Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Part of what I really like about Boston's vax card requirement is that it keeps people who get all upset about vaccines out.

Yeah, oppositional is the wrong word. Assaholic is the right work. Fucking assholes.

Actually, calling them assholes would be better. It admits they have agency.

It's near impossible to change minds in this crazy polarized country, but from my experience with pains in the ass (and probably everyone else's), you've a slightly better chance if you call them assholes than if you call them mindless sheep with Pavlovian oppositional tendencies.

It's also worth noting, Libertarians call people sheep all the time and are pilloried for it. It's a joke, a meme. But when progressives do it, it's fine. ("Because, well, people are stupid sheep... But only when we say they're stupid sheep... Not when the libertarians say it.") Another double standard (one of a thousand) regularly found in current politics.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

And what other vaccinations are required? My state may vary from yours, but I know of no fed govt mandates for vaccines. It's optional. At the school board level, and perhaps the state or municipal level, yes, vaccines are mandated. If you don't get your kid vaccinated, the child can't attend or play sports.

There is a real minority of people who oppose vaccines generally, but they have not had a conservative valence, at least not until quite recently. A few years ago, lefty vaccine skeptics were in the news, and a number of prominent conservatives who have recently discovered principled opposition to vaccination said exactly the opposite a few years ago when some crunchy lefties were concerned about vaccines.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

And what other vaccinations are required? My state may vary from yours, but I know of no fed govt mandates for vaccines. It's optional. At the school board level, and perhaps the state or municipal level, yes, vaccines are mandated. If you don't get your kid vaccinated, the child can't attend or play sports.

I love your conceit that conservatives don't mind vaccine requirements, they're just all stoked up about federalism and the idea that the national government is taking a power that ought to be reserved to the states. And you say I'm tone deaf? Get real.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

And I love your use of the term "oppositional." As if people objecting to a mandate are all petulant little children. None may actually hew to the principle that people may choose for themselves (or be better incentivized at the municipal or state or school level).

A vaccine requirement reflects that you don't let people choose some things for themselves, like whether to get vaccinated, when their choices impose costs (deathly illness) on others. That's the principle. Almost no conservative is committed to the sort of extreme libertarianism that says that individual rights always trump the common good in the case of illness. As I was saying, most conservatives have never felt that way, and have recently discovered their "principles" because of the political moment. I'm old enough to remember when conservatives thought that people who might have been exposed to Ebola did not have civil rights and should be locked up to prevent exposure, which shows a strong commitment to contrary principles. Obama was the President then, and they were committed to saying he wasn't exercising enough federal power to protect everyone, not that those decisions should be made by local government or that people who might carry Ebola should just decide for themselves. Can you see why HPV is similar? It's not about the vaccination there.

In other words, "petulant little children" fits the bill much closer than your effort to put lipstick on a pig.

The inescapable corollary to comments like yours is that you, who assume you know what's best, are in a position to tell these people what to do.

No, that's not a corollary, logically, but it does tap into the aggrieved conservative mindset and the fact that the conservative "principles" are more about some sort of resentment about what the rest of the country might be thinking about them than any kind of abstract commitment to libertarian ideals.

In a pandemic, I'm not the best person to tell these people what to do. Public health professionals are, because they have training and expertise in this area. Similarly, when I board a passenger jet plane, I do not insist that every person on board has the independent right to determine safety protocols, but that does not mean that I think I'm the person to tell them what to do. I put on my seatbelt and listen to the crew's instructions, even if I think I think some of them are stupid.

I know what's best. But I don't think I should have the right to tell people what to do.

Yes, yes you do. If someone runs a red light and hits you, because they think they have the right to decide for themselves whether or not traffic laws apply to them, you will absolutely think they are a selfish idiot and an asshole, and should not be allowed to act that way without consequences.

But dipshits make comments like yours and turn it into an argument of "real Murica" versus "coastal elites."

And then any chance at compromise is lost.

What's the chance of compromise with people who are, fundamentally, oppositional? How does that work?

You trotted out Mike DeWine as a paragon of sensible leadership, in contrast to Democrats like Gavin Newsome. A Republican like DeWine gets to do shit without as many conservatives reacting oppositionally. I live in California. There are no moderate Republicans left -- the wing nuts have run them out of the party. Whatever Gavin Newsome does will be opposed by the conservatives here, and then thoughtful people like you will tut tut that Newsome's choices have made compromise impossible. Compromise is fundamentally impossible by people who form their "principles" by acting oppositional, and that is who most conservatives are now, on any issue that becomes politicized.

eta: BTW, I understand your wistful desire for some sort of compromise, that everybody just find a way to get along. That would be awesome. The problem is the significant minority of the population that forms their political views oppositionally, not those of us who point it out. The throughline of conservatism is greivance and trolling libs.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

We have several businesses - for some reason described in the press as "restaurants" - suing the city over it's vaccine or test requirement. It definitely makes me more likely to dine in, but then again, I'm not dining, so hard to say what the net impact on business is.

One of the "restaurants" is a "sports" bar connected to a strip club that's owned by the local mogul of such establishments. I can image it is costing his other businesses.

Earlier in the pandemic, the owner of a sushi place we used to go to sometimes was on the local news complaining about restrictions on dining in person at restaurants, and complaining about why the hospitals weren't doing a better job of increasing ICU capacity and staffing up. I understand why he wants to keep his business open, but at bottom it is an attitude of pure selfishness and indifference to whether other people get sick, and I'm really tired of people trying to dress that shit up as if there were some higher principle involved.

As John Kenneth Galbraith said, the modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Earlier in the pandemic, the owner of a sushi place we used to go to sometimes was on the local news complaining about restrictions on dining in person at restaurants, and complaining about why the hospitals weren't doing a better job of increasing ICU capacity and staffing up. I understand why he wants to keep his business open, but at bottom it is an attitude of pure selfishness and indifference to whether other people get sick, and I'm really tired of people trying to dress that shit up as if there were some higher principle involved.

As John Kenneth Galbraith said, the modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

And you’re engaged in Utopianism.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Conservatives are violently opposed to COVID vaccination requirements, but don't have a problem with other vaccination requirements. There's no principle involved. It's just oppositional behavior.

The city of Detroit, which voted 97% for Biden, has a 40% vaccine rate. Stop pretending it is only Trumpers.

It is a foul truth but people of color are very vaccine resistant. I believe everywhere, not just south of 8 Mile Road.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

And you’re engaged in Utopianism.

A jaded, world-weary fellow like you needs to call other people idealists.

The Galbraith quote didn't there. I don't know that the sushi shop owner is a conservative at all. He's just behaving selfishly.

And "selfish" is not the best description of the conservatives who have decided that having to wear masks or get vaccinated is an intolerable threat to civil liberties they hadn't thought about a few years ago -- the point is that they way they define their self-interest is malleable, not a simple fact in the way that an economist would think, but a posture they'll change for other reasons.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

The city of Detroit, which voted 97% for Biden, gas a 40% vaccine rate. Stop pretending it is only Trumpers.

It is a foul truth but people of color are very vaccine resistant.

I certainly don't think it's only Trumpers who are reluctant to get vaccinated. Try reading harder. There are a lot of people who are uncomfortable about it. The ones who are pretending that it is some sort of profound civil rights issue are, for the most part, conservatives who did not feel that way about vaccines until the last two years.

And then there's Sebby, who apparently has no problem with the infringement on his freedoms so long as his municipal government or school district is requiring vaccination, but sees an intolerable threat to his conception of federalism if the national government should do the same thing.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I certainly don't think it's only Trumpers who are reluctant to get vaccinated. Try reading harder. There are a lot of people who are uncomfortable about it. The ones who are pretending that it is some sort of profound civil rights issue are, for the most part, conservatives who did not feel that way about vaccines until the last two years.

And then there's Sebby, who apparently has no problem with the infringement on his freedoms so long as his municipal government or school district is requiring vaccination, but sees an intolerable threat to his conception of federalism if the national government should do the same thing.

It’s pretty to think the “why” someone isn’t vaccinated matters, especially to a blog obsessive. But Covid doesn’t care why someone isn’t vaccinated.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

It’s pretty to think the “why” someone isn’t vaccinated matters, especially to a blog obsessive. But Covid doesn’t care why someone isn’t vaccinated.

That's funny, I could say something similar about conservatives. It's pretty to think that the elaborate principles trotted out to explain conservatives' behavior matter, but they don't. The point is, they are just acting oppositionally, and the make-believe principles are beside the point. It's turtles all the way down.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

That's funny, I could say something similar about conservatives. It's pretty to think that the elaborate principles trotted out to explain conservatives' behavior matter, but they don't. The point is, they are just acting oppositionally, and the make-believe principles are beside the point. It's turtles all the way down.

I’m a conservative? Sad. Read harder.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

The city of Detroit, which voted 97% for Biden, has a 40% vaccine rate. Stop pretending it is only Trumpers.

It is a foul truth but people of color are very vaccine resistant. I believe everywhere, not just south of 8 Mile Road.

Yeah, there is resistance in all kinds of places, the Trumpers just get the biggest megaphone for it.

Some of Detroit is certainly vaccine resistance, but might some of it be related to access or fear of access? Especially among the undocumented or recently documented, there is a lot of fear of accessing services.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

I’m a conservative? Sad. Read harder.

I like having you around to protect me from the neoliberal label. There are plenty of progressives who like to throw the neoliberal insult at me, but I can always say, no, you mean Hank, next to him I'm right there in the trenches next to you, AOC, and that schmuck Bernie. Hank's the real neo-liberal.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Yeah, there is resistance in all kinds of places, the Trumpers just get the biggest megaphone for it.

Some of Detroit is certainly vaccine resistance, but might some of it be related to access or fear of access? Especially among the undocumented or recently documented, there is a lot of fear of accessing services.

You can walk into pretty much any drug store and get it, so it isn’t access. And all resistance is fear; thinking Bill Gates puts chips in it is fear. Undocumented fear might explain some, but Detroit is heavy majority African American. For the total number to be so low, the % of vaxxed black people has to be quite low. They’re citizens.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

I’m a conservative? Sad. Read harder.

I didn't say that, Sparky. Sad, indeed.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

You can walk into pretty much any drug store and get it, so it isn’t access.

As long as you have time to wait. And can get off from work to get it or if you have a reaction to it. Access isn't just the shot.