How we got here:
Cool country you’ve got there. Would be a shame if someone invented a website for ranking hot girls on campus and your mom used it to learn how to poison herself with horse paste.
An accurate historical summary
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
F***book is a disease.
Facebook is like “facepalm”, only with a BOOK.
Twitface also too.
The antivaxxers have been getting more and more violent. There have been quite a few attacks on vaccine provider centers lately.
and
The vaccine providers and health care workers are saving lives and keeping people healthy. The Covid-19 deniers/antivaxxers are killing themselves and other people by the tens of thousands.
What is also notable about these attacks is the police response. There isn’t any. The police are almost always nowhere and do nothing. I’m not sure why but it could well be that a lot of the police sympathize with the Covid-19 virus deniers/antivaxxers.
Anti vaxxers have even shown up in Queens . In NYC! Where we had bodies stacked in tractor trailers! I can’t even 🤷🏽♀️. Started to tell them to stop spreading their lies but thought better of it as I was on my way home from work and I was tired . Mostly tired of anti vaxxer BS . So I just mentioned loudly that I had already taken the vaccine and had no problems and kept walking
There’s a significant segment of the American populace that has gone over the edge, goaded on by politicians, preachers, and an assortment of other grifters. In the last 24 hours, the Supreme Court declined to review the Texas abortion restrictions. The Texas legislature passed draconian voter restrictions. A judge in Ohio (I think) ordered a doctor to treat a patient for COVID with Ivermectin because his wife wanted it. You’ve got people screaming at each other over vaccinations and wearing masks to combat a deadly pandemic. Rep. Cawthorn is talks of bloodshed, again. Rep. McCarthy and Sen. McConnell hypocritically fault Pres. Biden for the exit from Afghanistan. Meanwhile, in California we could end up with a lunatic running the state instead of a capable, though faulty, career politician.
No wonder I laid awake much of last night in despair.
@3: It’s not that the police sympathize with the anti-vaxxers so much that the police frequently are anti-vaxxer.
I’ve been writing fiction on the side since childhood. Over the years, I’ve developed a detailed and lively paracosm that, originally, was my escape from the many curve-balls we all face in life. Now, in my 60s, I practically live there.
The gig is up, folks. Fascism lies just around the bend thanks to disinformation and the facile manufacture of contempt through tools like facebook.
The old system needs to be completely discredited before real change is possible.
As for the supreme court, once it has been discredited as a partisan institution it will no longer be venerated. Civil disobedience will play a big part in taking back justice.
@5 I have noticed on faceache that amuricans ,well some of them react violently to the slightest criticism of the land of the free .
Once they find out that you are British or European ,the standard retort is that if it wasn’t for America ,we would all be speaking German .
I reply that the Dutch once owned New York ,and if the British hadn’t taken it off them it would still be named New Amsterdam ,and they would be speaking Dutch .
I had to go a read The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats just now to find my thoughts and feelings about what is happening.
The poem was written in 1919 after the”Great War” and history does have a partial answer to the question at the end. I hope as with many others that the answer this time will be somewhat different.
davidc1 @ 9
…and a big chunk to the south of New Amsterdam would be speaking Swedish and have free health care!
This should make PZ happy.
The schools just started up and already in Texas and other places, teachers are ending up dead from the Covid-19 virus. The schools are also closing down due to outbreaks.
This article says it is not known if they were vaccinated.
Which almost always means they were not.
unclefrogy@10,
Worth noting that W.B.Yeats was a fascist.
birgirjohansson@11,
“New Sweden” actually began as a scam set up by renegade Dutch exploiting the Swedish flag to evade the monopoly of the Dutch West India Company. The Dutch investors did sell out to Swedes and the Swedish crown when they failed to make a profit, but colonist numbers never exceeded a few hundred before the Dutch governor of New Netherland appeared with 7 warships and took over in 1655. Of course the Dutch themselves were then displaced by the English by 1675.