12 Comments

"What is the psychic reward for being an easily grifted moron here?" Read Jonathan Metzl's "Dying of Whiteness." People are willing to die (or kill) in the name of social solidarity. (It's sometimes called "patriotism.") And behavior gets particularly janky when the solidarity is constructed from the negation of others' norms. If the wimmins, Jews, and dusky folk believe in public health …

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it's a slippery slope from voting for Trump to then becoming an anti-vaxxer. Both require a suspension of disbelief, which is itself a form of belief. And people don't like it when their beliefs are challenged.

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Touché...

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I'm old enough to remember getting the Salk and Sabin vaccines. I have a smallpox vaccine scar. I suffered terribly from measles and especially chicken pox. And of course I was as close to the front of the line as I could get for the Covid vaccine. I truly do not understand anti-vaxxers.

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Of course this is the secret strategy of the Dems. It will really pay off big time at the next census (If we make it that far). Now if I can only figure out how to stop Adam Schiff from sending me five emails every day.

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Only five! Lucky! Lol.

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The "reward," if you want to call it that, for Republicans is, you don't have to walk around feeling like you are different from everyone around you.

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"Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?"

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Why not ask what the payoff is to the Burn It All Down Party (before DonJr’s quote, the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party and fka the MAGA Party) from operationalizing Bannon’s Flood The Zone With Shit?

As many have said it’s not just to attack Doctors, or Climatologists or Universities or Newsmedia or Democrats

But the idea that anything matters besides who can shout loudest and cite magical incantations to keep witches away

You are quite right in guessing the mere tens or hundreds of millions isn’t enough to draw enough investment in propaganda & political operatives

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I'm waiting for some smart doctoral student to take an equation like Brad's and use it to figure out how much wealth was transferred to beneficiaries earlier than expected when parents died in their 70s and 80s rather than in their 90s. Homes, businesses and farms that would have been liquidated to pay for a decade or two of assisted living and nursing care instead got transferred to the next generation and created how much?? of an increase in wealth for those in their 50s who otherwise would have seen a more mild increase in their wealth much later in life. Not suggesting they were antivax to "throw momma from the train" but the fact this country requires many of its elderly to sell their assets to pay for elder care creates an interesting comparison of vaccine rates with nations where such coverage is part of a national health plan.

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Trump has ADHD and can barely read. He has learned to overcompensate by being a great talker and charlatan

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If you feel inferior and cannot win ethically, lying and cheating is justified to win

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