The same government whose leader refuses to wear masks, require masks at his events, or encourage his citizens to wear masks? Sounds like he trusts the government to me…?
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Mike Pesca had a good rant about how the Trump base believe politics is all bullshit so the best man for the job is a confirmed unapologetic bullshitter. The government is BS and Trump is always right because he calls BS.
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Yeah, well, it’s not the government telling people to wear masks. It’s infectious disease experts. The government just (sometimes) listens to them, as do people who don’t want sick people contaminating their stores, as do people who want to do the bare minimum to ensure their own safety.
If “The Government” told people to not stick their dicks in the toaster, there would be so many of these MAGAts showing up in burn units with embarrassing injuries.
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In my day we called that “killing with kindness”. The old lady wants a fight over nothing, so best to treat her like a harmless old dotard and let her wear herself out. She’ll have nobody to fight with, which will make her madder, and the Costco lady will have taken the high road the whole time.
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Nah, just leave her alone, but place a few of these around her:
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The Constitution is like the One True Ring of Power in that, simply by invoking it, you can do whatever you want, whenever you want!
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Apparently the Right to be Stupid is the one most of them seem to be finding and exploitong to it’s fullest Constitutional Potential.
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You mean elites. I don’t trust them. They are so out of touch with Real America™. They think they know more than us just because of their education and experience. /s
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Yeah, I know. It’s a weird disconnect with reality. I don’t get it either.
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What I can’t understand is: do these health experts or “officials” not have the authority to order these things? Like how a starship’s Chief Medial Officer (think Bones on Star Trek) has the authority to relieve the captain based on medical conditions?
And I mean at every level; municipal, county, state, or federal, not just Star Fleet.
If they do have the authority and don’t apply it, then aren’t they guilty of dereliction of duty? If they’ve been overridden by their superiors for political reasons, then why aren’t they resigning?
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I knew Devo was onto something with De-Evolution, but I never imagined it would happen so rapidly.
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Whoo boy, yeah. I keep thinking of the Frank Wilhoit quote: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect,” because boy, is that being demonstrated in the current cultural moment, in so many ways, on so many levels.
What’s also interesting is the repeated refrain of, “I’m an American!” Conservatives have shown, often by actually saying it, that they don’t consider people of color to be “real Americans,” but it’s becoming clear that this also applies to gays and everyone else they think it’s fine to discriminate against.
The “miasma” theory of disease posited that bad air (or water) caused disease, but proponents of the theory seem to have been in opposition to “contagionists” who held that it spread by physical contact with other sufferers. The miasma theory basically held that some rotting organic matter in a particular location (e.g. body of water) was the cause, and it contaminated nearby water and air - which made people sick because smelling things was the same as ingesting them. (Apparently some went so far as to believe that just smelling food could make you obese.) There apparently wasn’t enough consistency in airborne transmission for people to see how some diseases were spread from person to person by breathing - which makes sense, as during outbreaks, you’d be exposed to a lot of people who might be sick and the various factors that caused some exposures to result in sickness and others not, wouldn’t be obvious.
I saw some conservative ranting about distance markings for some business, and the totalitarian nature of having markings on a street that dictated how you traveled down that street… apparently not making the connection to, say, road signs.
Health experts can recommend various things (and for their troubles, have people make death threats at them), and local and state officials can make the rules that mandate wearing masks, for example. Unless the state government issues an order preventing local officials from making rules about requiring masks, as e.g. Texas did. (And then fairly quickly rescinded, to make masks mandatory state-wide as the cases exploded.)
Meanwhile, health officials nationwide are resigning in massive numbers - because their advice isn’t being followed and/or they’re getting overwhelmed with death threats for recommending people wear masks to avoid dying.
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I think it’s a very, very strong case of denialism. Deep down, people are afraid, because this thing that you can’t see can kill you, and there doesn’t seem to be much you can do about it. But if you deny that it exists, pretend that it’s “just the flu”, then it’s not so bad. Then you can cope. Seeing people wearing masks shatters the illusion, because those people are taking it seriously and that’s frightening, hence the irrational anger at mask-wearers.
It’s kind of like people who don’t want to get tested for cancer, even though their doctor says they have certain symptoms and need to get tested, because if they get tested, there will be a result. And the result could be bad. But if they don’t get tested, then they can keep pretending that everything is fine.
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For me thats a little too much like allowing the Chief of the Army to relieve the Head of State. And I wouldn’t want that, even if it does reflect the reality of the constitution in my country.
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To their credit, Costco has been one place that has been very consistent and upfront about what their mask policy is. I don’t work there, but I have to think the the workers that do are also very aware of what their store policy is and also know that management has their back when they enforce it. Considering the several videos I’ve seen of this happening in a Costco and the demeanor of the workers handling it, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were specifically trained on what to do in this situation.
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In Italy people are trying to get a bus ride without a mask and when driver refuse to start until they wear a mask as requested by the bus company, they beat him. Newer buses have dashcams and internal cams so they get charged by assault after a few days
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They are devolving into toddlers.
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George Washington was inoculated against small pox and he required his troops to be inoculated against small pox.
The founders were down with science and public health. They also would be very cognizant of property rights of the business owner.
“ Washington eventually instituted a system where new recruits would be inoculated with smallpox immediately upon enlistment. As a result soldiers would contract the milder form of the disease at the same time that they were being outfitted with uniforms and weapons. Soldiers would consequently be completely healed, inoculated, and supplied by the time they left to join the army.”
Also - quarantining.
“ Washington wrote to assure the President of the Continental Congress that he had been “particularly attentive to the least Symptoms of the Small Pox,” quarantining anyone suspected of having the disease in a special hospital. Washington further promised that he would “continue the utmost Vigilance against this most dangerous enemy.”
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Health officials in Brazil have been resigning - how could anyone deal with bolsonarrogant?!
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