Jeet Heer's piece on the military vs GOP leaves out one very important piece, which is the long-term Dominionist drive to insert and encourage rightwing Christian fundamentalist fanatics in the military. They are not content to "cow the military and make it more obedient".
I have just heard that an extended family member of my wife in Arkansas is in hospital with Covid. He is old and disabled. His daughter doesn't believe Covid is real and prevented him from being vaccinated when he wanted it. Now he is on a ventilator. Despite the personal experience, the daughter still is in denial about Covid. This is an anecdotal example that also supports the more general reporting of some getting vaccinations secretly in defiance of pressure from family members.
"There is an ecological effect: something in the air and the water and the culture that makes Trump voters in places where they are rare more likely to get vaccinated, and Biden voters in places where they are rare less likely to get vaccinated."
Possibly environmental, but it is the social environment, I suspect. A quick take:
There was a study not that long ago (no citation, unfortunately) about the effects of Fox News on the public. If I recall correctly, one result was that an increased presence/viewership for Fox tended to increase radical ideas among the population - including among the local population who did not watch.
This makes sense when one bears in mind that something on the order of 80% of the population pays little or no attention to politics or real news. Given that such people don't read or watch news, how do they form their beliefs about the world? It would seem that this is largely on the basis of what the rest of their community thinks. That is, the politically-engaged (and they may be left or right) create the background information ("what everybody knows") for their community.
Part of the increased vaccine hesitancy in deep red areas, is fear of losing social status if your peers discover you were so cowardly as to take the shot. Increasing numbers of people getting the shot are requesting that it be kept secret.
Jeet Heer's piece on the military vs GOP leaves out one very important piece, which is the long-term Dominionist drive to insert and encourage rightwing Christian fundamentalist fanatics in the military. They are not content to "cow the military and make it more obedient".
I have just heard that an extended family member of my wife in Arkansas is in hospital with Covid. He is old and disabled. His daughter doesn't believe Covid is real and prevented him from being vaccinated when he wanted it. Now he is on a ventilator. Despite the personal experience, the daughter still is in denial about Covid. This is an anecdotal example that also supports the more general reporting of some getting vaccinations secretly in defiance of pressure from family members.
"There is an ecological effect: something in the air and the water and the culture that makes Trump voters in places where they are rare more likely to get vaccinated, and Biden voters in places where they are rare less likely to get vaccinated."
Possibly environmental, but it is the social environment, I suspect. A quick take:
There was a study not that long ago (no citation, unfortunately) about the effects of Fox News on the public. If I recall correctly, one result was that an increased presence/viewership for Fox tended to increase radical ideas among the population - including among the local population who did not watch.
This makes sense when one bears in mind that something on the order of 80% of the population pays little or no attention to politics or real news. Given that such people don't read or watch news, how do they form their beliefs about the world? It would seem that this is largely on the basis of what the rest of their community thinks. That is, the politically-engaged (and they may be left or right) create the background information ("what everybody knows") for their community.
Part of the increased vaccine hesitancy in deep red areas, is fear of losing social status if your peers discover you were so cowardly as to take the shot. Increasing numbers of people getting the shot are requesting that it be kept secret.