Some of them have said the quiet part out loud — all the ones who think the economy is worth more than old people — but this is the underlying reality of every Republican’s policy ever.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
These would be the same people who decry the casualties of Stalin’s attempts at introducing collectivised agriculture, or of Mao’s Great Leap Forward. Somehow when it’s leftists in charge the idea of sacrificing people for economic well-being is beyond the pale.
Well, for the right, they believe in the truth of the name of their side – right.
Remember, before the camps, the sanatorium and care homes were cleared out, the residents murdered. Then, on to the next group on the list.
There was active discussion of bringing fascism to the US. WWII and the horrors of the camps put the kibosh on that. These days, they keep testing the waters to see when we stop punching Nazis in the face.
Don’t even try to say they give a fuck about the economy. We have plenty of “real journalists” to publish their propaganda, so there’s certainly no need for more. Rich and powerful people want to remain rich and powerful. That’s what it is. How well our economy is doing has never been their real concern.
Since the elephant is their symbol…
It seems Greebo, the evil tomcat of Nanny Ogg has a cousin in India.
A three-year old tabby took a stand against an elephant that tried to raid its home.
Behold, this is the kind of progressives you need to elect to fight off the big bastards.
“Personal responsibility.”
These are the same people who are right now once again, trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act to take away people’s health care, particularly if they are low income.
These are the people who are running concentration camps for children along our southern border.
They aren’t pro-life as they claim at all.
Herd immunity is a myth right now anyway.
We don’t know what percentage of the population needs to get the virus (60-90%?), how long it will take (3-10 years?), or if it is even possible since the duration of infection mediated immunity is unknown. It could be like other Coronaviruses at a year or so.
The whole idea of naturally occurring herd immunity is a lot more complicated when you look at it closer. Before vaccines, we never achieved herd immunity to smallpox, measles, influenza, polio, chicken pox, mumps, whooping cough, diptheria, etc.. This is despite the fact that most of these diseases provide long term to lifetime immunity.
The reasons are somewhat known. In natural pandemics, quite often, the virus never gets to everyone. In the current case of Covid-19, there are huge numbers of people like PZ and others, carefully hiding out and avoiding getting…Covid-19. Plus every day, a new group of susceptible humans appear, better known as newborn babies. And even durable immunity can wear off over years. Some people may mount a weaker immune response that fades over time.
We very likely could wait years and kill millions to achieve herd immunity with Covid-19 and never get to it.
The best way we know to get to herd immunity is the same way we did it with smallpox, polio, measles, etc., i.e. with…vaccines.
I knew it – they knew it. That they knew who was going to die much more than themselves and those like them very early on. The very people they despise.
It couldn’t be better. Lie about doing the best job ever fighting the virus and let’em croak! After all they vote for Democrats.
They never ever intended to do a damn thing to stop this pandemic and it’s just what they did.
There are no word as to how evil Republicans are.
There is no pass with shit like this and I don’t give a shit who they may be!
@#6, raven:
Could we… stop using the “kids in camps” rhetoric? Please? At least until we see whether Biden will be even slightly better than Obama was on that one?
It’s like the article in Salon that listed “10 things Biden can do to immediately improve US foreign policy” where literally half of them would involve reversing decisions which were actually made by Obama, not Trump.
Fuck off Vicar.
I had heard Carl Schmitt’s name bandied about a few times. Then I started reading him. Hobbes and Machiavelli were wimps. Politics means having mortal enemies. Exceptional situations warrant a dictator. Are we getting close to emulating his worldview in Trumpism?
@#10, Artor:
What, did I remind you again that Democrats don’t really have a better track record on most issues, these days, than Republicans do? Just better PR and usually less obnoxious personal style than Trump? So sad, I feel so sorry for you, being reminded that you just spent months desperately clinging to the myth that Joe Biden, a man whose entire career has been spent opposing the left, will actually improve things. It must be terrible to have wasted your time to such an extent, and I know it must be stressful to watch him do things like put Cedric Richmond, who has taken a third of a million from fossil fuel companies — including some which don’t even operate in his state — in charge of talking to activists about climate change, or stacking his transition team with corporate representatives.
But I don’t care. You idiots backed a traitor, now you’re trying to pretend you had nothing to do with it. You can fuck off.
No, it’s just that you’re a lying sack of shit, as usual. No, Obama did not establish the practice of putting children in cages. No, I don’t have a lot of faith in Biden, but he is clearly not Trump, so that’s at least an incremental improvement. Go crawl back under your rock.
@ The Vicar, # 9: It’s not “Kids in camps,” in’s “kids in fucking cages.” Are you blaming Obama for that? Admittedly, there were a lot of deportations under Obama’s watch. By contrast, most of those were for people with multiple criminal offenses. Also by contrast, what Obama DIDN’T do was to dehumanize entire groups of people by skin color, religion, or ethnicity, something Trump does over and over with a gloating smile on his face.
@ The Vicar, # 12: “But I don’t care. You idiots backed a traitor, now you’re trying to pretend you had nothing to do with it. You can fuck off.”
Vicar-exactly who are you backing? I don’t think you’ve ever said. All I’ve noticed you doing is trashing other people for supporting Democratic candidates.
So, Vicar, I’ll ask again. What is your history of activism? Have you ever worked for a candidate or an issue? Have you contributed time or money? I suspect you’re just a twisted, lazy wanker who’s only capable of oozing poison like a monstrous cane toad.
The Vicar and mnb0 think that a vote for Biden solely for the purpose of getting Trump out is equivalent to supporting whatever Biden might do, contrary to what PZ and most commenters here have actually said.
In other words, they are either really really stupid, or utterly blinded by ideological dogmatism. But I repeat myself.
And of course, they never offer alternative actions. Their implicit message is that Trump is preferable to Biden. So they are, at best, fascist enablers.
@Vicar
Holy shit, Vicar…
Raven said:
Right now, the republicans are still in charge, are they not? Which makes Raven correct. Whether the situation was similarly fucked before has little bearing on that. Rebulicans still failed to improve things. Made everything even worse by a significant margin, actually.
We get it: Both parties are monstrous. Good job figuring that out. Have a cookie.
But the way you point this out is incredibly fucking callous. Let’s NOT talk about children in cages? Because the wrong monster might get blamed for it? Are you fucking serious? That you’re actually trying to discourage such a discussion is… kind of disturbing. It shows that what you actually care about is political point-scoring. You just want to be right so damn much that you’re willing to ignore concentration camps. Cool.
What you fail to realize is that everyone else is not as laser-focused on political affiliation as you. Having children stuck in death camps is abhorrent no matter which party is doing it. I doubt many other commenters here would hesitate to say the same for fear of critisizing the “wrong” party.
You’re an asshole, Vicar. Not unlike the fox-news-inundated trumpist morons, it’s like you’re in a state of chronic outrage. And like for those people, spewing your bile on the internet has no effect and makes your life no less shitty, so you get more and more bitter. You imagine a polical consensus where none exists. Plenty of people on this blog are less than enthused with Biden and the dems.
Take a step back. Take a nice long walk. Or have a drink and a smoke. Just calm the fuck down. Learn some empathy.
And maybe, at some point, people might actually want to talk to you.
Right, let’s hold back on criticizing the Nazis until we’re certain a victory by the Allies will be materially better.
Would it not make more sense to criticize something that’s wrong right now, and then continue to criticize it if it persists, independent of the culprit? And let’s say you stop criticizing later. Isn’t better to do half a job than no job at all?
There’s a view I have seen almost exclusively on the left, that the worst thing possible is to be a hypocrite. Therefore, it is wrong to criticize your opponents unless you are prepared to criticize your allies with the same zeal. This one appears entirely asymmetric. Any examples of anyone on the right making this kind of argument?
I especially saw this in regards to Russian election interference. It was “bad” to criticize anyone for interfering with US elections because the US interferes with elections too. Um, no. The very fact that we understand this attack well enough to apply it to other nations is all the more reason to protect ourselves from it!
Hypocrisy, while it is a moral failing, is not worse than turning a blind eye to evil.
Vicar…
I tend to agree with you when you skewer the enablers of the Democratic party. Yes, they are corporatist, warmongering pieces of shit. Yes, they need to be called out on a regular basis when otherwise this would be an out-to-brunch echo chamber. You do a good job with that. But “could we stop using the kids in camps rhetoric” is an epic shit take. We have the moral high ground on kids in concentration camps because we critcize Trump and we criticize the deporter-in-chief Obama and we’ll criticize Biden when any of them do that. It’s one of the best demands we can make. No way you’ll convince me to stop using that rhetoric.
Oh, yes, he did. He wanted Trump to win, in order to speed up the collapse of the USA – which he considers inevitable, but if Biden managed to delay it, “the Boomers” would escape their just desserts by being dead when it happened. The Vicar is just self-righteousness and hate all through. Remind you of anyone?
you know you got to give it to him he is consistent. he only ever has one thing to say and he goes on and on about it. You might think he was a monomaniac obsessed even about an imaginary anti-left-wing cabal or is it an anti- right-wing cabal. Like the current occupant crying about a conspiracy against him. Well it is a conspiracy but just not secret it is called politics and much of it is done in the open to convince a majority to vote for them and their policies.
You have to win in the public square mostly, you have to be engaged in the decisions that effect your life. If You do not like things the way they are then offer constructive change. Or just criticize everyone is corrupt and attempt to prevent any real change.
Or just earn your silver and keep spewing and go along with the way things are. like the prostitute who complains about her pimp but goes along when he calls.
uncle frogy
So, uh, is comic by that stonetoss nazi? Or just mocking his style?
@hoku
It’s based on @shencomix / owlturd (www.webtoons.com/en/slice-of-life/bluechair/owlturd-30-didnt-wanna-know/viewer?title_no=199&episode_no=324) via @queersatanic memes via who knows anymore
Vicar — You’re making me look like a paragon of reasonableness and sanity.
Did Vicar succeed in derailing yet another thread. Crap I just helped out with that by reflecting on it. Move along.
Hey, the other day the rich guy who lives across the street from me in turbo-liberal Seattle came by to demand we stop parking on some city property close to his house. He obviously never wears a mask, and he threatened to call the cops on us for illegal parking, because the guests to his constant house parties with music you can hear from a block away had to park slightly farther away.
Things that are legal right now: parking on city property.
Things that are not legal right now: house parties.
Now, I have no idea if this guy supported Trump or Biden, because they’re both candidates of the rich. He doesn’t have a BLM sign in his yard like half the people in the neighborhood, but then again loser me doesn’t either. And he’s an asshole, but some people on the internet say I am too. So maybe Trump? I have no idea.
But you know what? He sucks either way.
People who suck may support one party, and the party may be so vile that everyone who supports it sucks by definition, but they’d suck with or without that party to represent their disgusting views.
Welp sorry to derail the conversation about concentration camps.
@27
Well, did you call the cops on him? I can’t think of any reason not to, assuming they’d actually do anything about it.
On the subject of “herd immunity”, I just happened to read this news about the news vaccines: Doctors say CDC should warn people the side effects from Covid vaccine shots won’t be ‘a walk in the park’.
It sounds like getting this vaccine can feel like a pretty bad 24 hour flu (my description, not the article’s). And while that’s clearly better than exposing yourself to a 1% mortality risk, it might be really hard to get sufficient numbers of people to sign up for this to establish herd immunity.
I’m not naysaying the vaccine. It’s the most promising news I’ve heard yet. But it doesn’t sound like it will be happy or easy for everyone (even if the anti-vaxxers all relent somehow).
A vaccine and a day or two of feeling like crap, versus COVID and a near-certain chance of complications and/or death?
~rolls up sleeve~ I’ll take the vaxx, thanxx.
@28
Ah yes gunfire, just the thing I’d love to add to the neighbors’ loud COVID parties.
Maybe I am an asshole after all.