I do believe in monsters. Except they’re all human, and mostly religious.
I can’t recommend it. Not that it isn’t honestly reporting what the Right is doing, but that it’s more terrifying than I can take. A small sampling:
- Trump uses coronavirus fears to advance Bannon’s far right agenda
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Sebastian Gorka won’t stop blaming the left for coronavirus ‘mass hysteria’
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Liz Crokin: The coronavirus is cover for the military to make mass arrests
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Josh Bernstein: The Coronavirus Outbreak Is a Democratic and Chinese Conspiracy Against Trump
Paranoia, conspiracies, End Times lunacy, QAnon garbage, it’s all there. The Left is accused of hysteria and overreaction when sensible and necessary action is taken to control the pandemic, but these looneytunes are taking it all to a new level. I’m waiting for the parade of flagellants and the right-wing coup in the midst of the chaos now.
If you want nightmares, watch creepy Kenneth Copeland curing everyone through their television screens.
Kenneth Copeland healed viewers of the coronavirus through their televisions last night. pic.twitter.com/8lwHufTIy4
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) March 12, 2020
What’s all over his hand? Ewww.
It’s almost a relief to turn to Answers in Genesis, where they just have a glitter in their eye and see the coronavirus as a mere opportunity to proselytize.
I’m convinced that this coronavirus outbreak is possibly the greatest outreach opportunity for the church worldwide. The coronavirus has covered the globe and, thus, brought missions to our own turf. The church needs to respond to the current situation sensibly and centered around the gospel. Here are some things we should be doing during this time of worldwide panic.
The “things” are to assemble a medical mission team (evangelize while treating people), buy up all the personal hygiene products from your local stores to bribe the local community, and write up Bible tracts to be distributed with your bottles of hand-sanitizers.
It’s horrible, exploitive, and ghoulish behavior, exactly what I expect from Christians any more, but it’s also almost quaint against the backdrop of the outright dangerous nonsense other groups are promoting.
So this is how civilizations die. I’d rather not be in the middle of it.
I hear my father spew this crap every night.
“So this is how civilizations die.”
No this is how EMPIRES die. I dream that this could be the end of American Imperialism. I’m too pessimistic to think that’s the actual case. We could test single person in the country and give them free health care for the next year if we just canceled one single aircraft carrier. What’s going to kill more people in the next year?
They did the same thing during the Swine flu pandemic of 2009.
Xpost Dispatches
Fox NoNews and the right wingnut Reality Denying Machine did the same thing with the H1N1 Swine flu pandemic of 2009. Including a disinformation campaign about vaccines in general and the Swine flu vaccine in particular. The result was…
It’s likely that the death rate from the Covid-19 virus will again be higher in Red states.
Being dumb about dangerous things like viruses has its costs.
From Alex Jone’s Infowars 2009
Did you know the Swine flu vaccine is going to be mandatory or you will be sent to a FEMA concentration camp.
It is part of a Globalist UN depopulation program to kill billions of people.
This was on Alex Jones’s Infowars gibberish site in 2009.
Of course, none of that happened.
The reality was that the Swine flu vaccine was an achievement in rapid vaccine production, and saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
The death rate from the Swine flu was far lower after it was introduced than before it was introduced.
It’s likely that the deaths from the Covid-19 virus will be higher among fundie xians/GOPers/Red states for a lot of reasons.
.1. The Red states never expanded Medicaid.
The result is more people without health care insurance.
More hospitals closing down in rural and poor areas.
.2. A population that is older than the national average.
.3. People who rely on propaganda and superstition instead of factual information.
Being dumb about a dangerous virus isn’t going to help their chances for survival.
PS Average lifespans are already shorter in Red states anyway.
No surprise, there are quite a few conditions out there that will kill you.
Anybody got some Karmavirus available for smearing on firearms at a gun show?
Asking for a fiend.
What’s all over his hand?
Hand sanitizer. He may be evil but he is not stupid.
So the devil is trying to give us the flu? Gods (literally), how standards have fallen.g But note the stark difference between seeing an evangelical and listening to him. The latter is silly, the former very creepy – the video started playing without sound so I was treated to a vision a glistening suit handwaving at me with a rather worrying facial expression. Definitely not the sort of thing you’d want to see next to your hospital bed, so that’s a no on AiG’s idea, too.
At least that seems fair: The republicans get the Russians, the democrats the Chinese on their team. Balance to the universe has been restored, so we can now ignore this and move on to the next conspiracy. Although it would mean the EU will get stuck election-meddling on behalf of some third-party candidate, which seems like a bit of a waste.
Get rich or die trying: the people trying to make money from coronavirus:
@#2, Ray Ceeya:
We just spontaneously decided to put $1.5 trillion into the stock market to try and juice it into rising again. Out of nowhere. All the claims of “we can’t afford it”, applied to anything from Medicare for All to student debt relief, are lies. We can make up the money any time we want, and we do that when it’s the wealthy who receive it.
You have right wing religious nut jobs ,over here in GB people are panic buying toilet paper ,100s of rolls at a time .
And rubber ducks ,rubber ducks ,i ask you .There are literally flying off the shelves .
Okay ,maybe i lied about the rubber ducks
Next mediums will start saying they saw all this in their crystal balls and then someone will start with Nostradamus and bible codes .
And who do the UK and the USA have piloting the plane ,the snatch snatcher and bojo .
So, how do we turn this all around?
@#12, Susan Montgomery:
I have a suspicion that if you were to make a list of all the plans which would actually work, electing a president who says he wants to put billionaires (including Michael Bloomberg) in charge of all the major economic positions, thinks that any plan to combat climate change which meets expert approval is too much, and who says that he will veto universal healthcare even if it gets through Congress, would not appear anywhere on that list. Apparently most of the Democratic Party disagrees with me, though.
The human race is going collectively insane at an accelerating rate. In Australia the Greek Orthodox Church is carrying on with sharing the communion cup between congregation members because it is a religious ceremony and therefore people wouldn’t be able to catch the coronavirus from it!
@9: “Satan could not be reached for comment…” That’s because he is currently self-quarantined.
The person eating the crips might not be that bad. Indications are that it does not spread very well via food. I.e. picking up a chip and eating it with a potentially contaminated hand might well be safer than scratching your nose with it. Not that I’d advise either, of course.
@13 I suspect you may be right.
But the 2020 election is an irrelevance. We’re not going to get a savior, we’re not going to get a Someone Else who’ll solve our problems without any effort or cost. First on my list is to stop expecting an easy solution to just magically appear. But I’ve been through that before, haven’t I?
Second on that list is to accept that the American public is not as liberal as we like to think they are and that our tactics up until now obviously haven’t worked – and quite possibly did more harm than good. And then, using that as starting point, adjust our tactics accordingly.
Coronavirus disproprortionately kills older people.
Coronavirus disproportionately kills older people… and older people disproportionately vote Republican. (The kids — under 45 — are alright, according to polling.)
If right-wing loons disproportionately ignore infection protocols, then they will die disproportionately too.
Might be the demographic swing necessary to start electing sane people.
@#17, Susan Montgomery:
The problem is that the Democrats are apparently going to not just be irrelevant but a hindrance. Sanders won’t save us if he gets into office, but he won’t be putting up barriers to us saving ourselves. Biden will. He has said as much already.
This is why I blame Democrats for a substantial portion of the mess. It’s bad enough that we have to fight Republicans without the Democrats deliberately making themselves an obstacle as well.
@20
the modern “liberal democrat” the one we need is the one who will reach across the isle and work with the conservative republicans to get things done, what we need is a moderate who will lead us forward conservative and liberals alike and capitulate at the first sign of disagreement and avoid all that polarized conflict that is so unpleasant and scary
uncle frogy
https://deadstate.org/christian-megachurch-cancels-faith-healing-service-in-response-to-coronavirus-outbreak/
Not that sure of its efficacy it seems.
@22 HAHA ,and they tell non god botherers to have a little faith .
nomdeplume@14, That’s also happening in Greece, for precisely the same reason.
Well I for one am not seeing a way out. What I see is a disease of information, and it’s simply not being addressed in any coherent way, in politics or anywhere else. There are calls for civility of course, which are nice, but by now it should be apparent that they have little efficacy and are only a band aid for a deeper, a-civil problem. And expecting the Zuckerbergs of the world to fix it is laughable. At long last it might as well be the real zombie apocalypse, in my jaundiced view.
@20 But why is that? Aren’t the Democrats on our side? Weren’t they always? I think you can guess my answers to those questions. But that brings up another question: Who ever really was a liberal? Or, to rephrase, what did being a liberal ever really mean?
@25 To me, the way out is clear. Deal with the American public as it is and not how we wish it was. Agree on a handful of basic principles that are never wavered from and form a firm foundation for a “liberal” worldview. Then work on achieving realistic, short-term goals upon which even further goals can be achieved. And also take full advantage of mass media and the internet to usethe willful ignorance of the public rather than trying to give unwelcome enlightenment.
This stands in stark contrast to the careless moral relativism and LSD-fueled utopianism of the hippie counterculture in that it requires effort and hard choices (and might actually work) that we’ve been avoiding for so long. But the conservatives have been preparing for this moment in history for at least 25-30 years while we’ve had nothing but pipe dreams, nihilistic rock anthems and “allies” we should have known we couldn’t count on.
@27
Well, yes. And in the end it becomes an issue of realpolitik (doesn’t it always?) which is why, the choice being Biden or Trump, I’ll vote for “centrist” Biden without hesitation.
Pace matters though, for example dealing with climate change when the “zone” is effectively being flooded–as they say in disinformation speak. Simply getting together and talking sense is not a very specific prescription when, as you say, the current situation is the product of several decades of concerted right-wing effort intended in part to undermine sense, rather effectively as it turns out.
@28 So, then let’s not use sense. FWIW, I don’t advocate realpolitik as a reason to elect Biden. I see it more as triage. The worst thing right now is that Trump is in office. It doesn’t make sense to worry about plans that won’t be enacted regardless of who’s president and likely will take years to show results even if they were. Voting Trump out is the most important thing right now.
But, we’re talking about sense, yes? What use is talking sense to a person who is woefully under-educated, mistrustful of education and educated people and trained by our culture to be mistrustful – indeed, resentful – of benevolent authority which places barriers between them and instant gratification? Leaving both sweet reason and the mailed fist out of consideration, the problem then becomes persuading such people to support us. And yes, climate change is something that just can’t wait two or three decades for us to get our shit together. Consider this a thought experiment to ponder.
Hmm. Server just ate my comment.
Anyway @29
Not sure if we’re having the same conversation…?
I’m reasonably sure we are. But, I am somewhat neuroatypical, so perhaps I’m missing something. Would you care to elaborate on your confusion?
Backtracking a bit, I commented that I’m not seeing a way out. If we’re talking about turning things completely around, which is what I was referring to, I don’t think that will happen. But if we’re talking about slowing the decline, sure, we can do that.
@32 Oh, okay. For the short term, you’re right. I do have a little hope for the future, though.