Reading Romans in the land of the bleach-drinkers.

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. ~Romans 1:21-23

I've been seeing this Tweet shared around for the past couple days. Some yahoo saying they basically don't trust anything but Trump and their fellow Trump Supporters. Everything else is "Communism" never mind that Communism has been a dead philosophy for 30 years. It's either Donald Trump, or Zombie Karl Marx, yo!

Conservatism really is dead. It died of stupidity.

Apparently, these fucking people would rather Vape bleach and poison themselves than just do what everybody else is doing and socially distance while waiting this thing out...because Trump said so.

I mean, seriously, haven't these people ever read the warning labels that have been on this stuff basically forever?

Are these people so desperate for some kind of magic shortcut to life, that they'd basically kill themselves for no benefit, using things that have been known to be hazardous materials since...well, forever?

I work in food service, haven't any of these people ever had a chemical safety training? Can't they read a goddamned warning label? What must it be like, to be so desperate to believe in something that you would kill yourself doing something that any properly-educated five year-old kid knows not to do?!

And then today, Trump walks the shit back, trying to claim that he was being "Sarcastic." He wasn't. I saw the video, he was dead serious when he said that. Not just dead serious, but like many people with personality disorders, Trump doesn't really seem to have that much of a sense of humor or a functional understanding of social graces or truth in order to be sarcastic in the first place. He lacks the empathy to be funny, this is a common issue among people with personality disorders.

And on top of that, Trump's base is full of dumb ass rocks-in-their-heads idiots who don't understand sarcasm or much of anything else either.

And if you don't think Trump knows that, you have another thing coming. He banks on the cult-like following along and the stupidity as the basis for his political strategy to start with. It's the while basis of Trumpism. If people were intelligent enough to read a warning label, apparently, or could grasp ideas like that it's wrong to be a racist or to hate people just because they disagree with you or because they tell you facts instead of what you want to hear, we wouldn't be in this mess.

I'm sorry, maybe it's just me but I think it should be a crime to improperly educate people or to teach false doctrines and I think lying, above a certain level, needs to become a legally actionable offense. Why? Because people are building their entire identities and lives around these lies, they believe the lie more than they would ever believe in the truth because the lie confirms their biases and is what they want to hear in the first place.

It's getting so bad that people would rather poison themselves than simply accept what is true, if what is true does not confirm their biases or fit with what they already want to do anyway. I mean, the cleverest devil in the pits of hell couldn't have thought this one up!

Get people to drink bleach because their political idol says that, rather than modern medicine, will cure them. Thus getting people to kill themselves even though warning labels saying "Harmful or fatal if swallowed" have been on this stuff forever. Get them to kill themselves, even though the vast majority of these people believe suicide is a sin and they'll go to hell for doing it. All because of Donald fucking Trump. Does that sum things up adequately?

And then the minute it doesn't work out the way they thought it would, every last one of these lying sons of bitches turns around and denies that Trump ever said it, even though we all have the comments on video. I mean, seriously, do these people think that everybody is stupid, or just as malicious as they are?

Well, Okay, maybe they got the stupid part right, at least among their own followers.

There comes a point where foolishness and stupidity become a danger to civilization. I think we're there. This kind of crap needs to stop, because while it's tempting in these cases to let natural selection take its course, it's also immoral, and hospitals and morgues are already overwhelmed. If you can't look at this situation and think "Jesus, that's messed up" I strongly suggest you go home and rethink your life. We have thousands of people who are dumb enough that they could kill or severely injure themselves, and we have a president who is encouraging this, because he thinks he'll get something out of his own followers dying off, I guess.

This entire situation is not sustainable, and will result in mass death on top of the virus already causing mass death if we aren't real damn careful. Maybe 40 years of substandard education wasn't a good idea? Maybe allowing the Republican Party to turn into a cult was a bad idea?

Republicans are going to kill off their own followers if we let them, because Trump is an idiot and they're too afraid or spellbound to stand up and say what is true.

Roughly a third of Americans are Republicans or Trump Supporters at this point. Roughly a quarter of Americans and certainly a majority of Republicans trust Trump more than they trust what they can see with their own eyes or hear with their own ears.

This country has a population of around 330 million people.

Do you think this country could survive suffering 80 million deaths?

Asking for the rest of us.

Why? Because this is going to become more than a merely academic question at the rate we're going. We need to stop doing this shit to ourselves.