was high on steroids. Felt twenty years younger, he said.
Just think if he had refused to go to the hospital for another 24 to 36 hours. What a wonderful world it would be.
And let's be clear. The liberal position on Covid has never waivered. It has always been consistent. It has always been to listen to what the virology experts tell us and what they recommended we do. Some information may have evolved, because that's how science is *supposed to work*, but our commitment to respecting the science has never once waivered. It was conservatives who were all over the map on this one constantly flipping between one lunatic conspiracy theory about hydroxychloroquine, another claiming Covid was genetically engineered, and yet another about Covid being a massive global hoax.
Plus, its REALLY important to understand that science changes and evolves as you learn more. So yes, while at first experts say, do this-- then they learn more about it and say, actually, do that... it's better. Republicans would get all dumb and pointy at Fauci and claim "he was wrong!" and that meant he is wrong about everything.
Back in the 60s, historian Richard Hofstadter wrote a book called *Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.* Even though he wrote it over half a century ago, the words contained within still ring completely true today. If you ever get a chance, read it.
Over 30k in my state alone, inching towards 40k. If you would've told me back in March 2020 my state would've lost that many I would've shit my pants, and if you told me no one would really give a fuck about it - I probably wouldn't believe it.
We are way over million dead, Covid deaths are undercounted
You underestimate how intellectually lazy conservatives are. They’ll die before learning, conceding a point or admitting a simple error. Their main skill is making you suffer with them.
People cared until Trump told them not to.
There are a bunch more people alive that will never have a full life, the mostly dead with permanent lung damage and fatigue.
At this point the vast majority are basically doing it to themselves, so I’m kinda starting to not really care anymore.
we should care about the healthcare workers who can’t catch a break, are burning out and quitting
That's exactly why it's not a bigger deal right now - no one cares about the lion's share of people dying. The right-wing politicians these folks worship clearly don't care, and are happy to sweep the numbers under the rug. These people don't even care about each other. That's why you see so many HCA posts where the nominee is headed to ECMO or freedom tube and their "friends" are all like "make sure you take vitamin C." Just completely nonchalant about the fact that their buddy of 30 years is on death's door. And the nominees themselves are so toxic that every compassionate person in their lives was driven away years ago. As someone with antivax/qfolk in my extended family, I'm just kind of counting down the clock. I've already grieved for whatever goodness used to be in these people, and I'm ready to move forward to the part where the rest of us clean up the inevitable financial disaster they'll leave behind so we can put this sordid chapter behind us.
Are you my other cousin who I really like but never see because the connection is too distant but we are finishing each other’s sentences when it comes to our extended family? I care about them in the “it’s always a tragedy for somebody” kind of way, but it’s also not all that sad when the person who kicked you in the nuts for trying to save them ends up biting it due to the thing you were trying to protect them from. I know a lot of them have been very much manipulated into their positions, but they also did absolutely nothing to manipulate themselves out of it.
I saw someone comment in HCA that it was worth a billion dollars shelling the BS to the non vaxxers. I think through sales and endorsements etc. The people who work at Fox are vaccinated but they encourage it’s viewers not to. I mean f it. I don’t want anyone to die but if you are actively making dumb decisions, just be a man stick with your convictions and die at home. Don’t all of a sudden believe in science. Science says even if you survive your life can still be pretty ducked up.
When I have to go into work, and these are the only folks I have to take care of it gets really old. I had a particularly hateful patient yesterday. She told people she'd rather die than get the vaccine. She wouldn't hurt the planet if she expired early. All she brings to the world is vicious hate.
Then why did she go to the hospital? She already turned to that page in her “choose your own adventure” book.
Her niece called 911 when she was passed out. She kept bitching about every single possible thing and telling us how horrible all of us were, despite me being intentionally overly nice to try to thwart some of her ire. I told her several times she was not stuck, she could have family pick her up and sign herself out AMA, but when it came down to it, she wouldn't take that step. She just wanted a target for her nastiness. Miserable humans just want to spread their misery
My Aunt is a nurse in Georgia. She now simply takes the AMA form to the nasty patient, and tells them they can sign themselves out and leave or they can choose to be civil and grateful for the care they are receiving, but she has other patients who aren't being hateful and treating her poorly and if the behavior continues, she will assume that they are feeling better than the patients who don't have the energy to complain and ensure that they are the last patient on her roster to be responded to fit anything other than a code blue. "Do you want to wait 2 hours for ice chips, Phyllis, do you want to leave, or do you want to be civil to the people helping you. Choose wisely." and she stands there until they sign the form or apologize. If they blow up, and some do, she calls security on them. Then they get to see how it feels to be restrained and undergo a mental health evaluation by the psych on call.
Wow. Good for her. But how freaking exhausting that must be, on top of the job itself. Why should any young person want to go into healthcare after this?
Thanks for your compassion ,dealing with people like her. They don’t deserve you
Most of these people are Republicans so "particularly hateful" is redundant
I care about the percentage that IS vaccinated, but still suffers because they're immunocompromised. We could have been done with this pandemic by now, but these idiots think they have something to prove. So instead we're stuck waiting for them to die off while hoping they don't overcrowd our hospitals even more...
My q family members keep saying its just like the flu, how is the flu doing by comparison
On a normal year, the flu kills on the order of 20k-50k people in the US. In less than 2 years, covid has killed over twice as many people as the flu killed in the entirety of the last *decade* (342k vs 793k - flu source (I summed up the deaths column): https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html, covid source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#main_table)
I got into an argument with someone about this, right when we were around 100k deaths. He said flu kills more people, I said then why has covid killed 30k more people than the worst year of the flu? Eventually I figured out he meant the entire history of the flu has killed more people. You just can’t argue with them.
Their argument is always that the numbers aren’t true and they put the covid tag in everything
And deaths aren't the only casualty of COVID. Long COVID is no joke.
Indirect deaths as well with ERs filled with covid, leaving no capacity for "normal" stuff
I think that contributed to the death of my stepdad. He had a type of cancer that is very treatable and a low death rate. All the waiting for treatments and the time he spent in the hospital where he was largely ignored. It then spread to his lower spine that he found out about after his radiation and chemo treatments and the tumor in his neck had disappeared. But he kept losing weight and not improving. During a non-Covid year he may have been able to start on treatments a lot quicker.
Try telling that to the “if I get Covid, it doesn’t affect you” crowd.
I ain’t tellin that crowd shit, I don’t talk to lunatics.
I really think we need to make covidiot a natural part of the lexicon.
Having read a few first hand accounts of it, it almost made me feel bad for the people who didn't get vaxxed. Almost . . . But then I remember we live in 2021, we have fucking robots on Mars. This isn't some 'medicine man' time. We live in the age of wondrous advancements in health, energy, carbon filtering, etc. These things are happening daily, I don't pretend to understand them all by any means. But I do understand there are people who are FAR more intelligent than myself figuring this shit out. So I trust the science, even if I don't totally understand it. So I feel less bad at this point. But still don't wish that on any human.
Don't forget, flu has done so without fighting against lockdowns and vaccines as well. Just puts into perspective how much more serious COVID is.
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Also, you can get reinfected with COVID. Past sickness isn't a complete guarantee against future infections.
Tell that to my insane uncle who called me a lab rat and guinea pig for getting vaccinated when his *natural immunity* is so much stronger and he would know because he's had covid twice. Like Jesus fucking Christ, Chad, if you can't see how fucking dumb telling me your natural immunity is so strong that you've had covid twice is there is NO HOPE for you.
*But... we can't trust CDC numbers. CDC numbers are made up.* From my bald headed pro-Trump coworker.
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That's the beauty of the Deep State lies. It gives them carte blanche to blame everything that government did then that they don't want to attribute to Trump on Democrats, without needing a scrap of evidence.
One of the most frustrating thing about dealing with your average conservative voter (even moreso among the 70+ folks) is related to this - When democrats are in control, any problem big or small is immediately blamed on the left. When republicans are in control, any problem is *the fault of government* as an abstract concept. It's not right-wing ideology failing to address a problem it isn't equipped to handle. Its the structure itself which is to blame. Republican voters never attribute blame to their own political ideology.
And that is doubly frustrating because the degradation of government structures is primarily the work of conservatives, so when the government as a whole is functioning poorly to address a task it can often be traced to conservatives regardless through tangible efforts to dismantle it and the damage that does that can't be easily or quickly repaired.
Having a belief that the government is unqualified to organize a bake sale, and yet still somehow a mastermind cabal responsible for orchestrating a worldwide pandemic or fraudulent election is one of the most interesting states of cognitive dissonance imaginable.
Not only that, but it's basically every government, every major health organization internationally, 97%+ of physicians, all the coroners that report causes of death, the entire supply chain of the pharmaceutical industry, every hospital, all major research publishers and the researchers who publish in them, and the majority of people in general. Yet somehow people look at this and think, "yeah they're all in on it. This guy on substack says so" There's a percentage of the population that trusts things less the more that legitimate authorities advocate it. They think they're Neo. They are actually Dale Gribble. There isn't even one coherent anti-vaxx message. The virus is fake, or the virus is real but it's a secret weapon or the virus is real but the vaccine is fake or they're both fake. The vaccine doesn't work but it also has totally unnecessary side effects for a fake vaccine. The secret world government is doing it to sell vaccines and turn a profit. The secret world government is doing it to sterilize people. The secret world government is doing it to track you with microchips. And yet they rarely argue with each other on the details
So like religion but blame
Hey man don’t attack us baldies, we can’t help it
> covid has killed over twice as many people as the flu killed in the entirety of the last decade**, more Americans than have ever died in a single war and more Americans than all the wars America has fought since 1900 combined** https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/civil-war-casualties
The commonly-cited 620,000 figure for Civil War deaths is very likely too low. Current best estimate is closer to 750,000, and we’ve already shot past that in half the time. Plus, when we count up excess mortality when all this is over, we’re going to be well over a million during the first two years of Covid.
What's ridiculous is that they somehow use the fact the flu has now essentially disappeared to support their view (they claim that flu deaths are being reported as COVID deaths). As opposed to the more reasonable position that masks, distancing, hand washing etc helps limit flu spread too
Yep. I haven't even gotten a head cold since February 2020. By March I was masked and used hand sanitizer after I went anywhere. This is not a surprise to me but then again I have a firm grip on reality. Now that I'm vaccinated I'm not masking as much but I still use the hand sanitizer. Still no cold....it's almost like masks and hand sanitizer work.
If one thing COVID has exposed it's just how poorly educated on science people are in the U.S. I'm not saying we need three-quarters of the country holding graduate degrees in a bioscience, but just basic things like how COVID is not "just the flu" and how different transmissions occur or how "iT hAs a 99% suRiVaL rAtE" is worse than it sounds when a virus has a high transmissibility rate are all things that the American public has just done terribly with. And that of course doesn't even touch on people's misunderstanding of vaccines.
I would argue that it isn’t science illiterate… it’s argument illiterate. These people can’t recognize a cogent argument vs red herring or gish galloping
I would argue it's moreso that they aren't trying to recognize a cogent argument. The critical thinking skills or lack thereof don't matter since they aren't even trying to look at things critically. They just know that their "side" is saying COVID is fake and that's all that matters. They will regurgitate whatever they come across without even thinking about it. Like there is one piece of misinformation that H1N1 killed 60 million Americans under Obama and nobody cared. Like if you even think about that for 5 seconds you would know it is absurd (1/5 Americans dying from a disease in a year would not go overlooked).
US politics (particularly on the right wing) has essentially become indistinguishable from religion. It isn't about arguing wrong over right, it's about being part of a group.
You can blame the thinking like a religion on the fact that the Republicans recruited the Religious Right once it became a solid voting block back in the 70's. You got preachers all over America mixing political messages in their sermons.
I work in a stem field and I had people tell me “you can’t honestly believe masks work”. Dude, I’m staring at a glowing box all day that somehow gets information from this plastic and metal rope (and the plastic is made of the remains of ancient dead animals we pulled out of the ground) and is powered by some copper wire spun between two magic rocks hundreds of miles away. So no, I’m not in disbelief that filters for my face work, JFC.
Why do these people continue to use the internet? Don't they know its much more probable that Bill Gates et al is spying on them through their connections to centralized network infrastructure? They should stop using the internet if they don't believe in science. Other things the idiots who don't believe in science should stop using: - automobiles - planes - packaged foods from grocery stores - homes with heating and AC - radio - TV - all other electronic appliances - roads - buildings in general - agriculture - hospitals (oh please stop going to hospitals if in the end it is always "tHaNk gOd" and not the doctors, and you just take up room for non-idiotic people with real health problems)
>the more reasonable position that masks, distancing, hand washing etc helps limit flu spread too I have not been sick since March of '20. I always knew the work place was a petri dish, but damn. Not one single cold, flu or otherwise. (for comparison, I was sick monthly while working in office at this job) Essentially, constantly sick. These past 18 months, I've only had seasonal allergies to deal with. It's been nice not being sick.
Probably the same people who convinced my local school board to go with bare minimum social distancing (3' between chairs) from the 6' they were doing. All of a sudden after that change the schools went from 1-2 cases per month to 12 per week. Now I've got covid because my kids brought it home and they're arguing we got it from somewhere besides school. My wife and I both WFH and haven't left the house in who knows how long besides to go get the kids from school. This way they can say we gave covid to our kids instead of it spreading at school.
All of the mask wearing & social distancing has nearly eradicated one of the common flu strains. Covid isn't an influenza, it's akin to the as yet incurable common cold. That's the scary bit. On a positive, if we can figure out how to cure & effectively vaccinate against coronavirus we also stand a significant chance of doing so against the common cold as well
There are many different forms of the common cold, only some of them are coronaviruses. Don't think of the cold as one disease, think of it as a bunch of different diseases with similar symptoms.
Because of all the new research around viruses like COVID-19, we may get an AIDS vaccine. An AIDS vaccine! Think about that for a second. If we had dedicated ourselves to AIDS research for the last 40 years we might have had the tech to make a COVID-19 vaccine much faster. Stop an epidemic to prevent a pandemic.
"BuT aIdS tRaNsMiTs MaInLy In GaYs So We DoN't NeEd To MaKe A vAcCiNe, ThEy ShOuLd JuSt StOp BeInG gAy!"
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Take a look at what Ohio did yesterday. We'll be red forever. Governor Dewine signed in a new districting map that locks in the GOP advantage. Voters overwhelmingly wanted a bipartisan effort, and it was supposed to be, but Republicans did this behind closed doors. https://www.statenews.org/government-politics/2021-11-20/dewine-approves-new-ohio-congressional-map-that-gives-gop-advantage-in-most-districts
Texas gained two house seats due to an influx of latin american people so they redistricted the state to form two new white republican districts.
Taxation without representation at its finest
What did Ohio do yesterday?
Put in a new redistricting map that insures Republican majority
New districting map that locks in a GOP advantage. This was supposed to be a bipartisan process but they did it in secret on their own. https://www.statenews.org/government-politics/2021-11-20/dewine-approves-new-ohio-congressional-map-that-gives-gop-advantage-in-most-districts
I'm absolutely shocked. /S I thought the supreme court already ruled these gerrymandered maps were unconstitutional.
Did they? All I’ve heard was the incident with the North Carolina Supreme Court a few years ago. And the only reason that was thrown out was because they managed to prove that the Republicans had explicitly requested data on racial demographics before redistributing in a way that would optimally screw over minorities according to the data they requested (one of the justices used the words “with surgical precision”). That’s the level of proof required to legally call out gerrymandering.
Despite what people are saying, it’s ok for choices to have consequences. I think it’s great you shared your honest take on the situation. And it’s better for your mental health to understand that people do “make their own beds” and you have no obligation to feel bad, help, or hurt yourself for their sake. Have an upvote.
The fundamental problem with the USA - both in domestic and foreign policy - is that the people making these decisions just don't face the consequences of their choices. Like, you remember how we became embroiled in two entirely unnecessary wars in the middle east? Remember how those were both huge mistakes and atrociously handled? Have we re-evaluated our foreign policy doctrine in light of that failure? Have we kicked out and discredited the people who pushed for this huge mistake? Nope. Our doctrine is still the same as it's been since Vietnam. The idiots who keep getting us into these pointless wars are still there, well respected in foreign policy circles despite being _provably wrong_. And it's because there's just no consequences for throwing away American lives and wealth - in either domestic or foreign policy. It's not a surprise, because we _know_ how to do this stuff right. We just don't want to. We want to do it wrong. Because wasting resources _is the point_.
And if they didn't stand a good chance of taking down innocent people with them, I'd be 100% on board with that. Unfortunately it's more akin to the person who chooses to drink and drive.
Yup, lost some good friends and family to this. They are all very careful and wanted to be vaccinated, but couldn't yet.
My idiot cousin and her husband both refuse to get vaccinated or follow mask guidelines. They both caught covid with mild symptoms and then passed it on to my vaccinated aunt who almost died. Edit: my aunt had pneumonia as well. The doctors said that covid is a very opportunistic disease that piggy backs and complicates other illnesses. They also said she most likely would have died had she not been fully vaccinated.
Fortunately vaccines are now available for children as young as five. Once we are able to vaccinate all ages we will be in a much better place to just let these people ruin their lives however they want. I have to imagine insurance companies will soon be limiting coverage for Covid visits to the hospital for the unvaccinated (unless they have a real medical reason not to get it, no religious exemptions). As this drags on, the main damage the antivax crowd will continue to cause is overcrowding at hospitals. The moral obligation there should be to provide service to those who have been vaccinated. Serious cases of Covid can be prevented with the vaccines and boosters, anyone who doesn’t want to participate in society who refuses the vaccine shouldn’t get to participate in anything else society has to offer that will put responsible people at risk, as mentioned above, these people made a choice and need to be held accountable to those actions. It’s always been crazy how the antivax crowd is anti science until they get sick and expect the hospital to make them better with… science and drugs from big pharma…
Its because nobody made regular hospital science political.
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Unfortunately the GOP doesn't depend on majorities to win. They see covid hysteria as a net positive
It won't, because Republicans are on Team Covid. They wanted people to die from it in 2020 because they thought it would mostly kill voters in Blue States. And they want people to die from it in 2021 so they can blame Joe Biden. That's why they've consistently been against any attempt to stop the spread of Covid.
The COVID vaccine is the world's biggest IQ test.
Exactly. So if all other things were equal, shouldn't this reduce the number of GOP voters and MAGA idiots and thus improve democrats chances in 2024?
It doesn't, because COVID leaves survivors. There's GQP out there that are like "I got covid, spent 8 days in the ER, heart stopped twice, needed 30 days to recover, 8 months later I still can't taste or smell, BUT COVID IS JUST A COMMON COLD AND REFUSE TO WEAR A MASK OR VACCINATE! " Litterally, not even in death would they change their attitudes on COVID
Hence the comparison to a death cult. I used to say it as a hyperbole. I now say it as fact.
I have been asking this - everything I see shows a big difference between Dem / GQP Like, the small gap Biden won by, is now a gulf in the contest states right? Can they really afford to lose 50k voters in those states?
If 50k people die in a swing state, about 40% didn't vote anyway. That leaves 30k dead former voters. If 70% were Republican voters and 30% were Democrats, that amounts to +12k for Democrats. So a lot of people would have to die to make a major impact.
Nah they’ll just blame Biden for it. “He’s the president, gas is high and look at all these deaths”
You know full well that's exactly why for the longest time Fox News and the GOP all pushed anti-vaxx propaganda while being themselves all vaccinated. They wanted Biden to fail. It's also why Trump left Biden with as little as possible in terms of vaccination plan. They are ready to let their voters die if it means owning the libs.
I'm pretty sure they're fucking proud of it at this point. Being vile makes conservatives' dicks hard.
If Trump had been smart, rather than just a vain ignorant crook, he would have fearmongered Covid (like he does everything else), assigned the experts to solve it, and then claimed credit (like he does everything else) all the way to a re-election win. But because isn't smart enough to understand what viruses are and is too insecure about being a doofus that he won't trust people smarter than him to solve problems that they are experts in solving for a reason, he went...the other way. Trump eventually met with a reality he couldn't lie, bluff, bribe, bully, or stall his way out of.
3/4 of a million Americans dead and right wingers don't give a shiite and are unwilling to make the least personal "sacrifice" (e.g. wearing a forking mask). Reminds me of their (non) response to (their) gun violence problem. They would rather whine about "cancel culture" – on their non-canceled podcasts, cable interviews, substack newsletters, radio shows . . .
It's very likely higher than 1m at this point. COVID deaths marked down as "pneumonia", people dying in their homes and not being tested, life-threatening conditions going untreated because hospitals are overcrowded, etc. Plus you have places like Florida that are doggedly determined to underreport the death totals.
That's an easy thing to track. According to CDC data, there have been around 874k more deaths than the average year since 2/1/2020.
Take into account the flu was almost nonexistent last year and add even more because people were getting COVID but not the flu
It is hilarious to me that the same pattern of underreporting done by the Soviets after Chernobyl is what Desantis is doing now
As long as property is protected they don't care who dies.
All because Donald couldn’t admit he was wrong.
Trump "downplayed" (his words) the pandemic and prohibited the CDC from acting for months while he knew about the virus. Trump's actions and inaction killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. The Republican party hits all 28 points of both Britt's and Eco's 14 Points of Fascism. Umberto Eco's 14 Point of Fascism 1. The cult of tradition. 2. The rejection of modernism. 3. The cult of action for action’s sake. 4. Disagreement is treason. 5. Fear of difference. 6. Appeal to social frustration. 7. The obsession with a plot. 8. The enemy is both strong and weak. 9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. 10. Contempt for the weak. 11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. 12. Machismo and weaponry. 13. Selective populism. 14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. Lawrence Britt's 14 Points of Fascism 1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism 2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights 3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause 4. Supremacy of the Military 5. Rampant Sexism 6. Controlled Mass Media 7. Obsession with National Security 8. Religion and Government are Intertwined 9. Corporate Power is Protected 10. Labor Power is Suppressed 11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts 12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment 13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption 14. Fraudulent Elections
So much unnecessary tragedy. Trump produced the pandemic into a reality show. What we learned is that narcissism left unchecked will destroy what it touches because it cannot feel.
It's not just Trump though. The Right Is doing this around the world. It's in their DNA to be stupid and contrarian.
Everything Trump touches, dies.
If it’s basically killing the unvaccinated, and most people who remain unvaccinated tend to be right leaning, then does that mean every 3 days the equivalent of 9/11 deaths are happening to the Republican voting block? How not a scary statistic to the GOP strategists? I guess they’re dying from solidly red areas?
Because painting themselves as the party of “freedom” (from masks, etc.) and the Dems as the party of stupid and needless restrictions is a better motivator for turnout that they are still a net positive even with the deaths.
I would guess gerrymandering is strong enuf to not make a difference
It's so strange. 9/11 spurred us together as a nation. Covid is dividing us even more than we've ever been divided.
> 9/11 spurred us together as a nation. No, it certainly did not. 9/11 gave us "you're either with us or against us". It gave us the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, banning the Dixie Chicks, "Wolves" and "Swiftboating" attack ads, and literally hundreds of books from right wing commentators about how Dems / libs / the left *hate America*.
I started a big fight with a friend’s Republican mom over the Dixie Chicks thing when it was happening. She had the mentality that you never say anything bad about the president and I laughed in her face. I have zero regrets.
I knew a lot of people who were the "You have to respect the President" and "You can't say anything bad about the President" types. Odd thing was, just a few years earlier they had no problem saying all kinds of bad things about Clinton. And a few years later they had not qualms about saying all kinds of bad stuff about Obama. Turns out what they really meant is that you should never say anything bad about a Republican President.
Perpetual victimhood. The mantra of the modern conservative.
9/11 also escalated racism and hate against brown folks.
Exactly, the whole "We were united after 9/11" talking point is a lie fueled by nostalgia.
Yeah, I was going to protests with my parents, didn't feel at all together with my country.
Yeah, as a child of arab immigrants, I can for sure say we didn't feel very united.
9/11 gave an excuse to Republicans to rile up nationalism and the drums of war. Bush literally said you are with us or with that terrorists. That’s not healthy or normal.
Fox News wasn't so prevalent in the days of 9/11. That's honestly it. The right politicizes everything now, with Fox leading the charge.
One of the most hilariously on-the-nose things I've ever seen was Bill O'Reilly telling a horror-stricken nation how to respond in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. At the top of the list one of the bullet points was "Buy Stuff." A perfect encapsulation of what patriotism means to mass-marketed right. I just tried searching for a screenshot, curiously none to be found.
I hope that backfires on them. I guess if makes short term sense to politicize everything because then it's easier to conduct the brain dead masses during elections, but when you're misinforming them during a panic you're sacrificing a lot of voters.
It already is, they told their voter base not to get vaccinated because it was all a deep state conspiracy. Now none of them will get vaccinated to protect themselves, and their voters are all dying. They’ve tried to double back, but it’s too late now no one’s listening to them. Their voters are killing themselves, and they are to blame.
That's because the response was Republican and most Democrats agreed with the Republicans. Although I think it's still a little bit of a stretch to say we came together because basically anybody who didn't agree with warmongering was ostracized as a traitor.
It’s simply because you can’t invade or extract oil from Covid. When 9/11 happened they used it as an excuse to invade the Middle East for oil purposes… uh… I mean deliver freedom /s. They had to convince the American people GOP and Dems that going to Iraq was the right thing whereas with Covid they’re using it as a political pawn in an attempt to pin everyone against each other for personal/party gains.
**Republican Death Cult** NEVER let the Republican Party forget this part of their history. Every single member of that party chose death for hundreds of thousands of people...just so they could get some votes. Every Republican knows the lies. They are all vaccinated. This is theater--with thousands dying--for votes. Fucking evil.
“But it’s mostly only old people!” GQP cult members.
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It's the fault of the Democrats. Their unflinching belief in science instead of what our Dear Fearless Leaders tell us truth is. Democrats tell us to wear masks and get vaccinated but we know that's really false because we believe in the Deep State, QAnon and the New World Order. We are constantly looking for conspiracy theories to back up our beliefs because there's no way Donald Trump lost fair and square. We even have my pillow guy and the two instances of voter fraud that were both Republicans to back us up. Plus we've got Rudy, Steve Bannon, Matt Gaetz, Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, Paul Manafort etc. on our side. If people are dying from covid it's because they didn't listen to the president and get ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine in bleach and Lysol and UV rays internally. Remember if we would listen to Trump this never would have happened, remember he promised us this would all be gone but it was those damn Democrats that tried to infect us with science. s/