20 years of right-wing media feeback loop. Something makes you feel bad? Go to Rush Limbaugh who tells you, “Folks, it’s really just that simple.” Now you feel better.
After a couple decades their brains and their hivemind have been completely rewired. They don’t even have to investigate to try to convince themselves anymore. They know from rote experience that the simple solution, to keep doing whatever they want, will always be there for any problem.
It’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.
Good posts ChrisV.
Lightfoot has reached the Italian Mayor phase:
https://twitter.com/chicagosmayor/status/1256761226811650048?s=19
https://twitter.com/royalpratt/status/1256695976418557954?s=19
Nothin, don’t mean nothing hon if it ain’t free
that kid got her with a savage NO U tho
I’ve posted about this before, but my parents are on the far end of Boomerdom and they grew up poor and have vivid memories of a time when they lost childhood friends from polio.And then there’s measles. rubella, all that crazy shit. It was basically a mortal lock that your kids would be exposed to measles so you just rolled the dice and hoped they would survive it.
I feel like if you lost childhood friends to these diseases, you are not fucking around with this anti-vaxx bullshit. The anti-vaxx idiocy is a luxury of the younger boomers who never had to care about infectious diseases.
I agree it’s hard. The best chance imo is the “we’re all in this together” line that Obama used successfully. And then you hope people consider consequences one level down on their own. Because yeah, explicitly pointing it out just results in agitation and defensiveness and rejecting the premise.
To piggyback on your excellent posts above… if I could summarize the problem with America in one word, I might go with “entitled”.
Growing up in America, you learn two things at a very young age: (1) individual freedom is paramount above all else and (2) America is the best at everything. You are bombarded with stories and routines that drive those points home. Those two lessons are going to get you to entitlement real quick.
I don’t know how many times I’ve heard “IT’S A FREE COUNTRY!” blurted out by some little brat to justify bad behavior – taking another kid’s toy or saying something mean or defying a parent’s instruction or whatever. Thousands of times, probably. It’s crude and stupid, sure, but you can see that even little kids have internalized the idea that in America you should be able to do whatever you want without consequence or thought. That attitude is basically the same thing we are seeing from grown adults right now. Oh, you want me to wear a mask? To quote Eric Cartman: whatever, I do what I want.
That’s the worldview.
Postscript: You guys, measles is some crazy evil shit. In the Western world, we’ve managed to chase it away, but it is the most infectious disease imaginable, it is like a thing from a sci-fi-movie. If you cough in the frozen food aisle, everyone who walks through there for the next two hours might get infected. It’s insane. The good news is that we can end it now, the bad news is that we aren’t ever going to end it because who fucking cares about those Africans. We could eradicate measles if we really wanted to, but fuck it, where’s the profit in that.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01011-6
In poor countries, measles is a killer, especially in combination with malnutrition and vitamin A deficiency. Estimates are uncertain, but the death rate in developing countries hovers around 3–6%, and it can spike as high as 30% in the worst outbreaks, according to the WHO. Its victims often die of complications including pneumonia or diarrhoea and dehydration. Those who recover can be left with permanent disabilities, including blindness, hearing loss and brain damage. The virus also impairs the immune system for months or years after infection, creating “immune amnesia” that leaves children vulnerable to other infections.
The virus is so contagious that few unvaccinated people who come into contact with it are spared its effects. Scientists define infectiousness using the ‘reproduction number’ — how many people, on average, would be infected by a single person with the virus, in a population that has no immunity. For Ebola, that number is estimated at 1.5–2.5. The new coronavirus terrifying the world seems to be somewhere between 2 and 3. Measles tops the charts with a reproduction number of 12–18, which makes it the most contagious virus known. You don’t need to be in the same room as an infected person to catch the virus — it is spread by respiratory droplets that can linger in the air for hours.
Measels was a possibility when I was a kid and I think my older brother had it. Looking it up I found like 50k people had it the year I turned 3. He’s a year and a half older. Vaccine coverage was pretty low those years - like 60%. Numbers dropped dramatically in the US from about 500k a year or so before he was born straight to very low numbers when I was 4 or 5.
https://twitter.com/scottgottliebmd/status/1256765834913091584?s=21
Sigh. I see that multiple prisons are seeing >50% of population infected. Guess they will be informing about herd immunity a few weeks before Iowa.
“IOWA” was a code word over the radios at a plant I used to work in when a manager decided to tour the plant.
Idiot Out Walking Around. May have been co-opted from the military?
This is near where I grew up and a friend posted it with a caption saying how they couldn’t wait to get out there next weekend. I don’t see how things don’t explode from here:
This is a very good description of the current state of antibody testing.
I don’t see the average W2 worker clamoring to go back to work, but man seems like they can’t get to the beach fast enough.
I really wish we knew about outdoor transmission but considering this thing is more contagious than 1918 flu, and that parades are held outside, then probably it will spread. Even if it’s just 2-3 family groups at a time breaking social distancing to hang out together. All those closer encounters add up.
Public opinion on “re-opening” remains strongly against. I don’t know what the end game is for these morons.
I think it’s as simple as we are about to start seeing an increasing deluge of social media pictures of people at the beach, people at the lake, people out for a nice meal, etc. That is going to be a very powerful peer pressure device to drag a lot of us off our couches and out there with them.
This is one of the battiest things I’ve read this entire pandemic. Norwegian Cruise Lines should be obliterated.
I guess I don’t understand why the GOP is all-in on this idiotic policy. I fully understand why a small, vocal minority of stupid entitled Americans are roaming the streets with AR15s. What doesn’t make sense is political leadership making decisions that will prolong the crisis and kill people. That doesn’t help them, politically or otherwise.
