As it turns out, conservatism was the real plague all along.
No, he is not. He initially tried to run as a Dem, but once Dems realized he was a right-wing nut job, he (appropriately) decided to run as an Independent.
I blame Jenny McCarthy.
Blame Andrew Wakefield. He was the one who convinced Jenny McCarthy. She’s a useful idiot. And I do mean idiot. She wrote an article that’s been scrubbed from the internet about how her child was an ‘indigo,’ meaning he would have superhuman powers. This was before his autism diagnosis, which apparently changed her mind, because that’s when the article got scrubbed.
It also contained a sentence that said (paraphrased): “After my son was born, I quit smoking.”
She’s a fucking idiot.
I thought you were kidding, but nope. The smoking sentence isn’t mentioned in there, but everything else is. Wow.
It really is rather astonishing what one idiot in the right place at the right time can accomplish. For example, if you had asked me to describe a typical anti-vaxxer anytime before 2020 I would have described someone a lot like a hippie. Someone who smokes a lot of weed, makes their own clothes, shows up at all the mid-week protests against factory farming, that sort of thing. If you asked me that same question now you’d get a very different answer and it really can be summed pretty succinctly in the acronym MAGA.
I’m sure the first type is still out there but the second type is much more interesting in the academic sense of the word. These are people who were openly mocking anti-vaxxers less than 5 years ago. These are the people who didn’t think twice about mandatory vaccination days in school or the military. This sort of person flipped their whole attitude towards the medical community almost exclusively because one loud idiot who obviously doesn’t have a fucking clue how any of it works told them that he knew better. That’s amazing.
Can’t tell you how many times in my clinic I heard “I can’t stand that Fauci”. Every time a look of disgust would envelop my face and I would ask ”why?!” in disbelief. Most of the time they couldn’t tell my why other times because he “lied”. It was clear they didn’t understand basic science and we’re being told what to believe. These were your run of the mill MAGAs that constitute the majority and the norm where I’m from.
What’s wild has been watching previous hippies that were antivaxxers suddenly adopt racist and hateful attitudes because it aligned with their newfound perceived in-group.
Like - how do you go from proudly having protested for civil rights to using the N word all because of the strength of your convictions about the healing power of quartz?
Our brains are weird as shit and I really can’t wait for AI superintelligence because it’s become clear as fucking day that such a thing as superintelligence sure as hell isn’t going to be happening in humans.
Between this, forcing women to give birth against their will, and celebrating stealing children from migrant parents, making children suffer seems to be a core Republican value.
How about the right-wing media which fostered scientific ignorance because making money and supporting a fascist political party was more important to them than the good of the country? These MAGA dipshits didn’t stop getting vaccinated until they were told to.
How about Christianity which advocated for blind faith and dismissed knowledge as worthless since the first century?
Where do you think the right wing got the idea that listening to authoritarian guidance and conforming to group beliefs trumps scientific knowledge and learning?
In general, it’s alarming how often some form of ‘spiritualism’ whether Christian or some Western strain of Eastern branded BS goes hand in hand with people saying they don’t believe in vaccines.
This isn’t simply scientific illiteracy, it’s spiritual literacy as a competing factor encouraging belief in magical thinking over observation and testing.
Which at this point has expanded out to weird crap like thinking the pyramids were built by aliens or that Jesus was secretly talking about tongue yoga to stimulate the pituitary gland to all sorts of the most bizarre shit I’ve ever heard.
People have thrown away any grip on reality and along with it suddenly become insufferable know-it-not-at-alls that just don’t shut up about criticizing actual knowledge while promoting insanity.
