Right wing nuts, and Michigan Militia crazies prove they're a threat to the common good
"All I keep hearing is that the curve is flattening, the curve is flattening. So that may be true but all the ICUs are still full. The sickest are still there. People are waiting to be intubated. We're full we can't handle anything more. We can't open this country. If you want to live you stay home. My God, don't open up this country. It needs to be closed until at least June."
- Amy Pacholk, Trauma Nurse, Stony Brook University Hospital, New York
A friend of ours in Barbados , watching the spectacle of loud Trump-tard loons on CNN, put it succinctly: "If Trump rallies are off limits now, they also ought to be in any mini -form with all these nuts going off about their 'rights' in the state capitols! The majority shouldn't have to put up with this every day!"
She is, of course, totally correct. Why are we, the silent majority following the laws and orders to stay in place - to protect the greater good from this rampaging virus- being held hostage by a minority faction of squawking nuts? Why are these totally partisan protests allowed in any case when they risk the health and welfare of the greater community, including elderly people and those with compromised immune systems? Also, why are these obviously political protests allowed to go on when across the globe all other protests have been halted out of "an abundance of caution"? Those include climate protests- organized by Greta Thunberg- leading up to Earth Day Wednesday. The very fact this minority of screeching fake patriots are allowed to hog the national TV spotlight is bad enough, given it skews perceptions to make it look like the pro-Trump nuts are in the national majority. They are not! (WSJ, today, 'Most Americans Fear Opening Too Early', p. A4)
Further, when one sees they aren't even practicing social distancing then they become a dire threat as super spreaders to the whole state or states. This is even as one read today's headline in the conservative Colorado Springs Gazette, "Coronavirus now leading cause of death in Colorado."
So hey, I don't give a good goddamn about your supposed "personal rights" or individual "liberties" - which stop when your virus spreads to my face or loved ones' noses. So you are out of bounds with these demonstrations, and it's time for the gubernators to shut them down. By use of sweet reason and persuasion, if possible, else deploying the National Guard. The time for bullshit and folly has to end, especially as Colorado now has 9,730 cases.
Am I being too extreme here in endorsing a hard nosed approach? Not at all. 19th century Utilitarian moral philosopher John Stuart Mill posited that when individuals contemplated actions that affected only themselves then a strong case existed that they be allowed to choose for themselves. This is even if they ended up acting in ways deemed by reasonable observers to be self-destructive. So, a drunken imbecile has every right to ruin his own life if he wants, just as the rolling fringe Trump rally jackasses have the right to get sick- on their own time and dime.
However, when an individual's (or group's) actions have the potential for substantial negative effects on others, Mill asserts that strong intervention is justified in principle and may be advisable in practice. Thus, the Trump rolling rally fools have every right to risk their own illness, but not spreading it to the vulnerable citizens in their states-- by their reckless actions, stupidity.
Anyway, as we watched the wingnuts gathered Sunday in Denver, "creating a cacophony and circus with cowboys on horseback, bullhorns and car horns" (as reported in the Post) it was apparent their moorings to any sanity had been dissolved. Probably from excessive exposure to the Reich media looneytunes like Rush Limbaugh, Hannity and the rest of the FOX News stable of know nothings.
Watching the ABC News coverage of the Denver display Janice caught one nitwit holding a sign reading:
"Give me Liberty - Or give me COVID -19!"
To which Janice instantly shouted, "Give that idiot COVID -19! And let him choke on his own snot like Trump!"
Ok, you go, girl! Took the words right out of my mouth. Yet another parade of forlorn fools and brainless imps - who fancied themselves authentic individuals (as opposed to puppets controlled by Hannity, Limbaugh and the DeVos family) - made other asinine remarks or held imbecilic signs. These included bollocks like: "My Constitutional Rights Trump Your Fear!" Uh, no, asshole, you have NO constitutional right to become a "Typhoid Mary" and spread a deadly pathogen by your fucking, self-absorbed actions. Got that?
Other signs and comments could be read in today's Denver Post, i.e. signs such as:
"Death is a part of life!"
Suffocating as your lungs fill with fluids and the ER nurse can't get the ventilator tube down your swollen windpipe? I don't think so.
"Don't tread on me!"
Mary Conley of Jefferson County, held a home made sign that read,
- “Trust the people,”
Not if they're certified morons, Mary, I prefer to trust science, i.e. the epidemiologists.
Then there was Jim Fenimore, of Colorado Springs, who said he attended because he "believes the drastic response to the coronavirus pandemic has been ginned up as a political tool, one intended to make the economy crash and subsequently cause Trump to lose support and be ousted from office."
In other words, parroting the usual regurgitated slop created by the Right wing media machine. The numskull went on to spout
“I don’t want to see anyone die, but there are far more deaths for other reasons.”
Which idiotic argument I already skewered in my Saturday post, noting those other reasons don't include transmissible aspects and exponential growth - to the point of overwhelming hospitals and staff. Fenimore's estimated IQ? Maybe 75.
Many protesters spoke of "individual liberty" and suggested that the state’s stay-at-home order "violated their constitutional rights". Clearly they haven't really read or studied that document. They also carried signs that read, “Facts not fear” and “More freedom, less tyranny.” Each loaded with irony in its respective context but I doubt any of these clowns would get it.
A "brilliant" Millennial, Angie Conde, when asked for her opinion, blabbed:
"I just feel like they are making too big of a thing out of this virus,”
On what basis do you arrive at that conclusion, Angie? From the last Rush Limbaugh rant? Have you even watched the scenes of the patients inundating ERs? How about the crematoriums now being overworked, with hundreds of bodies still to be burned piling up? As in Brooklyn Borough. Or do you regard those as 'fake news'? Estimated IQ? 60.
None of these boisterous buffoons waving American flags, chanting "USA! USA! USA!" - like they're in an Olympic stadium, merit being referred to as citizens. How could they be? A citizen, after all, doesn't militate against the interests of fellow citizens to spread deadly disease. Thomas Jefferson in his Notes on Virginia perfectly defined the warp and woof of the citizen when he wrote:
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories and to render them safe their minds must be improved."
Translated, that means NO citizen must be so bereft of critical thought and education that he simply trusts a leader, say like Donald Trump. If so, the government that is supposed to involve all of us, degenerates - as we have seen with this one- devolving into factionalism - splitting people apart, forcing states to fight each other for scarce medical supplies etc., the abuse of authority and outright propaganda. (Trump's daily "briefings") See e.g.
Charles M. Blow
Stop Airing Trump’s Briefings!
Further, the only way citizens can be rendered safe from these adverse effects is if their minds are improved. They cannot be if they swallow wholesale the lies hurled out by the likes of FOX News or Limbaugh. Oh, and believing codswallop like "making too much of this virus" - which a majority of these imbeciles still believe is no different from the flu. (Even as Colorado now reports the highest death rates from COVID-19, i.e. beyond any other causes)
Anyway, among the items learned over the weekend was that former Right wing talk radio shock jock Michael Savage has now (kind of) joined the good guys. At least in terms of calling out the feckless liars and propagandists spreading the crap that the protesting morons are swallowing.
According to the Denver Post piece ('Michael Savage Slams Right Wing Media', p. 7A):
"Savage's views are striking departure from the accepted version of events among Trump's loyalists in the media, who have made a concerted effort to downplay the pandemic and have helped fuel support for protesters against stay-at-home orders in states such as Michigan."
Adding:
"Savage has attacked the credibility of the conservative media, attacked its biggest stars of being too rote and unthinking in their views of the president, and demanded they be held accountable for misleading millions of Americans."
Well, about damned time that someone from outside the "liberal media" and the liberal cognoscenti handled this job. Especially powerful was when Savage said (ibid.):
"We're living in a terrible time in America when truth has died."
No argument, there. It's been dead since Trump eked his way into office using the Electoral College. In respect of the way Trump's ass kissers invariably attack the Left over "fake news", Savage said: 'This is crazy!"
But Michael Savage's contempt has been especially reserved for the two top mind vomit peddlers, Hannity and Limbaugh, as when he warned the lockdown protesters who've been gobbling their effluent:
"Do you understand the danger you're in by listening to these people and just following them blindly over a cliff?"
Well, truth be told, they don't because none of them possess the least bit of critical thinking skills. They likely don't even know what the term means. When a few of them were interviewed at the Denver lockdown protest, their responses disclosed a mean IQ of maybe 90, if that - and zero critical thought. What else can you infer from answers such as we've read?
Though Savage does appear to have upped his own mental appreciation for the moment, he still exhibits blind spots, or maybe a residue of Right wing rubbish. That is since - according to the pieces - he still believes the current lockdowns are a "threat to individual liberty", which they emphatically are not. No one is being locked down as in incarcerated - since people can still go to the grocery and pharmacy. Nor is anyone having to wear an ankle bracelet to the best of my knowledge. Further the American version is partial only, different regions - different rules- while in Barbados for example there is a universal 24 hour a day lockdown. So it is the epitome of exaggerated rhetoric to claim a "loss of individual liberty". What it is, in fact, is using the only weapon we have against this vicious virus given there is no vaccine yet, and no treatment.
The way a mature American needs to look at this lockdown is to be man enough, big enough, citizen enough, to help our medical heroes so their ICUs and hospitals are not overrun. And comparatively speaking, keeping your ass quiet at home 12 hours a day is nothing, nada, compared to doctors and nurses selflessly toiling 12-15 hours a day to save lives.
Even as the right wing nuts, cranks, Trumpie assholes and their ilk marched around the nation, we also learned Bill Gates has now been targeted by the QAnon fruitcakes and Reich media blowhards. Evidently this began when a 2015 video of Gates surfaced in which he opined that the "greatest threat to humanity was not nuclear war but an infectious virus."
Well, the nuts took this to heart, and created a conspiracy ideation from it (I refuse to dignify it using the term "theory") Indeed, since the resurfacing of the video Gates has 'become the star of an explosion" of such ideations, pertaining to the coronavirus outbreak. As the Post account notes (April 19, p. 2A):
"In post on Youtube, Facebook and Twitter, he is being portrayed as the creator of COVID-19, so as to profit from a vaccine".
Of course, if any of these simpletons knew anything or read even a bit of serious news or research, they'd know that was impossible. That is given that the examination of the genome of the virus discloses it could not have had an artificial (i.e. man-made) origin. But, of course, most of these clowns would no doubt call that "fake news" even the dolts swallow Limbaugh's claim that COVID-19 refer to "the 19th coronavirus of its type". As opposed to the actual definition, referring to the year (2019) that the new virus (SARS- COV-2) erupted.
Another bunch of conspiracy morons have spread nonsense that Gates is "using COVID-19 as part of a dastardly plot to cull the global population".
No, folks, you cannot make this shit up. This is how low the IQs of one segment of the population have fallen. And look, I have no problem if they want to share this B.S. amongst themselves. But no more going out into the streets, blowing horns, waving flags, and threatening the lives of the silent majority - the 2 out of 3 Americans who want no part of opening early. It's time now the needs and welfare of the many outweigh the desires of the minority.
More collectively organized societies (like Barbados) get that, and it's time ours did too especially when we are in a similar war mode - in terms of mobilizing critical resources- especially medical equipment. In this regard I am always reminded of my folks' sacrifices during World War II. Did they bitch, protest and cry because they had to adhere to gas and food rationing and state rules, curfews? Of course not, because they put on their 'big boy' pants and understood they were all in that great moment together, to subdue a common foe. We can do less now. Less thought of "me", much more of "WE".
The bottom line: Every manjack has to understand that the virus will determine the timeline of when to return to business as usual- not impatient twerps unable to tolerate any more social lockdown.
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