Over Sarah Palin’s dead body
The “you can’t tell me what to do!!” party continues to embrace death by suffocation.
Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate, used the same week that the US passed 800,000 Covid-19 deaths to tell a rightwing gathering she would add to that toll herself before she would agree to be given a vaccine.
“It’ll be over my dead body that I’ll have to get a shot,” Palin told a cheering crowd. “I will not do that. I won’t do it, and they better not touch my kids either.”
Awesome! So brave, so defiant, so protective of her kids’ right to die instead of getting vaccinated.
Palin, who tested positive for Covid in March, was speaking at AmericaFest 2021 in Phoenix, Arizona, an event hosted by the conservative student organization Turning Point USA which attracted other staunch vaccine opponents including Tucker Carlson of Fox News and extremist Republicans Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
I wonder if it’s occurred to them that they’re promoting “don’t take steps to avoid COVID” while the other party is promoting “do take steps to avoid COVID” and that thus they are encouraging their own voters to get sick and die. You’d think the effect on elections would slow them down if nothing else did.
Really though I just marvel at the stupidity. What’s the principle they’re defending? That government should do nothing to prevent the spread of a lethal virus? What kind of principle is that?
Is it the principle that no one should ever do anything for the common good, even when it’s their own good too? But what kind of principle is that? Why is this a Republican thing as opposed to a stupid confused people thing? I’ll never understand it.
My father is a lifelong Republican, and a Trump voter. He got the vaccine. He wears a mask. He socially distances. It looks like he is going to make 90; he only has 9 more months. He bemoans the fact that Trump is promoting the anti-vax anti-mask position. He listens to his doctor because he has a solid basis in reality, at least on medical. He may be a fundamentalist Christian, and a Trump voter, but he has enough intelligence to get his medical information from someone who is competent to give it.
So it’s not necessarily a Republican thing. I think it might be a younger-than-Baby-Boomer Republican thing, at least from what I see around here. Nearly everyone here that was Baby Boomer or older has followed CDC guidelines, even though they are strong Trumpistas. Maybe because they’re in the age group most at risk? Or maybe because a lifetime of trusting their doctors won’t wash away so easily? Because they grew up before the internet? I don’t know. But I do know that I never saw masks on anyone under about 40 here, and only about 25-50% of the 40-60 age range. When we had a mandate, they put their masks on, even though the police said no one would enforce the mandate. That’s just what they do around here. Someone makes a rule, they follow it, but protest to City Council until it goes away.
I think the evidence suggests that it very much is a Republican thing. At least on first order correlation. You could certainly refine down from there into those fine with precautions (reality grounded), those who are Team-Trump, and those who are just batshit crazy (there is a growing wing of the Republican Party who think Trump has sold them out and is too moderate). I posted this tweet http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2021/miscellany-room-7/#comment-2915793 to Miscellany Room a few days ago. over the course of the pandemic you can trace it’s initial attack into impoverished and high-density housing areas. then in the next surge it’s affecting everyone, but mores those who aren’t taking preventative action. Then in the current surge it’s primarily those who are unvaccinated. The mortality rate is still ‘only’ around 3 per 100k, so nowhere near enough to twist an election result, especially when the system is now so heavily biased in favour of the GOP.
Pailin I suspect is missing the limelight and feeling of relevance, but she’s a has-been politically. Her 2008 brand of crazy is just too mild to grab attention now. It’s also easy for her to be brave about not getting an infection having already been infected and experienced a mild result. She’ll have some level of immunity, along with the assumption (misplaced perhaps) that any reinfection will also be mild.
Trump’s a moron, but even he’s not stupid enough to be an antivaxxer. He’s got the booster and everything:
https://twitter.com/nospinnews/status/1472934353583984641?s=21
He also got booed for it. Hence my comment that there is a faction of the GOP that are even more batshit crazy.
Aren’t almost all of her kids grown by now?
32, 31, 27, 20, and 13. Source – Google.
The principle being defended is that of the pouty brat – they can stomp their feet and yell “shan’t!” when told to do something.
I’ll have a crack at this one. Is it because the Republican party has become the party for confused and stupid people?
I see it as their imaginations at full stretch. They want to see past their own everyday unspectacular existences to a portrait of themselves as rugged individualists living on some wild frontier, like Davy Crockett or Annie Oakley. Every day should have new challenges to overcome. Something as mundane as getting a jab to save their own and their family’s life demands that a stand be made: like at the Alamo. Now that’s what they call livin’.
Me? I’ve got another name for it.
But then again who am I to judge the like of them? And will my opinion get me onstage and on the evening news from Phoenix Arizona? I’m just another blog commenter sitting in front of an ordinary laptop. Not a gold-plated one like Trump must have. (A solid gold one would be too heavy for him or one of his lackeys to carry. Could attract a damages claim and a payout by someone.)
Sigh.! Oh, the injustice of it all…!!!
Palin is legit a stupid person, so she may be one of the rare Republican celebrities that actually didn’t get vaccinated and believes what she’s saying.
On the other hand, she’s still smart enough to run a good grift, making millions of dollars over several years by convincing people she was going to run for president when she knew that would never happen. So maybe she’s your typical Republican celebrity who is personally vaccinated but plays an antivaxxer populist for money.
As for the rank and file, the charitable (and I think probably accurate) interpretation is simple denial. Who wants to live in a pandemic? It’s no fun. Hey, great news — there is no pandemic after all! Go back to your normal lives! Oh, people are saying there’s still a pandemic? Liars! They just want to control you. Don’t listen to them.
Apart from the obligatory knee-jerk opposition in advance to anything the loathed liberals say or do, I think the conspiracy theorist mindset has a lot do with it as well. People are not wrong to feel like they’re constantly surrounded by disinformation and hidden agendas, but simply knowing that doesn’t automatically translate into critical thinking skills, and it’s all too easy to end up learning the wrong lesson. Despite what Movement Skeptics™ might say, “following the facts where they lead” and “letting the evidence speak for itself” is not a realistic option most of the time. Life is simply too short for even the smartest, best educated person on the planet to acquire all the necessary pre-knowledge to evaluate the evidence outside of a very narrow field of expertise. Hence there’s no way around operating on a degree of trust, and trust is precisely what’s lacking.
As the post-truth era has demonstrated all too clearly, extreme distrust, cynicism, suspicion, and paranoia (especially the selective kind) doesn’t make people less prone to accept crazy claims, but more prone to give up on evidence and argument altogether and go with whatever suit their biases, self interests, tribal loyalties, and ideological preconceptions.
‘…thus they are encouraging their own voters to get sick and die.’
Republicans don’t anticipate needing actual voters any more. Gerrymandering, controlling state electoral systems, unleashing mobs to disrupt voting (remember the ‘Brook’s Brothers rioters?), declaring unwanted results null by fiat.
I don’t think it would be beyond possibility to separate the Republican sheep from the Republican goats by asserting that Donald Trump gets predicted in the Bible: specifically, in the Book of Revelation; as the Antichrist.
I would like to see the Republican theologians prove me wrong there. I would consider myself to be on pretty strong textual ground, with of course a few choice quotes from the Book of Daniel thrown in for good measure. ;-)
She has a child with Down Syndrome. It is medical neglect to keep a vulnerable child unvaccinated, surrounded by unvaccinated family.
Ouch. That’s horrifying.
I think for most of them, it’s defiance for the sake of defiance. If Fauci says do it, they won’t do it even if he tells them to pull the ripcord of their ‘chute. And they ain’t gonna wear a damn muzzle, neither.
No, the only parts of the government they like are the “Constitutional Sheriffs,” the cops who can do no wrong because they are the thin blue line, and the Troops who guard our freedoms to hate the government that sends out the troops.
So there you go.
Needless to add, many mothers choose to terminate the pregnancy rather than give birth to a Downs Syndrome child.
.
https://www.downsyndrome.org.au/about-down-syndrome/statistics/
https://www.learnreligions.com/sarah-palins-faith-701386