The recurring question – why are Republicans so hell bent on killing off themselves and their own fellow party-members?

Some Republican leaders are seeking to support Joe Biden’s efforts to beat the pandemic by encouraging the public to get vaccinated as soon as possible. But others are actively trying to undermine the president’s offensive by embracing what critics regard as [a] lethal mix of ignorance, irrationality and nihilism.

And that lethal mix is going to bite them in the ass a lot harder than it bites us.

These Republicans seem intent on scoring political points by appealing to a pandemic-weary’s public yearning to get back to something like normal life. Still in thrall to former president Donald Trump, they fiercely oppose mask or vaccine mandates by invoking traditional party tenets of individual freedom, personal responsibility and resisting state interference.

And blah blah blah, but we can’t have absolute individual freedom unless we abandon society altogether and go live on a barren rock for a few days until we starve to death. If we can find a barren rock, that is – if all 350 million of us try we’ll run out of rocks in a matter of minutes. The benefits of society entail giving up some freedoms. The freedom to spread a lethal virus isn’t really a freedom worth having, let alone defending.

But with America now averaging about 113,000 cases a day, an increase of nearly 24% from the previous week, and hospitalizations up 31% from the week before, Republicans stand accused of causing the deaths of their own voters as the highly contagious Delta variant scythes through red states where vaccination rates are low.

Oops. But freedom freedom freedom.

In the past week Florida and Texas, states whose leaders take pride in riling the Biden administration, have accounted for nearly 40% of new hospitalizations across the country.

“We’re number one!!”

Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, welcomed hundreds of thousands of people to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally where no masks or vaccines are required, while Henry McMaster, the governor of South Carolina, declared: “Mandating masks is not the answer. Personal responsibility is the answer, common sense is the answer. And we have an abundance of both in South Carolina.”

He says, displaying reckless irresponsibility and lack of common sense.

Critics say the governors have abandoned the conservative principle that decisions should be made at a local level but they have support from prominent Republican senators such as Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Paul, a licensed physician and senator for Kentucky, urged civil disobedience against coronavirus restrictions, saying in a video: “It’s time for us to resist. They can’t arrest all of us.” He has been banned from YouTube for a week over a post that questioned the efficacy of masks.

That’s outright evil. Resistance is for when it’s the fucking Nazis pouring over the border, it’s not for public health measures DURING A PANDEMIC.

Democrats are dismayed by such willingness to turn even a matter of life and death into a partisan issue. They note that a minority of the population is hampering the entire nation’s recovery and needlessly endangering more lives, including children.

For political jollies, or just plain spite. The moral bankruptcy is a sight to behold.