I keep seeing stuff like this lately.
Videos.
People quitting their jobs, immolating careers and lives because their belief in conspiracy theories, their politics, or sheer desire to make a martyr of themselves in the neighborhood Facebook group is more important than life itself.
Because every last one of these idiots, functionally, is hoping to get...and ultimately cash in on...their 15 minutes of cheap internet fame or something something Gazpacho.
I'm sorry, but I don't get this and I never will.
The ones I've personally seen thus far are cops, nurses, a couple of Air National Guard enlisted troops. You know, people who don't really have the money to just up and quit (or literally can't quit in the case of military personnel, who will face administrative separation) or much to fall back on, or whatever and they sure as all FUCK aren't likely to find jobs in their field or where they're going to make comparable money that don't have a vaccination requirement at this point.
I gather that the actual percentage rate of people doing this is rather low, in most professional jobs.
On the other hand, where I used to work it's a bit higher, probably around 25% or so of the workforce, enough that the tribal council was afraid to institute a vaccine mandate...and since I left the casino has reintroduced a mask mandate, but only for employees.
I don't know if anybody has left in some grandstanding fashion over that. I do know a couple people said they were going to.
These people are prolonging the pandemic, not only for themselves but for the rest of us too.
Because Anti-vax bullshit has been subsumed into the Republican Party, because Anti-Vax bullshit has effectively replaced and almost completely supplanted Christianity for the basis of End Times conspiracy theory. Because people are fucking stupid, and in a lot of cases being told, straight up, that they have to give a shit about other people for the first time in their fucking lives.
And a lot of these people just don't want to. They don't care, they don't have it in them. Like that picture of the hand-painted sign my cousin sent me from Afghanistan all those years ago "America is not at war. The Marine Corps is at war, America is at the mall."
Does it ever cross anybody's mind that if these people can't handle dealing with a virus as a person who's a part of civilization...they wouldn't be able to handle anything else, either?
And too many people are just fine with that, for the worst reasons.
Asking selfish bastards to care about other people, like asking cowardly shits to be brave, probably isn't going to work.
Does it not occur to the people who've ginned this crap up and prolonged it, that this would also apply to any crisis where the threat was actual multi-cellular organisms, like other people?
Somebody who spends their life living in fear, especially of imaginary things or of things that are peripheral to life like loss of status isn't going to be able to be brave and pick up a weapon to go out and fight Russian soldiers or a zombie horde.
People who cannot react rationally, or who default to religious stupidity aren't going to do the proper things in the face of any threat that doesn't fall within some extremely narrow parameters, which are simply not based on reality to start with. You're not going to be invaded by the Federal Government or your own neighbors, the liberals down the street are highly unlikely to come to your door with some plant-based casserole and tell you that you have to eat it...
And if they did, this is America. You're damned well free to slam the door in their face and tell them to fuck off, as I've done with many a Christian door-to-door Evangelist.
That is, when I wasn't in the mood to reel them in by debate and then drive them off with facts...and that goes all the way back to when I was a Christian myself. You'd be amazed at how many Baptists and Pentecostals suddenly turn deafer than a Blaze ferret when you say the words "No thanks, I already go to church."
But I digress...
People who fearfully act like just the fact that people are free to have different beliefs or that they might have to wear a mask when they go to the store means that somebody is going to come and take away their Jesus and make them celebrate Winter Solstice instead of Christmas aren't going to all the sudden become brave defenders of freedom when they're faced with the very real threat of a deadly virus or men with guns. They're going to act out stupidly, or cower and piss themselves.
Personally, I've gotten a good couple dozen vaccines in this life. COVID-19 vaccine wasn't any different, except that the second shot screwed me up worse for a couple hours than flu shots did when I've had to get them.
So...why the hell do so many people think this one is different?
You can usually figure out why they think it's different from whatever bullshit excuses they use.
But most of the time it basically boils down to "Getting vaccinated is something liberals (or mainstream conservatives) do and they don't want to be seen doing the same thing."
Like these fucking people, who are usually white and privileged to some degree, think they're some kind of counter-culture whatever or some shit. Come on, people, get over yourselves.
But ya know, I had a disturbing thought earlier tonight...
Lately I've been working my way back through the Liberation Trilogy, by Rick Atkinson...a series of books about the American role in World War II in Africa and Europe that ran from 2002 to 2013. I bought the first one, An Army At Dawn, for my Grandpa for Christmas in 2002, and the second, The Day Of Battle, for the same reason in 2007. The last of the three, Guns At Last Light, was not published until 2013, two years after my Grandpa died. So I got it for myself and read it in his memory...and when the time came I donated it (and the other two books in the series as well, as I ended up with my Grandpa's books the next year) to the tribal veterans of the Ogitchedaw Warrior Society who then seconded the books to the tribal library when whichever of the guys wanted to read them were done. I think my Grandpa would've approved of that.
Because my Grandpa gave a shit about other people.
Anyway, excuse the digression...again.
Or not.
The truth is, had America had the same mentality in 1941 that it does in 2021 we'd all be speaking either German or Japanese...that is, whatever of us had ancestors that were allowed to continue to exist after we lost...and there would be no America anymore.
You know that scene from The Man In The High Castle with the Yamato and a Japanese battlegroup sailing under the Golden Gate bridge? Yeah, that. Think about that for a second.
More to the point, I think if the Chinese or the Russians or Radical Islam or whatever invaded the United States or if we got into another major world-level conflict somehow, yes I absolutely think that the government and the military would fight, probably well, probably effectively...but I think there would be a substantial fifth column of our own people willing to sell out America and bow down to the enemy simply because the collective effort of national defense would be beyond them...or worse, there would be those who would do so for their own profit, or simply to hurt their fellow citizens that they don't like.
Because one hell of a lot of Americans have turned anti-American, and it's usually the ones who bray like jackasses about loving America the most.
Either way, we would end up a smaller, divided country because of it, and it'll be the same way because of conspiracy theories, political fuckery and the simple fact that people can't even work it up to stand up against a damn virus.
And the only people who will benefit from this are America's enemies, both foreign and domestic.
To which at this point must be added the Republican Party and I say that as a former Republican.
We are a Nation At Dusk because too many people cannot face facts and reality or handle crises intelligently, because too many people embrace an ideology of self and selfishness that place's Man's self-fulfillment as the highest good in his life. Because for too many people, collective effort and giving a shit about their fellow humans feels like treason...to what, I'll admit I do not know.
"Owning The Libs" AKA being a tedious, tiresome jackass doesn't count as an ideology. It eventually gets you punched in the mouth. Some of us are getting real damn tired of this horse shit. Real damn tired. Anybody fourteen years old or older should damn well know better than to act like that.
And I say that as somebody who used to be a Christian and a conservative, who was one for three quarters of his life, who absolutely made decisions ranging from career choices to speech class topics based on those beliefs.
But you know what didn't rate as a "belief?"
Giving a shit about other people.
Public health.
Protecting my own goddamned life.
All those freedoms and rights these people crow about as they're being escorted off the property from the job they got fired from for not getting vaccinated?
They don't mean shit if you're dead.
More to the point from a Christian perspective, plenty of people have effectively wagered their Eternal Souls on...conspiracy theories? Really?
The part of my brain that remembers being a theologically conservative Christian recoils in horror at that thought in particular.
And while you're at it, you might want to ask yourself who is it that's egging this crap on? Who wants you dead, and for what?
Trust me, whatever their faults, it ain't the "Liberals" either real or imagined.
It's the same wealthy assholes who are usually responsible for all these anti-social movements and fake moral panics trying to get people to vote for their pet politicians for reasons that do not benefit said voters in the slightest. We're dealing with people who'd happily end the world if it meant they'd never have to pay taxes again, of course they're going to edit Jesus out of End Times prophecy and replace Him with a popular pseudo-cause du jour.
And I've seen people I never thought would fall for it call me a spawn of the devil for not falling for it.
Come on, people, is giving a shit about other people, or putting country over party or ideology, or even protecting your own life from a known threat really that fucking hard?
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