Liberty! Freedom! Covid! America’s Heroic Public Health War
From the surf, you could hear what sounded like the rip of paper from the weapon that most horrified Allied soldiers — the 25 rounds per second MG-42 machine gun. The U.S. Army called it “Hitler’s Buzzsaw,” and a long line of them peppered amphibious vehicles carrying troops about to land onshore. D-Day veteran Frank DeVita, scarcely 19 years old by June 6, 1944, recalled the scene after he was ordered to drop the ramp from his vehicle, “The first 7, 8, 9, 10 guys went down like you were cutting down wheat,” he said. Others made land only to launch skyward on one of General Rommel’s 4 million freshly planted landmines — part of Hitler’s 2400 mile long “Atlantic Wall.” Snaked about 156,000 Allied warfighters the atmosphere crackled with the electric hiss of bullets, explosions surrounded them, and with so many having had their arm or leg sawed off by the MG-42 their screams joined as one continuous shriek. Those men had rights to self-preservation, yet they were there anyway with responsibilities they embraced to protect the homeland, what NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw called the Greatest Generation.
Seventy-six years after losing 418,000 to WWII, we face another enemy that’s already killed 850,000 Americans. But there’s a new generation afoot. Facing not machine guns, not landmines, not having to gather one’s guts blown out on the sand, many Americans refuse to battle this menace by simply wearing a…cloth mask?
Really? Is this what Rand Paul and his Putin-schooled anti-maskers / anti-vaxxer “Republicans” are so upset about? All that government “intrusion”?
Actually, they have a point. The majority (82%) of these “Republicans” self-identify as Christians who “Love thy neighbor;” they don’t need government telling them what to do. Let the people decide. They should decide for themselves which side of the road to drive on or whether to stop at traffic lights — neither of which is in the Constitution. If they want to carry a gun on commercial aircraft, they’ve got Second Amendment rights.
And while clearly not the WWII generation, perhaps this new cohort is heroic in a different way. As new Covid variants evolve in the bodies of our fiercest patriots, they can sacrifice themselves for the Pi, Rho, or Sigma variant that can never be stopped, thereby keeping “America First!” in deaths from the virus.
U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
We could export our bounty to the world, and planet earth could be relieved of so many nutty bipeds running amuck.
Such is the daring bravery and mental bulk of our New Right (I once belonged to the Old Right), those champions of liberty; those courageous defenders of rights without responsibilities; those lovers of our Constitution in pursuit of fascist tyranny — according to FOX’s Tucker Carlson, like dictator Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. These people are our last stand against the slippery slope of reason, truth, science, and morality.
As Chatal Desol said of we moderns, hardship makes a people. So does its absence, and that absence creates a petty populous.
Petty and pathetic. Our New Right mocks or assaults doctors and nurses who report the revival of Covid death counts thanks to its Delta and Omicron variants. What is a dramatic undercount — perhaps by a factor of 2 — is to the New Right an overcount, including people dead from heart attacks, car wrecks, and according to New Right religious leaders in the Church of QAnon, botched UFO abductions. All while Biden’s “do-gooder government intruders” provide local volunteers offering free vaccinations door-to-door. But for what? “Covid’s just another seasonal flu.” According to Georgia “Republican” Representative and not university history major Marjorie Taylor Green, those volunteers are Nazi Brown Shirts. At the Dallas 2021 GOPP CPAC meeting, North Carolina “Republican” Representative Madison Cawthorn said those volunteers might “take your guns and Bible!” While dead Rush Limbaugh’s replacements, Clay Travis and Buck Sexton announced their scientific assessment of mask effectiveness based on “the data”: “clearly, they don’t work.” (Correct. If you don’t use them, they don’t work.) Yet Limbaugh repeatedly preached, “Science is one of the four corners of deceit.” Is this a paradox? After their daily mask-dismissals, Clay and Buck personally promote a miracle cure for pain and aging at “Just $19.95!” “If somebody said it helped, wouldn’t you try it?” they ask.
The British love this kind of irony.
Then, like a superhero comic character, FOX NEWS reporter Peter Doocy swooped in to save America from the Great Mask Cover-up. After Biden spent 15-minutes explaining why masks were again needed, Doocy shouted at the departing President to ask why masks were needed.
Aaa… Let’ see… Because all those brave “patriots” reared a more lethal version?
Peter, you graduated from Villanova. Do they teach “if-then-else” logic there?
Why is the New Right so easily confused by such simple things?
Because it sells.
Limbaugh’s spawn have one god: money. Top dollar demands top ratings. Top ratings demand they rally the troops, boil the blood, keep them angry enough to shoot up pizza restaurants, build their pipe bombs, and destroy the Capitol their Al Qaeda brethren missed. This constant state of agitation is mirrored by the audience — gluing eyeballs — and covers for the fact that “Republicans” are no longer problem solvers. Trump’s perpetual bumbling was proof. Bumbling that is now an act of piety, its persistence required to cover for the impotent limpness of Donald J. Christ. And it’s well-practiced. We’re told Florida and Texas are “beacons of freedom” from mask mandates and those “hysterical loons” wearing them, while those state governors DeSantis and Abbott keep “America First!” in Covid deaths by making their states primo with the disease. Not only have they enlarged liberty but cemeteries as they dig more graves. And while states like Maine and Vermont, who followed expert guidelines, were doing just fine (what a surprise), Abbott called on them to help his hospital staff shortage. Demagogues like these expect that genuflecting to the creed will inspire Trumpers in the next election, regardless of how many people it kills.
This is the kind of knot that dogmas tie people into. It also makes it hard to keep the message straight. Fearing class-action lawsuits from families who lost loved ones to liars, FOX host Sean Hannity said, “Just like we’ve been saying [they have?], please take Covid seriously. I can’t say it enough. Enough have died.” But other “Republicans” protested — wait a minute, Hannity! With arousing adolescent defiance, Arkansas State Senator Gary Stubblefield enunciated his scientific illiteracy by choking down cattle dewormer as a Covid prophylactic. (Does this mean Covid’s not a hoax?) Fellow Arkansas State Senator Trent Garner declared he might reconsider masks if mortality hits Black Death rates of 30 percent. He prefers “dangerous freedom” to “comfortable safety.” Wannabe Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders vowed she’d take no steps recommended by health authorities to curb Covid if she’s elected — a stirring campaign slogan. And Arkansas U.S. Senator Tom Cotton exposed the awful truth that when it comes to public health authorities, “the only thing they’re gonna consider is what they think is in the best interest of public health.” (Arkansas. Hmm…)
Returning to the New Right’s problem-solving plan (if the Left’s for it, the Right’s against it), Hannity changed horses, “I never told anyone to get a vaccine!” Opposing public health is a more pious measure of cult-loyalty than “Stop the Steal,” which Sidney Powell, FOX, Newsmax, and OAN are running from now that they’ve racked up over $10 billion in Smartmatic and Dominion lawsuits for lying.
While in the background, in Nashville, Tennessee, “conservative” radio host, manmade global warming denier, and virus-scoffer Phil Valentine lay in a hospital with Covid, his wife pleading for prayers. Valentine’s brother said, “Having seen this up close and personal, I’d encourage ALL of you to put politics aside and get [the vaccine]. I don’t believe there’s a chip in the vaccine, and I don’t believe 5G is gonna trigger some sort of mass casualties or any of that stuff. The reason roughly half of the population hasn’t taken it is because they (formerly me) assumed we were being lied to for any number of nefarious reasons.”
Texas “Republican” Dickinson City Council member H. Scott Apley told promoters of the vaccine, “You are an absolute enemy of free people.” Fondly recalling the good old days of camisole cremations, he promoted “mask burning” parties. He’s now remembered for his GoFundMe page, raising money to put his Covid-infested body in his grave.
“Conservative” Florida radio host, science denier, and Trump supporter, Dick Farrel said inoculations are “promoted by people who lied all along about masks, where the virus came from, and the death toll.” Farrel joined H. Scott Apley and, yes, Phil Valentine beneath the sod as Covid victims — the prayers didn’t work.
As the ancient Greeks were fond of noting, there’s something poetic about the consequences of willful stupidity.
Isn’t it remarkable what issues these people choose to politicize? From manmade global warming decimating their rural voters in the American West, to Covid, now slaying unvaccinated Trumpers everywhere.
But Democrats should stop complaining about it. Of 18 states that voted Trump in 2020, 17 have the highest unvaccinated populations. While Biden slaughtered Trump in the popular ballot, the Electoral College decided Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin by less than 45,000 votes. By the next election cycle New Right doctrine could easily kill off 100,000 or more unvaccinated “Republican” voters. (Three times more “Republicans” than Democrats are dying from Covid-19.) Remember when not Dr. Jared Kushner told us Covid-19 was a blue state problem? Of course, the Delta and Omicron variants also kill children who aren’t equipped to know their parents have been suckered by a cult. And New Right adults are just as incapable of distinguishing between truth and lies, tourism and insurrection, patriots and traitors — they voted for one, by definition, who bumbled his way through a failed government takeover.
As one Bush-2 aide remarked, the GOPP is an acronym, not for the Grand Old Putin Party, but the Grand Old Pandemic Party.
References not linked above:
Paragraph 9: Hardship makes a people: Chantal Desol, Icarus Fallen, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2010.
Paragraph 17: Filling in for the late Rush Limbaugh, Clay and Buck are the sources of “Florida is a beacon of freedom” and those “hysterical loons” during an August 2021 broadcasts. On May 17, 2021, Clay and Buck railed against Biden’s desire for herd immunity by crossing that threshold with vaccines. Why the outrage? Trump had the same goal and yet someone labeled it the equivalent of “murder.” It’s that “double standard” again. However, Trump sought herd immunity through widespread national infection by the live virus. Biden’s herd immunity via vaccine saves lives. Trump’s bumbling to the same goal would cost approximately another 7M — that’s million — dead (~250M unvaxxed at that time times 0.03 death rate). Conservative William F. Buckley used to tell a story about things like this: “It’s one thing to push little old ladies out of the way of oncoming trucks, and quite another to push little old ladies in the way of oncoming trucks. It doesn’t do to say in both cases one is just pushing little old ladies around.” Limbaugh was such a better liar than what he left behind.
Paragraph 26: Bush-2 aide: Mark McKinnon.
