And now, some good news for a change.
If you’re like us, you’ve read stories about conservatives, MAGA choads, religious numpties, and var. and sundry other douchebags around the US of A who, when it comes to matters of public health, “don’t believe in” the science of it. They resent having to be inoculated during a worldwide pandemic. They eschew the wearing of masks, the better to sneeze their way to Typhoid Mary-like notoriety. They agree with notorious lunatic RFK, Jr. when he asserts that vaccines cause autism. (Editor’s Note: Vaccines do not cause autism.) They hold “measles parties” to better enable their (helpless, abused) children to actually contract the disease.
More? You bet. These imbeciles blame Anthony Fauci for COVID; they do not blame Donald Trump for his counsel to a) wait until the disease just goes away; b) wait until summer, when the disease will just go away; c) eat horsepaste; and d) inject bleach. They took Trump—whose preening vanity about knowing anything is directly proportional to his abysmal ignorance about everything—seriously when, regarding the COVID virus, he asserted, “I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re going to test that too... So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute—that’s pretty powerful.” They applauded when Pete Hegseth—who we think of as The Shame of Princeton but who is more accurately identified, for all time, by Wonkette’s own Evan Hurst as “Secretary of Hair and Makeup”—ended the requirement that members of the armed forces get a flu shot. This policy, mind, had been in place since 1945; in fact, George Fucking Washington himself insisted that his Continental soldiers get smallpox vaccinations. The result of Hegseth’s mandate? Let’s ask The Daily Beast from last week:
The numbers are getting worse by the day. As of Tuesday, at least 222 recruits at Lackland Air Force Base had been diagnosed with flu, and four had been hospitalized… That is up from 159 cases and two hospitalizations a week earlier.
Also, if you’re like us, you read these stories and you think, often in so many words, “GOOD. LET ‘EM ALL DROP DEAD.” Or, if you’re in a somewhat more reflective mood, you might think, “Okay, wait. Don’t let them all drop dead. Rather, let some of them first infect their friends, loved ones, and like-minded colleagues, that they, too, may, in the fullness of time, drop dead.” And then you—or, at least we—think, “IT’S CALLED NATURAL SELECTION, BITCHEZ.”
It seems fair and just when, because of their moronic beliefs, science-denying nitwits get sick and croak. But do they, really?
Well, sort of! Because look: Here comes Wonkette’s own Robyn Pennacchia with the unimprovably-entitled piece, “Conservatives Now Owning the Libs by Dying More.”
A study published in Nature last month found that conservatives are dying at higher rates than are liberals, as opposed to back in 2010 when we all died at more or less the same rate. Curiously, it’s not just COVID-19 deaths, either. Multiple studies have already shown that Republicans were at least 15 percent more likely to die of COVID-19, particularly after the vaccine dropped. What this shows, however, is that they’re more likely to die of every other cause as well.
Be still our beating heart! Robyn quotes a piece in Fast Company (“A New Study Points to a Mistrust in Medicine”):
By 2016, the gap had begun to appear in biomarker measures. By 2020, it was showing up in deaths from causes such as heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Since then, the gap has only widened. Between 2020 and 2022, only 0.2% of “very liberal” respondents died of internal causes, compared with 1.34% of “very conservative” respondents.
Interestingly, it’s not that conservatives see doctors less than liberals do. In fact, both cohorts are about equally likely to consult a Primary Care Physician. It’s that conservatives are less likely to trust their PCPs and take their advice.
IT’S NATIONAL CATFISH DAY, NATIONAL LEON DAY, AND NATIONAL HANDSHAKE DAY. SO FIND A CATFISH NAMED LEON AND SHAKE ITS HAND.
Let us, for a moment, meditate on the profound stupidity of this. Cast your mind back to the late 16th century, when Sir Francis Bacon, the Father of Empiricism, first enunciated what would become the Scientific Method. For four and a half centuries man-and-womankind has made steady progress in the science of medicine. Like leprosy, smallpox, and bubonic plague, measles had been eliminated from the US. And now it’s back. People who would not hesitate to consult a mechanic about their car or a stylist about their hair suddenly “don’t trust” a doctor who spent twelve years mastering the profession (let alone who has been working on infectious diseases for decades).
Why? What is it in the conservative—make that Republican; these people are not conservatives—mind that rebels against this particular aspect of modernity? They can’t all be Amish. They partake of technology. They use computers and drive cars and fly in planes. Why, when it comes to the most fundamental thing of all—the protection and maintenance of their stupid precious bodies—do they turn into spiteful teenagers for whom defying Mom and Dad becomes the supreme test and proof of their identities?
Is it religion? That’s Robyn’s theory:
I guess if you don’t believe in evolution, if you don’t believe in climate change, if you think vaccines are bad for you, if you imagine that there is some kind of conspiracy among scientists to put out information just to ruin your day or make you question your religious beliefs, it wouldn’t make sense to believe doctors, either, when they say you need to lower your cholesterol intake.
Yes, and: It looks like these people don’t trust institutions (academia; science; “experts;” “the government;” “the media”) but do trust individuals: Trump, Fox News bobbleheads, hate radio yakmeisters, influencers. Does this reflect their rejection of the Catholic church (the biggest, oldest, most powerful institution on Earth) and their embrace of Protestantism, with its personal relationship with the personal Jesus? Could be!
Then again, many Trumpers are Catholic, so maybe not.
In any case, these, you will note, are the rugged individualists, so-called because each of these individuals keeps a rug under which they sweep their various hypocrisies. They’ll post a flag (of a, um, snake) that says Don’t Tread On Me, but if their going maskless during a pandemic brings a risk of spreading their infection to others—well, as we say in the original Latin, uff-tay it-shay. They’ll cheer when Trump natters on about “freedom” and “our Country,” but cheer louder at (or utterly ignore) his racist attacks on an ethnic group or on immigrants. The rule of law, the right to vote, the checks and balances of government as enshrined in the Constitution: There isn’t one supposed tenet or value of “conservatism” that all of them, from the US Senate down to Cletus and Brandine in Possum Holler, don’t betray and violate and kick in the balls, every day, in their fealty to Donald Trump.
Bear in mind that, even after the last few weeks of absolutely wretched, loser-level failure on all fronts, from Iran to the Reflecting Pool, Trump still polls, per the Failing New York Times, at around 38% approval. Thirty-eight percent of 350 million people is 133 million. Granted, many of these who approve of Trump are children, the senile elderly, and bots. Still, we can’t believe it either. That’s 132 million too many. So we need them to continue to refuse medical attention and to die move swiftly along to a Better Place.
Until they do, we’re stuck in Splitsville—our term for when a single geo-political entity is occupied by two or more distinct “nations.” In this version one nation consists of us: sensible people who, for all our faults, know enough to get a fucking vaccine and pay attention when our doctor says something regarding our health. The other consists of those who, after centuries of medical advances, don’t believe in the existence of germs because you can’t see them. Bless their myocardial-infarction-due hearts.
YOU THINK LIFE UNDER TRUMP IS BAD? GET A LOAD OF LIFE IN THE CONFEDERATION OF CONSERVATIVES STATES OF AMERICA.
PS, Readers--The original version of this newsletter had a few missing words. This has been remedied, because WE CARE, okay? Although we're not going to say "we regret the inconvenience," because come on.
<<Also, if you’re like us, you read these stories and you think, often in so many words, “GOOD. LET ‘EM ALL DROP DEAD.” Or, if you’re in a somewhat more reflective mood, you might think, “Okay, wait. Don’t let them all drop dead. Rather, let some of them first infect their friends, loved ones, and like-minded colleagues, that they, too, may, in the fulness of time, drop dead.” And then you—or, at least we—think, “IT’S CALLED NATURAL SELECTION, BITCHEZ.”>>
Bravo! Let 'em catch their preventable diseases, drink their raw milk, shove crystals up their asses and use ivermectin, fenbendazole, and their 11 secret herbs and spices to cure their cancers. I honestly don't care anymore and if they take their like-minded buddies with them, you're not gonna see me complaining. I've become kind of a bitch that way.