Rant coming, and I'm aware that I'm preaching to the choir.
The NYT has a recent opinion piece titled What to Do with your Covid Rage. I'm too angry to even read it. My anger is all that's keeping me moving and from falling into despair.
I am a fully vaxed RN and also LMT. I saw a fully vaxed client last week , close contact obviously, and both of us wearing masks, a practice I reinstated recently as I kept hearing about "breakthrough cases". That evening, she called to tell me her adult daughter who lives with her and is an RN at a hospital but refused vaccination, had tested positive. My client tested positive the following day. Now here I sit, ranting to you, instead of the activities with others I had planned for my week. I'll lose a good chunk of income from this quarantine but the worst is not being able to visit with my son, DIL and grandson as planned for the first time in two months (you see where some of the despair comes in).
This is not the fault of immigrants, nor the CDC, nor Biden's administration as Faux would have us believe. This is the fault of a spoiled. entitled, ignorant young woman who, despite having become a nurse, has shunned science, and accepted conspiracy theories as a personal practice. Not only did she refuse vaccination, but in the face of rising cases and a dangerous variant, did nothing preventively to protect her parents at home from sharing the virus with them. No mask, no distancing. I imagine she would defend herself by saying, "Well, if the vaccine is so great, why do I need to do any of that?"
I've been thinking a lot about my mother in law. Dot and I did not always see eye to eye. She may even have voted for Trump in 2016 as she had come to increasingly refer to Obama as a socialist. But she was rightly proud to be a Massachusetts General Hospital School of Nursing graduate and worked as an RN her whole life. She and her colleagues worked like slaves as students at the hospital with no gloves, cloth masks, no protection against needle sticks. She felt nursing as a calling and was devoted, not in a smarmy way but a smart way, to the best possible patient care. She thought critically about things and didn't often hesitate to tell a doctor what she really thought or was afraid was going on with a patient. She nursed before a polio vaccine. I remember talking about universal precautions when I became a nurse in the early years of the HIV epidemic and she said, "you can't tell from looking at who you think your patient is whether they carry a dangerous infectious disease in their blood or body fluids or respiratory tract; we don't know what might be there that hasn't even been discovered yet.". She was a thinking nurse who cared at least as much about her patient's well-being and the public good as her own health and that of her family. She understood that her family's health was tied to the health of the community. She died in 2017 and she would be so appalled that nurses are turning away from what evidence has shown us is a safe, effective vaccine against serious illness from Covid, because they believe, against all evidence, that it might be worse for them than the virus itself. That it's all about them, not the patients, not the 60+ parents, not the public's health, is what she wouldn't be able to comprehend. She suffered no illusions about humanity and she cared for the ridiculous as well as any other patient. But that RNs all across the country could behave this way, that would be shocking to her. I wonder what she would have done with her Covid rage.
Your "rant" is what so many of us are feeling lately. I am so sorry that you, having done the right thing, have to go through this. Let's turn your rant into action. I have scaled back my letters to the editor and to my senators/congressman because I live in Florida, and they don't give a damn about what I think. My congressman, Gus Bilirakis, just sent out his weekly newsletter saying that hordes of immigrants are coming across the border and infecting us. So, let's all change our message. Let's "rant" to the paper and to the congresscritters and governors about how these unvaccinated and uncaring individuals, including nurses, are now causing US to lose our liberty and prevent us from doing the things we want to do.
I've just sent off an email to my father in law to invite him to join me in writing a LTE (a registered republican his whole life, he took a deep breath and voted for Biden) along the lines of my rant, or at least giving me permission to invoke his wife's name if I'm correctly guessing about how she would feel. He is enraged that people aren't getting vaccinated. He got his first shot the same day I was able to as a first responder, January 30, just before his 82nd birthday. Can't wait to read his response.
I just got an email from the hospital I work for. They're hosting a voluntary (sigh) virtual town hall for STAFF, not the public, to discuss "Vaccine Facts and Fallacies". I have a premonition this is a precursor to making the vaccine mandatory, as our friendly competition, Dartmouth-Hitchcock, announced last week they would be doing. I think they're hedging their bets that the FDA is going to confer full authorization on Pfizer within the month, and Moderna close behind. After that it will be much easier for them to insist on a mandate. Hopefully it will still make a difference at that point. Sometimes I feel like we are perpetually too many steps behind.
Interestingly, I learned at an ADA seminar that the EEOC allows businesses to mandate vaccines verification or regular testing. But they cannot force an employee to take a vaccine given by the business. They can request copies of the vaccine card given in the community. Little bit of a distinction, but noteworthy.
Good for Darmouth-Hitchcock! Glad they balked NH’s motto “Live Free or Die”. I had a physical exam there in 1990, so different than the old one in Hanover, where I made several visits in the mid 60s.
The whole idea that immigrants in Texas (who are tested, and quarantined if positive) could be causing infection spikes in Florida is worse than insane, it's homicidal, because it works against unvaccinated people realizing in time that they made a mistake and getting vaccinated.
Meanwhile, as I sit here in MA finally able to socialize a bit more, my vaccinated grown daughter is on vacation on the beach in Miami of all places. She could reasonably point out that she has no more virus exposure there than at her restaurant job at home, where she works with and around folks who are unvaccinated and unmasked. So I'm going to be even less social from when she gets back to when she gets a negative test result...
It reminds me of a little card my Dad used to have in his home darkroom: If you can keep your head while all around you are losing theirs, maybe you don't understand the situation.
Joan, I appreciate your dad's saying, never heard that one before. An early rendition of "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention"???
My vaccinated daughter also works in a restaurant, tiny little indoor place with outdoor seating as well in good weather. They've forgone the masks the last couple months and I said to her last night (she lives here) that she should really go back to it, no matter what others are doing. There's substantial community spread and such is the guidance for crowded indoor public spaces. And a lot of tourists from all over, and no one checking vaccine status at the door. Some days lately I feel like it's just a matter of time.
My adult son with special needs was working at a restaurant before the Pandemic hit. He was set to go back this summer since he was vaccinated but being indoors with people unmasked, even if he wore as mask, was a no for me. Can't take the chance as he is still high risk and the milder cases are where they see long Covid cases.
Thanks for articulating this so beautifully. My mom was a science and math teacher. Her best friend, of more than 70 years, was the Dean of the Nursing school at the University of Minnesota. Both of those women are spinning in their graves at the hubris of all who put politics and ignorance over the health of the rest of us. I wish there was a way to summarily fire medical personnel who walk away from science-based public health requirements!
There is a way to fire them. Mandate all personnel who care for the sick to be vaccinated and fire them when they refuse. They can all join a hospital that doesn’t require vaccinations and we must all stay away from that hospital. The mayhem that ensues at that facility will be a testament to the refusal to accept the science. Delta will see to that. None of this is “right” or satisfying for us but we have to protect ourselves so we can get to the other side of this nightmare.
I am always astounded to hear of health care workers unvaccinated. Not only endangers those whose job it is to help heal but it gives fuel to the anti-vax as a reason to be wary of the vaccine. My neighbor's husband is head of infectious disease at our local hospita and her daughter an infectious disease ER doctor. She went to her doctor at that same hospital and was treated by a male Black nurse who was unvaccinated. She very politely explained why it was important for him to to be vaccinated and he could help others in his community to stop the spread of the virus and he was receptive to her talk and thanked her. He said he was totally unaware of a lot of what she said. Of course she was horrified with this being a hospital health care worker and went straight to her huband and they set about getting information and talks out to the workers. This was earlier this past winter and they are the only hospital I know of that has a pretty high vaccination percentage. This seems like such a basic given....
Oh. My. Gosh. After I read these comments and knowing that my husband is having a procedure at the local hospital tomorrow, I jumped up and phoned them for reassurance. Guess what? No vaccine mandate. WHAT? The girl told me that of course they mask and use appropriate protections and the majority are vaccinated. I said, "MAJORITY?!" I'm upset, for sure.
I'm glad you called them, Becky. They need to hear that their patients are thinking and concerned about this. Interestingly, in the beginning of the pandemic, I heard a lot of people saying they were afraid to seek care because they didn't want to get Covid - from other patients! It never occurred to them to be worried about getting it from their providers, who they trusted would be using lots of PPE and precautions. We were all in the same boat back then, no vaccine. Now that the vaccines are widely available, we assume providers have done as they should to protect themselves from patients and vice versa. But too large a chunk of them have not and it needs to change and fast. Best of luck to your husband tomorrow. All you and he can do now is be vigilant about how well they use PPE with him and take pictures of anything you see that is concerning. VT has one of the best vaccination rates in the country so there's that!
Some hospitals do. One in Houston took the lead. Now government agencies are following suit, such as Los Angeles County at least requiring routine testing in lieu of vaccination.
Thanx for the rant. I can feel the rage at the abject ignorance around us. I get angry every time the idiot, mass murderer governor of Floriduh, Ron DeathSantis is on TV spouting his unsubstantiated bullshit, then I get more upset that I am YELLING at my TV.
This is day 18 of my own quarantine after having been probably exposed to the Delta Variant while being tested for Covid by an ER nurse who was unvaccinated and whose mask did not cover her face. I was fully faxxed and this would have been a "break through." My "friend" was also fully vaxxed, but even though he too was probably exposed, he continued to barhop night after night in crowded venues. So, not only have I been in isolation for all these days to prevent the spread to others, I have ended a five year relationship. Your comment resonated with me so much. It's not so much that he was ignorant (his own mother was an RN and he knows better) but that he was "spoiled" and "entitled" and put other lives at risk. I could not condone that or tolerate it. I share your rage!
"This is not the fault of immigrants, nor the CDC, nor Biden's administration as Faux would have us believe. This is the fault of a spoiled. entitled, ignorant young woman who, despite having become a nurse, has shunned science, and accepted conspiracy theories as a personal practice. Not only did she refuse vaccination, but in the face of rising cases and a dangerous variant, did nothing preventively to protect her parents at home from sharing the virus with them. No mask, no distancing. I imagine she would defend herself by saying, "Well, if the vaccine is so great, why do I need to do any of that?"
Oh, Ellen, I'm so sorry. And I applaud your courage and convictions. One of the hardest things for me about all this is to watch how otherwise good people make terrible selfish choices that don't make any sense. And the unfairness of it all. You and I and millions of others are doing all the right things, likely even overdoing some of it, while millions are throwing all care for others, even those they purport to love, out the window in the name of personal freedom, as if that is the gold standard by which we ever aspired to live. I'm coming to believe more and more that unfettered personal freedom is incompatible with life, but as they say here in the Granite State, Live Free or Die. I guess they really mean it.
So sorry, Ellen. Layers of adding insult to injury. And layers of your losses... May our regard for your righteousness help heal your losses. And of course may your wise precautions keep you healthy--a relative term in today's world!
Thank you! My rage comes from my wife of 50 years and 15 days being murdered by the last administration. I am on day 6 of quarantine myself, from a rogue caregiver who -- after switching planes 3 times and 4 different airports -- violated company policy and came into my home the next morning, untested and unmasked.
Only a call from the company telling her to get out prevented her from spending the whole day. I may have killed myself by letting her into my house.
I am so sorry for your situation as well; at least I'm not losing wages as you are....
Gus - heavens to murgatroid! What a horrible situation. I'm so sorry about your wife. That is a heavy, heavy loss. That caregiver should be drawn and quartered, but only after being tarred and feathered! There aren't words for that sort of behavior. A deathly threat to you and a huge liability for the caregiver company. Shout it from the rooftops! At 6 days, have you been tested yet? I'm waiting til day 5-6 unless I develop symptoms. Holding you in steady healing light and please keep us posted on your status and well-being.
Thank you Beth. It was company policy to test all employees returning from vacation. The director called within 20 minutes after she tried to clock in by phone, asking if she had been tested. When she said no, the director told her to "get out of there." The caregiver told me she HAD been tested when I asked her the same question at the door. I asked her to wear a mask, so she went back to the car and got her excuse for a mask. It kept sliding down to her chin because the elastic was worn out. Her nostrils were like a double barrel shotgun pointing at me!
The company had the right policy, and did the right thing. I blame myself this time.
Gus, the caregiver lied to you. Do not blame yourself. If we can't trust our caregivers we can't have a relationship with them. It's on the company to provide plenty of appropriate PPE. In the beginning it was hard to come by but there is NO excuse for that now. I'm glad the director was on top of things, as much as she could be from afar. They should do surprise inspection visits too.
That is unbelievable, Gus!! I hope you'll be okay.
When a workman showed up at our house a few months ago unmasked, I asked him where his mask was. He said,"I'm not sick." I told him he could be a carrier and infect me and would he please get a mask or I'd give him one. After he inspected our roof, gave me the estimate, and left, I told my husband, "We're not going to give that company our business." And we didn't. Later the company emailed me asking our decision. I told him we weren't going with the company because of the masking incident. End of conversation. I wonder if the company even cared it didn't get our business.
I've noticed more and more that people are being willfully ignorant. They have just stopped following the news or thinking about safety or risk mitigation. If you mention the term "viral load" they look like deer caught in the headlights. They were good for a year but they are done worrying about it or they just don't understand the limitations of the vaccines. One of my friends sent me a comic that said, "Covid is the new IQ test."
I was trying to show some empathy by including bits of my story, and as usual, I received more than I gave, so Thank You to everyone for your empathy and encouragement. This truly is a great community, and this truly is a hot topic. I am becoming so aware of what all of us are going through, and your examples of humanity give me an shot of strength!
I am so sorry for what you are going through, and share that "YOU DARE TO CALL YOURSELF A NURSE" frustration and anger. Healthcare workers, though, should never have had a choice whether to get the vaccine or not. Public Health Codes must be Public Health LAW: enforceable across the board. She should have lost her job.
You know what else scares me, MaryPat? That someone so clueless, so incurious, so non-thinking, so selfish is taking care of patients. Covid aside, I would be terrified to be sick in the hospital, dependent on others to evaluate and respond properly to my condition, if there were nurses like her on my team.
Yes, terrifying. And deadly. The American Nurses Association reported in May that 83% of nurses surveyed had been vaccinated against COVID-19, and recommended that ALL healthcare facilities require vaccination as a condition of employmen:
Thank you for your rant, Beth. Your mother in law was spot on and so are you. I am sorry your client's daughter has decided jeopardizing those around her is more important than protecting them. You are in my thoughts.
My heart goes out to you Beth. Pinellas County FL, where I live, has a current positivity rate of 18.47% according to the CDC (Florida public health posts lower numbers, and hides most data). This is the highest positivity rate since Covid began. We are also experiencing the highest hospitalization rates ever. Masks mandates, vaccine requirements, and reduced capacity are now forbidden in our state. Madness.
If the R's were really only against *requiring* masks and vaccines, and they valued human life, they would mount campaigns to get people to wear masks and get vaccinated voluntarily. They do not. All the evidence says they are in favor of increased infections and deaths.
I was reading Tara Parker-Pope's piece in the NYT about updated guidance for the fully vaccinated. A commenter from Texas - of all places! - stated in sorrowful polite terms what she could only have heard on Faux : that it's Biden administration's fault for following CDC guidelines in June that vaxed folks could go without masks, along with those vaxed folks "mixing" with the unvaxed, causing the Delta which she said was discovered in India in March and quickly spread here (uh, more like December but you got the second half right) and then mutate! The only redeeming thing about her comment was she mentioned that the media scared her family so much about Delta that they did rush off to get vaccinated - they had been waiting for more data! So it's all the fault of the CDC, Biden, we vaccinated and the media. I ripped her a new one.
I hear you Beth! I think one of the things that has to change, is adding basics of immunology, epidemiology, and fundamentals of Public Health in our Nursing Schools and Medical Schools. They need more training and pandemic preparedness. We need to pay them more when they have taken these courses. Health Care workers at every level need to be aligned with Public Health officials. Otherwise they are vulnerable to the demagoguery lead lies that are prostituting as leaders and policy.
Actually, we had such training in 1991, when I took my CNA course. We trained with LPN's stopping short of their particular skill practice, but all the beside care is the same. It actually depends on the individual and how much they absorb of the training.
In the hospital, I alerted Infection Control of 2 possible nosocomial problems, which they remedied. (IVAC electronic thermometer with a red & blue probe and inch apart when Clostridium dificile was rampant. And, sharing blood pressure cuffs on an oncology unit with immuno-suppressed patients - with Candida in their armpits)
This from a CNA, the lowest in the Medical Practice hierarchy.
Barbara, if you haven't already, would you consider contacting Concord Hospital and letting them know that as a retired RN (maybe from there???) and community member, you want them to make vaccination mandatory for CH employees? It sounds from your other comments like you're aligned with this idea ;-)
I even had some public health in my Army medic training, on the off-chance that as an infantry medic I might be the only medical personnel in a town or village. Water supplies, waste disposal, infection control. Air, direct contact, and 'fomites.' Primary inoculation portals: eyes, nose, mouth, wounds. I have never forgotten that training.....
We do teach these critical public health topics in all nursing schools, along with requiring observation in community health agencies for the ADN level, and community health experience for the BSN level. Nursing instructors also follow specific criteria for evaluation of students which include ethical standards and critical thinking skills. I fear in these times of nursing shortages and con man presidents, those standards may not be enough.
Hardly, and not enough, and I don't mean as a topic, I mean as a graduate level course in order to get that nursing or medical license. These schools have proven inadequate in teaching Public Health and have failed in pandemic response. There should be no debate with a HC worker about vaccines, mask mandates, and testing. Around me is a population of nurses and a few doctors that believe Fox News and their FB feed over their county Public Health Director, or they are scared to speak out locally for fear of offending their republican patients. I'm in a Red state and the population of nurses and some doctors ignorance is astounding. Speaking with several doctors from around the country on this issue of education and training, most admit they did not receive adequate Public Health fundamentals as a part of their med school nor residency.
This stuff is taught but some ppl have belief systems that are cultist and therefore unreachable. My wife was an RN the same time I became a CNA. (I helped her with her nursing studies, and was no stranger to working as a para-professional in free clinics in the '70s New Orleans & India.) Nurses must take CEU courses and even CNA's get in-service training.
However, there is discord on beliefs. During the AIDS pandemic, I was vocal in the local press and my wife & I often wrote Op-Ed letters in tandem. (I wrote them but the byline was always Brenda Boyte RN & Rob Boyte CNA) We wrote against the prevailing fear where politicians wanted mandatory testing (useless considering the window period for antibodies at the time and your next hi-risk behavior).
We briefly subscribed to a magazine in 1994, "Revolution - the Journal of Nurse Empowerment" but found the supported the stance that health care workers should all be tested for HIV, so that patients could decide if it was safe to have them providing care. Well, because of discrimination against HIV+ ppl, the laws made that diagnosis "superconfidential" and we as well as the ANA were against mandatory testing/disclosure for this disease. The mag got a lot of pushback from nurses including us and we dropped the subscription (as well as nursing schools) and got our money back. The "Nurses" like FL Gov. Ron DeathSantis, never changed their erroneous, useless & wrong stance and doubled down on it.
So, with some ppl, facts don't matter if the facts go against their cult belief system (or political posturing with the idiot voters).
True. I am sad to have to post so many 😣 faces. But I am also glad for all the activist work you and your wife have done. I, too worked at a free clinic in the early 70"s, when I was a nursing student. I told my favorite nursing professor, Dr. Henrietta Eppink, all about it, and she toured the clinic then set up a regular rotation of nursing students to help staff it! Dr. Eppink, in 1971, drove a VW Beatle, and always parked at the farthest corner of the parking lot, in rain, sun, snow or sleet. A model for environmentalism and health as well.
Its interesting that in 1918, there was a HC worker shortage because of WW1 mobilization. There was also slow communications and censorship, so no one knew there was a pandemic. Today, there is a shortage of HC workers because many are burnout or even refuse to work in high risk places anymore, mostly due to too patients have too much misinformation and wrong information that is moving too fast for people to make common sense of it, only making it worse.
There are actually courses, such as microbiology, that cover many of these topics. public health is a required course in BSN level education. What I don't understand is the people who have passed state boards refusing the vaccine. Wilful ignorance.
It's a cult of willful ignorance and they meet on FB. I too cannot comprehend how one could get through nursing school, tough anywhere, pass the state boards, also no picnic, and not get in line for a vaccine.
The nursing program here and many places are inadequate. (Im not bashing all nurses nor ALL nursing programs). Our nurses need more Public Health awareness, Pandemic History, immunology 101, Vaccine 101. We had nurses holding house party's with upward of 70 to 100 people in their houses for birthday party's etc during the shut downs and in defiance of Shelter in Place orders. We have far too many nurses listing to the TV and FB, that are anti vax, that are telling their friends its not that big of a deal. It is absurd.
Idaho. and our vaccination rates are as low as the southern states less than 40%. Our state Epidemiologist just released a report that doesn't paint pretty delta future. No one is listening to her. Only two school districts in the entire state have mask mandates. It is as if the Pandemic is over for 75% of the state. Idaho's coming disaster will be in the news soon.
8/6/21 SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California will require all of its roughly 2.2 million health care workers and long term care workers to be fully vaccinated by Sept. 30 as the nation's most populous state is losing ground in the battle against new infections of a more dangerous coronavirus variant.
Great news, MaryPat! I did write to our Chief Clinical Officer today to express my support in making the vaccine mandatory at our hospital system, and also to suggest making the viewing of the informational meeting Vaccine Facts and Fallacies mandatory as well. We have numerous annual mandatory compliance things we have to view and test on that have nothing or little to do with clinical care. I don't see why this shouldn't be one of them. If they have it be voluntary, the people that most need to hear it, those that are dead set against vaccination, aren't going to bother.
The only statement our completely clueless governor has made about all this is that "Mask mandates aren't a good idea." At least he hasn't gone as far as DeSantis and tried to basically outlaw them. He'd get a LOT of push-back from mayors in Atlanta and Savannah, who've defied him before.
You betcha! And a few others in overwhelmed rural places with tiny hospitals too. They figured Kemp wasn't going to bother with South Georgia, not enough votes down there. If I remember correctly they were right.
I'm very proud that my sister, a nurse, ran the COVID vaccination program in Fairfax County VA. I'm so sorry about your client's daughter, and that because of her you have to quarantine. You're definitely entitled to your rage. If I were running the show, I'd mandate vaccines for everyone who lacks a good medical reason for avoiding them.
That's awesome, David. She must feel so gratified to have the opportunity to do that. She really made a huge difference! I worked in our hospital's employee vaccination clinic once a week for the first three months and it was one of the best things I ever did. These were people who had already decided and gone through the process so I didn't have to convince anyone really, but in some you could sense the doubts, the hesitancy. The very first person I vaccinated was a late 40s PT who made it very clear right off that she was only there for her elderly mother's sake. I validated every reason everyone had for being there and did my best to soothe every frayed nerve. We laughed a lot and had a lot of fun. Mostly people were so relieved to be able to get the vaccine, they were overjoyed to be there.
Thank you Beth! Both about my sister and for your work in the vaccination clinic. I'm sure my sister is very gratified, although it was so much work that she was glad when it was over. She was working much longer days than in her regular nursing job.
I was among the relieved and overjoyed when I got vaccinated. I can still feel the smile that was on my face the day I got my second vaccination (Pfizer). (April 13)
Beth, I read your "rant" with a tremendous amount of empathy AND shared rage. I had my own recently departed mom in my mind the whole time I read your comment. She graduated nursing school in 1944 and worked as an RN until she retired in 1986--having served the last 9 years as director of nursing at the Northeast Georgia Medical Center here. She was old school to the max, and was VERY highly regarded by doctors and staff here as a "damn good nurse". (One very old doctor (hitting 90) actually came to her funeral service and kept telling me how they always knew that when "Mac Sellers" was running things, they knew there was nothing to worry about.) In her book, "old school" meant that the care and comfort of the patient was HER primary responsibility. It was "hands on" in a way that isn't done now to much degree. Call it TLC, call it "bedside manner", but the last few times she was in the hospital she noticed and bemoaned what she saw as a lessening of quality, compassionate care from nurses. It was interesting when she would talk to the nurses charged with looking after her--and certainly after they learned exactly WHO she was--they would come in and want to talk with her because she was this "living history book" of nursing. Nurses who would come to the house a couple times per week for home care would end up just talking to her. They were fascinated by her. ("Your mom is AMAZING!!") She also did not mince words, nor suffer fools gladly. I KNOW in my heart of hearts she would be infuriated at the state of things if medical personnel did not take proper precautions to ensure patients' (and colleagues') safety. I remember she said so many times since Covid showed up how glad she was she did not have to deal with something like that, and I know her heart went out to the people on the front lines of this pandemic. I'm pretty sure she would have little patience for medical personnel not getting the vaccine, and I'm sure she'd have been the first to want to make them mandatory. I can just hear her! "Then find some other field!..." or words to that effect. She trusted science implicitly--she remembered in medicine then being among the first users of penicillin and how they thought then it was nothing short of a miracle. Same with other vaccines. I guess it's a generational thing, maybe, but I still cannot conceive of the mentality of putting yourself and your loved ones, AND YOUR PATIENTS in such danger. Were my mom here, she'd be solidly behind every word you said! These old nurses were a hardy lot!!
Thank you, Bruce, for sharing your mom's story. I loved it! To tell you the truth, those old time nurses scared the hell out of me as a new nurse, but I learned more about how to organize myself as a nurse on a busy maternity unit from a crusty old nurse (who raised 5 boys while nursing full time!) on the graveyard shift than from anyone else. And as a patient delivering there myself, I knew that while she didn't have the gentlest bedside manner, I wasn't going to bleed out from a postpartum hemorrhage on her watch! She didn't miss a trick.
I, too, felt nursing was a 'calling.' After 40 years, I no longer recognized the profession in the profit-taking enterprise of "healthcare.' Had to leave. Love your Mom!
Bruce, you must be close. My wife and I were/are frequent flyers at Northeast Georgia. In Gainesville, before all the additions and after, and Braselton. I have left a lot of tissue in both places....
My son in law is the acting director of security for the whole system, and when that gig ends this fall he’ll go back to supervising over at Braselton. He volunteered for the Graves Detail there, rather than endanger any of his officers, so I am very proud of him. If you ever need a name to drop, see me....
Cool! Almost no one is around from when my mom was there. A couple of the medical center top brass did show up at her service, which was very thoughtful, but almost all the doctors she worked with are long gone. She really was considered one of the last links to the old Hall County Hospital days...when she went there in 1956/57 it had all of 90 beds (they added 57 beds in '58) and maybe 20 doctors. Ambulances ran out of Little & Davenport Funeral Home. The whole system has really changed over the years. Fortunately *touch wood*, I've never been in the hospital here (that may change by the end of the year...), so I don't think I'll have any need to drop any names...at least I hope so! Thanks!
All kidding aside it's killing me that healthcare professionals are still vaccine hesitant at this late stage.
1. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines started on 3rd base with the initial testing. The mRNA part had a long history of testing. Adapting it for COVID-19 was like tweaking an existing formula. It was tested before going live.
2. We are now 160 million vaccines given. A few side effects have cropped up, but EVERY vaccine/medicine has some side effects.
3. Final approval is right around the corner.
It's reasonable to be hesitant when there's not a lot of data but there was a lot of data with the rollout and now there's 8 months of post rollout data proving no big problems.
A lot of the hesitancy is due to people not wanting to be told what to do by the person who won a free and fair election by 7M votes and who are exerting the only thing they have left: their precious white privilege. Just a variation on the mindset behind Jan 6 imho.
Exactamente. I participated in a local school board meeting before 50,000 students return to school tomorrow (brick and mortar, no remote learning option open) and thought I was in an alternate universe. Of course masks and mandates and adult tantrums were on full display.
Oh yes. This board has also initiated a “moment of silence” to start each school day in every school in the county. It begins tomorrow. Participation expected by all in spite of separation of church and state since it’s “silent”.
As Gus said, an excellent summary and pretty much what I've been saying to vaccine hesitant people for months. I've been vaccine hesitant myself in years past so I get it. But 8 months in now we are way beyond reasonable vaccine hesitancy. Now it is just stubborn obstinancy pure and simple.
Love your MIL. Mass Gen was THE nursing school back in the day.
I graduated in 74 with a BSN, got an MA at Teachers College, Columbia, and a doctorate from USF. I think the ignorant young nurse, and all the others like her who are refusing the vaccine, need to have their licenses challenged. Clearly, there is a deep knowledge deficit regarding infection control (IC). IC is one of the most difficult subjects to teach as it involves things one cannot see without a microscope. However, IC and prevention is core curriculum for nurses. Clearly, this person didn't get the message.
I share your outrage at these so-called 'health care workers' who deny protection to their families, people who are patients, and their community. Inexcusable ignorance. One of the first lessons we teach in nursing school is that the nurse must care for her/him self. Otherwise the nurse cannot care for others. Basic.
Jane Mayer, in her August 9, 2021 report on the rich conservatives funding Trump's Big Lie about the 2020 election, documents the myriad dirty tricks wealthy, anti-democratic forces such as the Bradley Foundation deploy in their attempt to overthrow what's left of representative democracy in America and maintain the oligarch's hold on power. It's a grim account of the Trump republicans ongoing assault on voting rights and the lies they spread to distort the perceptions of ordinary Americans.
"Since the 2020 election," Mayer writes, "this movement has evolved into a broader and more aggressive assault on democracy. According to some surveys, a third of Americans now believe that Biden was illegitimately elected, and nearly half of Trump supporters agree that Republican legislators should overturn the results in some states that Biden won. Jonathan Rauch, of the Brookings Institution, recently told The Economist, 'We need to regard what's happening now as epistemic warfare by some Americans on other Americans.'"
Mayer's valuable piece confirms that we are now indeed on a wartime footing in our politics in this country, a war started by Trump and his band of miscreant outliers. By identifying the players and in exposing their deceits, including their attempts to falsely blame Biden's immigration policies for the spread of the Delta variant, Mayer has performed a valuable service by making it clear who the enemies of democracy are and thus helping lay the groundwork for prosecutors as they work to hold these grifters accountable.
Reading the Jane Mayer article in The New Yorker was a visceral shock to my whole being: physical and mental. It presents the magnitude of the assault on American democracy and paid for by hundreds of dark money organizations...all of which are tax exempt non-profits. I am literally shaking. American democracy is truly in danger from the Republican party. I can now understand why Republican senator Adam Kinzinger wept when he talked about his reason for joining Pelosi's Select Committee. I feel helpless and hopeless.
Well girl, you can collapse, but you must stand up again with some grit and intentionality to do your active part in securing our democracy.and it will mean going out of your comfort zone. Taking feet on the ground actual action. Heaven knows we need your smarts, teeth, and determination.
Now is no time to falter. And no need to feel helpless. Simply by keeping a strong sense of what is right within your self will give you a confidence that will influence those around you, and may allow you to more readily see and seize opportunities to spread hope, and counter fear and hatred. Keep the light alive!
Biden’s team is making progress. I wouldn't underestimate them. The scatterbrained hare will exhaust himself before he reaches the finish line and the slow but sure tortoise will sedately, with the dignity that comes from being honest, step across and win.
Mayer's article is excellent, but the fact is that we, small-d democrats, should have seen the threat decades ago. Kim Phillips-Fein's Invisible Hands lays out the foundational story of the anti-democratic movement that grew out of the reactionary response to the New Deal and led to the communist witch hunts of the 1950s, the hard-right politics of Barry Goldwater and to the election of Ronald Reagan. A bold line can then be drawn from Reaganism, to Gingrich, Cheney/Rumsfeld and to Trump.
We, democrats, have been arrogant, naive and complacent while the storm gathered around us. Only now are mainstream voices finally recognizing the events of the past year as a coup attempt. It was not an insurrection. It was a multi-part coup attempt, much of it executed in plain sight. January 6th was just its climax.
But it "wasn't" a coup attempt, as in past tense. It is ongoing.
And we must confront another deeply disturbing aspect of Trumpism. Yes, there is a hard core group of nihilists who seem set on "burning it all down." But more influential in the movement, and more
dangerous, are Christian and Jewish millennialists who are hoping for, and actively seeking to bring about, the discord and devastation that is to precede the coming of their Messiah.
This is the end to which they embraced Trump as a very effective means, just as the secular elements of the GOP coalition came to do.
Once we recognize this hard fact, we can better understand the seemingly self-destructive politics of the religious right. Climate change, global pandemics, racial strife, culture wars, and eventually, a religious hot war on secularism are features, not bugs, for this Book of Revelation cult.
Great thoughts. Thank you for defining that it is a a sub-group of Christianity and Judaism. The majority of us don't think that way, and are just as horrified about it as you are.
I think we have enough to be guilty about, without adding this to it....
What a horror, the situation described in painful detail by this article of Jane Mayer’s… It’s vile. It’s back to the Weimar republic and the Nazis’ backers. (Remember that Nazi racism drew inspiration from Jim Crow America…)
But now I’m going back to white South Africa and that classic rhetorical question:
“Would you give a vote to a baboon?”
No, I wouldn’t.
A pity, though, because baboons’ survival instincts and skills are without question far superior than those of human beings.
Especially human beings whose brains have been addled by decades of exposure to virtual reality and the black arts of Rupert Moloch et al. Always bearing in mind that stupidity is no respecter of persons or political allegiances, and dangerous stupidity (“higher stupidity”) is largely the preserve of persons with high IQs, well equipped to stampede the herd…
The above remark does not cover the strange being that got itself into the White House in 2016. Its defense politics resemble those of baboons and its baaskaap is quite as absolute as that of any baboon pack leader—absent the wisdom…
"Rupert Moloch." Perfect! Absolutely fitting. He has single handedly wrought more destruction to functional politics around the globe than any person I know of.
My reply to her (and to same others I’ve encountered) …”so, your Republican leaders (put in your own choices) such as Trump, Hannity, Cruz, Voldemort..oh, I mean Scott, Tuckems, DeSanitize, Abbott…. They’ve all been vaccinated but their followers are not allowed the pleasure?
Hmmm. Sounds like you’ve been punked.”
Gloves off. Resisters do not respond to logic and thrive on looped argument. I’m resorting to implied insult and “ reverse conspiracy theory” (I just made up that term 😜) banking that it will fester and stay in their brains later. It’s what got them there in the first place.
Your comment “gloves off” really is an important one. It’s time…past time…for the rest of us to counter this BS. Fox has a megaphone spouting this nonsense and what do I hear from Main Street? Certainly not a great deal of opposition.
Opposition a-plenty, Annette. Just not loud enough, sly enough, bratty enough etc. I’m changing my tactics. Thousands of children starting school tomorrow in my state and now being used in the battle. Unacceptable. And I have a glint in my eye that always is there when children are being mistreated. Time to even it up.
I so agree with the 'gloves off'. These sinister bastards take advantage of politeness and say anything they feel like saying to get reactions. A stunning thing for me to hear is how Democrats are all about mind control. A supposedly educated nephew of mine ranted about how 'forcing people to wear masks' was just a Democrat plot at mind control. There's no talking to him...he just yells...do I just conclude that he's nuts?
Tell him that yelling anything about an inanimate paper mask like it is a black widow spider crawling up his sinus cavity is about the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard. Tell him what is needed is idiot control and to get some family pride in his brain or you will open a can of whoop ass control. And then sniff haughtily, toss your head, and walk away.
You might be interested in a letter from me published in today's Palm Beach Post (circulation about 100,000):
"We should accept the fact that the Covid19 pandemic will last far longer than we expected it to because of the adamance of some who, for a variety of reasons, still refuse vaccination. The unvaccinated, besides risking illness or worse, also provide an expanding environment for the virus in which it can grow, spread and mutate, posing a threat to us all. But with few exceptions, attempts to identify the unvaccinated, these allies of the virus, meet with social and often ambiguous political opposition.
It then remains the job of the vaccinated to let everyone know who they are by wearing an “I’m Vaccinated” sticker. I purchased a roll of them online and offer them to others. Vaccinated people, if enough of them wear such stickers, will be able to more easily identify those with whom they might wish to avoid contact. A typical exchange might be: “Are you vaccinated?” followed by “Great, here’s a sticker to wear” or “No? Well, you should be! Bye.”
You might even try wearing the sticker ON THE MASK. When I run out of my current mask supply, I'll look for an N95 or KN95 with that printed on the mask.
Good for you having a letter published! Bravo. And the stickers are an excellent idea. I just ordered a very nice bracelet from Etsy "Vaxxed". It was quite inexpensive and there are lots of styles to choose from. Just a thought.
The last time I looked every single one of us is descended from immigrants. It’s the height of hypocrisy to castigate immigrants for anything. I think we are starting to see the gene pool self correcting, I know that I’ve been vaccinated and can swim.
It’s interesting to me (in a horrifying way) that the misinformation spreaders are sharing posts paralleling 1930s Germany pointing to tearing down statues and banning/burning books rather than the attacks on immigrants. It’s like the cheaters who accuse their (faithful) spouses of cheating on *them*! Projection, deflection and it succeeds in stirring the pot.
Honestly I believe so many Republicans ARE vaccinated, those with power and influence especially. However they choose to promote anti-vax and no masks. People with such power and influence should not be given the luxury of secrecy on such an important life or death issue.
I don't know if this administration can actually get to the point where they are willing to play hard ball. Biden apparently (according to reports over the weekend) is contemplating holding up funding for schools that refuse to have mask and vaccine mandates. Somehow I doubt that will work.
In my world this is a "Time's Up" moment but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the mindset of the White House. My suggestion: start hitting Fox Not-the-News with dozens of lawsuits and start making a lot of noise about it. Start talking about sedition laws and introduce legislation that makes disinformation--the deliberate lying--about crisis situations subject to them. It's a little John Adams-onian but it would be interesting to see what happens. Use Op-Ed people as mouthpieces of more extreme round 'em up and stick 'em on an island tactics. Yes: I really am done.
In the meantime, Garth Brooks, who has never been someone I think of as a hero, told people who wanted tickets to his concert in KC that they could get a ticket to the front row if they got vaccinated AT THE CONCERT. I am not sure but I think ticket sales were dependent on vaccination status (I think his entire tour is vaccinated-only). Apparently so many people who claimed they were having "trouble" getting vaccinated (it's free at EVRY CVS DRUGSTORE IN KC) lined up for the jab to get a ticket. Hmmmmmmm.
The Democrats are playing badminton while the Republicans have a pitcher throwing 100 mph fastballs directly at the dupe holding the badminton racket. The Murdock’s understand one thing, lawsuits, they have the money to defend but it costs them a lot to do so. All of the lying bastards that work for them should be named as well, while they have deep pockets they are fractions of what the Murdocks have. Talk about draining the swamp, when they look at how quickly their bank accounts are emptying, it might help to focus their minds, just like the clown’s lawyers who will most likely have to pay for the legal costs to defend against their frivolous lawsuits. When I think about what an insidious family they are it makes me want to vomit.
That is one of the best analogies for how Democrats and Republicans "play ball". I hereby announce that I am stealing that, may make a meme out of it. If I do, I shall report upon the responses I get from my RWNJ element.
That is so funny, Stephen. Ally, I looked for one second and was like, Girl, geez what does RWN…. and got it that quickly. Hahahahahaha. Some comic relief. This is a dark day.
I had to run into my local Walgreens Saturday morning . I was met at the front door by a nurse with a clipboard in hand. She asked everyone coming in if they have had both of the C-19 vaccines. An older woman ahead of me said, "no I couldn't get through to the County to get an appointment, so I gave up. The nurse said great you will have you first one today and I'll give you a reminder for when to come back for your second one. " The woman seemed so relieved. It did make me think, how many older folks aren't vaccinated because they don't have the patience or knowledge to get through to get their shots. She also said she hasn't been to the Doctors in 2 years.
Here in South Carolina, the vax is free to all those eligible and most medical practices, pharmacies, and hospitals have been taking walk-ins since the vaccine has been available. There hasn't really been any excuse for not getting it. Heck, my GP called when they got their first shipment and asked how many in the family needed the jab and when did we want it. And one of those isn't insured at all. (Unemployed, possibly unemployable, doesn't qualify for disability, not eligible for Medicaid, no ACA premium discount. DON'T get me started.)
I live in Central New York. From the start there were the age restrictions. However, that softened as vaccines became available. When I got mine, they had opened up our OnCenter Convention Center and very quickly Syracuse University and other local colleges opened their gymnasiums.
It worked best for people with computer access or family members who could help out, but not undoable if you had to rely on the County and calling in. There were definitely snafus with the communication factors. As far as I am concerned, with the exception of the elderly that didn't know how to get into the system, all that's left unvaccinated in NYS are the covidiots.
I love Garth and we need more of our cultural icons to be making the same kind of noise. Where have they all gone? Talk about a time when they could be making noise about the most existential matters... say voting rights... all I hear are crickets. Save for wonderful Willy Nelson at what, nearly age 90?
Don’t forget about dolly, who gave a million to development of the moderna vaccine. But younger country stars remember what happened to the Dixie chicks after the invasion of Iraq. And when 58 people were killed in Las Vegas, at a country music concert, not a word about any sort of firearm regulation. Politically, country has been conservative. And now they can all be tarred with the same brush, “shut up and sing.” reluctant vaxxers need to tie getting vaccinated to something irrational, such as their love of a country singer.
FREE! It's freaking free everywhere you turn! And it's been free all along! Maybe if people had to pay for it they'd trust it more.
I'm done too. We are way past the "time's up" point. I understand that Biden wants to be perceived as a quiet, gentleman president but we're beyond that. There's not a single Democrat, Independent or Republican, in or out of office, who is successfully countering the anti-vaccine, anti-mask, anti-science message. The vehemence and strength with which the TQRs are spreading and reinforcing their false messages is a force that needs to be challenged aggressively, now.
“Maybe if people had to pay for it they'd trust it more.”
You’ve said it!
But it ain’t even an American phenomenon, this ultra-libertarian crap. We have it in a big way here in France.
And yes, animals can be wiser than humans, they aren’t subject to ideas and ideologies—and those can turn men and women into a mindless liberticidal herd driven to stampede…
Unfortunately there’s no cure for stupidity, no vaccine for pandemic psychoses. Only fear may work—but by then many will have died.
Especially among those whom white supremacists want to see dead.
Maybe some Americans will remember these words from a Frenchwoman on her way to the guillotine:
“Liberty, what crimes are committed in your name.”
Peter, you are so right...the ultra-libertarian phenomenon not just an American thing. I wonder what the tipping point will be for the "it's my right to live without your rules" crowd? Do their kids have to die? Their spouses? Do they have to lose their jobs and not find other employment? At what point is personal liberty an infringement on the common good?
The Americans who remember the words of Marie Antoinette have already been vaccinated.
Thank you, Daria. Someone sent me an item wondering how Londoners would have taken it if people had claimed the right to keep their lights on during the blitz…
Where are the moderate leaders Republicans like Mitt Romney? Why are they not standing up and taking the megaphone away from demagogues like Ron Desantis and Rand Paul? Their silence is as much to blame for the state of our country as the screed coming from the immoral power hungry autocrats.
That is the question! I’ve stopped watching “This Week with George Stephanopolis” because he always has folks from “the other side” and never pushes back. We need our Main Street Media to inform with truth.
Rosie and Lynn, it’s really all up to Fox News, I think. Romney can’t “take the megaphone” away from DeSantis or Paul, meaning Romney can’t keep them from appearing on Fox. Fox decides who gets the megaphone, and how often. Similarly, it doesn’t matter what ABC, NBC, CBS, NYT, WaPo and HCR broadcast and publish about the lies spewing from Fox. Fox viewers will never know, because they’ll never see it.
Please don't put your hopes on the likes of Mitt Romney. He is all for discriminating against people who don't fit his mold. As governor of MA, he openly talked about gay people in the same ugly ways that Trump talks about immigrants. " Why some of those people are even having children!" he exclaimed, in a tone reminiscent of Trump's screed against Mexicans..."they're bringing drugs, they're rapists..and some, I assume, are good people." .?? He wasn't against gay people, he said, just against same-sex marriage, but his off the cuff remarks said otherwise. Romney's a privileged opportunist devoid of empathy and a bigot of the first order.
Recall, also, the following: referring to Obama voters...
"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.
Romney went on: “[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
Romney is a privileged, white plutocrat, guilty of all that you list. He’s also one of the 2-3 “least horrible” Republicans. Try not to compare Romney to decent, compassionate human beings. Compare him to Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis or Marjorie Taylor Greene.
If they're the standard for comparison, what's the point? We're already lost, and nothing short of another revolution will help. Hmmm....not so bad an idea.
Revolutions seldom turn out well. See Iran, Russia, Cuba, et al.
The thing to appreciate regarding Romney (and Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, Murkowski and a few others) is that they may start a Republican civil war. Trumpists vs. plutocrats. If it comes, sit back and enjoy. We don’t have to root for either side, just enjoy them tearing each other apart. And remember what Napoleon said, “Never interfere with the enemy when he is in the process of destroying himself.”
If immigrants were truly bringing and spreading COVID, all the more reason to protect ourselves: vaccines for all who can and masks in schools. These methods have been proven effective by the credentialed scientists who study them, the highest authority we have on medical issues. Any politician who claims to know better is delusional and dangerous.
I had the same thought. DeSantis and Abbott are claiming that Covid is spreading rapidly in their states because of immigrants. Let’s set that debate aside for a minute, because it doesn’t matter if Covid is spreading because of raccoons on bicycles, or immigrants, or the rapid transmissibility of the new Delta variant. The proper response from a governor doing their duty to protect their citizens is to issue mask mandates, issue social distancing directives and expand vaccination efforts. Republicans are shouting “nasty immigrants!” while at the same time screaming “Freedoms! You can’t make us wear masks or get vaccinated!” Seems wise.
" Any politician who claims to know better is delusional and dangerous." Seems we have a lot of those kind of politicians. Dangerous for sure. Stupid, definitely.
The trouble with trying to be Trumpian is that unless you too are a sociopathic liar, your little bit of conscience will doom you. Good luck, DeSantis et al.
More bold hypocrisy in the great wide open. It works because their followers are not capable of Critical Thinking - even as some are "smart". The more they get away with this, the more they understand they can keep at it. And keep at it. And perhaps win all.
Authoritarianism does not happen suddenly. It’s like the collapse of the Florida condominium. Just like the concrete, over time democratic principles erode slowly, and suddenly our democracy comes crashing down.
I heard about a Holocaust exhibit at a British museum that walked people through a time line of exhibits showing the gradual takeover of German government by fascists until they turned a corner and found themselves inside a boxcar.
Yes, we watched it quite blatantly for years with Moscow Mitch. But behind the scenes there has been a lot of planning and dirty work going on. That is how insidious fascism roots itself in a trusting democracy. You cannot have a democracy without the majority trusting in its' premises. We have lost ours. If we want it back we are going to have to get our "huevos" and fight strongly.
It’s amazing how much history I’ve learned in the last year. Had never heard of these immigrants before: 😳
“During World War II, numerous ethnic paramilitary units collaborated with Germany to fight against Russia and the Allied Forces. The Bulgarian National Front, the Romanian Iron Guard, Ukrainian Nationalists, The Hungarian Arrow Cross are a few. When the war ended and displaced person camps were established, members of these groups as well as members of the Waffen S.S. found their way into the camps. The camps were run by the Displaced Persons Commission. Within the camps, the various ethnic groups were allowed to keep their networks intact.
A law enacted in the U.S. Congress in 1948 authorized 200,000 admissions to the U.S. over the next two years, and in 1950, it increased that number to 415,000. Many of those admitted to the United States were members of these ethnic groups.
Entities that would later be identified as affiliated with intelligence agencies were also involved in the camps. At the end of World War II, some of our former fascist enemies became our allies in the fight to stop the spread of communism. Nazi scientists were “laundered” and brought into the U.S. space program under Operation Paperclip.
Ethnic Groups in the United States and the Republican Party
After the immigration of many members of these units, starting in 1952, the Republican Party began to establish “heritage groups.” One example of this effort comes from Bellant’s hometown of Detroit. Arrow Cross was the Hungarian equivalent of Germany’s Nazi Party, and former members were moved into southwest Detroit, where there was a Magyar church and a large Hungarian population. Laszlo Pasztor came to the U.S. in the 1950’s and joined the GOP’s Ethnic Division.
Pasztor was one of the leaders of the 1968 Nixon-Agnew campaign’s ethnic division. According to Pasztor, Nixon promised him that if he won the election, he would form a permanent ethnic council within the GOP. After Nixon became President in 1969, the Heritage Groups Council was formalized, and Pasztor was made the organizer of the Council.
Bellant marks the Nixon Administration as the true beginning of the “New Right.” Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, adhered to politically extremist ideology. He believed that the need for law and order justified severe restriction of civil liberties. He brought conspiracy charges against critics of the Vietnam War, likening them to brown shirts of the Nazi era. Mitchell advocated for “no-knock warrants” and preventive detention. He once told a reporter, “This country is going so far to the right you won’t recognize it.”
The goal of a country dominated by Christian Anglo Saxons, controlled essentially by one party and secured through harsh and punitive law and order, is still alive and well in the New Right.” From Steve Hassan’s interview of Russ Ballant on his blog: https://freedomofmind.com/political-extremism/
Having done well for themselves for forty years by squeezing Americans economically and using the resulting distress and money to blame “those other people”, Republican politicians have gone one step further by effectively promoting the coronavirus pandemic. Their apparent goal is to weaken the country further, creating chaos and fear to feed their fascist campaigning.
Deadly lies. Twisted information. We are at risk for more than Delta. It has nothing to do with immigrants. Who is behind this quest for fascism? Who wishes to fell America to the idjts of authoritarianism? Why? This grand experiment quivers in the cross hairs of some potential despot. And other, perhaps more lethal, variants will arise. Fearful of our future, waiting for actions of congresscritters and DOJ to be timely and meaningful.
Don’t they realize that if our democracy fails due to their efforts that it will be open season on them, it would be the least we could do to honor our ancestors. Remember how the French Revolution turned from the monarchy to themselves, once you start swinging the sword, beware because it cuts both ways.
And, apart from plain greed and grossly overweening conceit, what is the motivation, what is the purpose of it all?
We all know the hacks, the fools and the flunkeys, the carbon-copy Goebbelses, the political whores, the pseudo-leaders with egos like zeppelins…
But what about those behind them, those who should be behind bars and stay there?
Some 2000 years ago, Seneca remarked that “FOR GREED, ALL NATURE IS TOO LITTLE”. He can have had no idea of how far greed could come… Now the goal’s to own the Solar System; the reality, to turn it into endless desert.
Rather more recently (yet pre-Trump) I noted that:
Heather Cox Richardson is 100% right. A million percent right!!! We are being led by FOX FIX Tucker and Sean and Trump and Rupert Murdoch to follow Viktor Orban and Hungarian fascism. Mussolini and Hitler are smiling.
It seems to me that is is rather clear that Fox News is a prime source of the disinformation going round, from all the references to what they purvey. And beyond that is the sea change in our communications media as a result of the FCC Fairness Doctrine being revoked in 1987, which allowed outlets a free hand to broadcast lies. There is little hope of a shared set of facts under these circumstances.
FCC FAIRNESS Doctrine did not cover the cable TV industry. The AIRWAVES belong to the people of this country and could be regulated. Cable and now the internet are not regulated by the government. As we are now struggling with. The Fairness Doctrine is as old a a Stage coach as a vehicle. We are light years past it and need to debate this with more vigor. Creating what? …in a free speech country…….laws? I believe beyond a doubt that there needs to be strong, and harsh consequences for those people who support lies, like the “the BIG LIE” fox and other disinformation creators need to be dealt with now! But how?
Another super spreader in Sturgis right now. No masks. Hospitals filled up again. Fox. Rand Paul. Big dark money. Florida. Texas. Send the children back to school. Stones. Glass houses. Nightmares. Lies. Stupidity. Colossal nerve of x45 iDJT mass murderer to even show his face in public. Blaming immigrants! Can you imagine?
Desperate times call for “Despot” measures and Donald Trump is a Desperate man. We have to remember that as overwhelming as this all is WE are the MAJORITY!
The most important fight of our time is the right for ALL of us to vote and the count to be fair. Let’s focus on that one fight and keep our Democracy. Call and write and March. Now is the Time!
Well, I'd simply amend by saying it takes us one step closer to civil conflict. I recently watched a prospective "If there were a second civil war, what would happen video." A lot of it was impossibly contextualized or supposed. One thing it, interestingly, restated (it was a 2nd version) was that the threat of gun-owning/leave-me-alone types actually DON'T band together and move to violence as a cohort very well. I'm not enough of a historian or sociologist to agree or disagree, but what I think we DO know is that many leaders of The Right, are willing to do exactly that: do whatever it takes to stir up, keep stirred up and yes, as we saw on Jan 6, move people to violence. In fact, I think Jan 6 made them more dangerous in a way. I think several of them, since then, have inured themselves to any previous fears they had about the consequences of civil unrest. I believe they WANT to push for the next step. Again, as I say almost daily: vigilance. We must remain aware of exactly WHAT is going on, what it means, and the ramifications. Ordinary citizens cannot let their weariness--of the bickering, the lies, the pandemic, etc--allow them to withdraw and not pay close attention.
If there were a civil war? I think 100 years from now (if we endure as a species) what will be recorded is that a 2nd civil war began in this country on November 10, 2016. When and how it ends seem out of reach at the moment.
I see your point. I think we’ve been distracted and grown complacent since Reagan, though. Lots of reasons for that. 11/10/16 was the moment of awakening for ALL of us, the horrified and the elated. It’s when mobilization and organization for democracy began again in earnest. But if you really want to take a long view, Heather might say the first civil war hasn’t ended yet. The South has never surrendered or given up on slavery.
To me it’s pretty simple with respect to the anti-vaxxers: Don’t want to get vaccinated? Okay. But, freedom of choice does not mean freedom from consequences. So, that means that your health insurer should be completely free to hike your rates and deny coverage for any Covid treatment that you may require. Hospitals should be able to bill you whatever they want for Covid treatment. Oh, and lest I forget, any medical bills necessitated by Covid treatment should not be permitted to be discharged in a bankruptcy filing.
Note: None of this would apply to anyone who has a medical issue that prevents them from getting vaccinated.
Along with personal 'authority' (read freedom) comes personal responsibility. I'm surprised this hasn't already started.
And while I'm at it. Why is it that the right to do what you want with your body applies here in conservative thought but not when it comes to women's 'right to choose'? I know it's a rhetorical question.
Rhetorically, the answer is "Protecting the life of the unborn...or innocent babies." It's a powerful response with historical precedent in religious beliefs that God ordained the creation of the child and the mother's life is only the vehicle. So much in our contemporary society stems from "antediluvian" reasoning. (My own response to that argument is, "Strange that God would change his mind. One-third of first pregnancies miscarry." Or, "I wonder why God would choose an incestuous rapist for the father?")
Strange that "God" would let weapons of mass destruction be created and handed out like candy to the citizenry so all those children (including those they might save) who were once in someone's womb can be massacred at schools and other places. Is that not blasphemy in their world? Sorry, that was too rational for 2021.
Interestingly, most ppl of faith had no problem staying out of women’s health&wellness concerns until the Rs decided they needed to tap the large Christian electorate. Their plan? Make abortion a religious issue.
Just Another sneaky way the Rs have slithered under the radar, building toward this frightening mess we find ourselves in.
Oh, dear, Charlie. I just read the other day about a Democratic governor in a red state who said words to the effect, "Show you're pro-life, get the vaccine." Of course I can't remember who said it, nor can I find the article!
I wonder how the health insurance companies are actually handling it? It’s true, I get a better rate when I do preventative healthcare. That rule should apply to being vaccinated against the virus! The lies spewed by the right wing are despicable too! Do these people really realize that they are paving the way to the destruction of our Democracy, in favor of an Autocracy? Heaven forbid!
The ACA policies can’t discriminate based on pre existing conditions (including willful ignorance). Don’t know about company provided health insurance. We really don’t want to make health insurance any more political than it already is.
Excuse me, but how? This is simply allowing the free market (in this case, insurers) charge what they want for risky (in terms of health) behaviour. It further places the onus on those who make the choice not to get vaccinated. I think that you're conflating freedom with anarchy. Being part of society involves both rights and responsibilities. It's not a one-way street.
Besides, I don't see how insurance companies charging more for risky behavior has anything to do with government. People who use tobacco pay higher rates than people who don't. People who don't wear helmets while riding motorcycles pay higher rates than those who do wear helmets.
Yeah. It made me think of tattooing them on their wrists so we would all know.... then I came to my senses because I know too much history. How did I do that? Critical thinking skills?!
You've hit upon a core! We are reluctant to belie our own democratic beliefs with "their" tactics. However, time and again "we" are pushed against a wall while the authoritarians keep on acting out and gaining ground. Witness Fox News and the Jan 6th insurrection as prime examples. (It first was touted as "Freedom" of speech, assembly, et al.)
For the hope the letter of Aug 7 brought, this one dashes that little spark. I'm so tired of reading about the lies being spewed by Faux Follies. Where are the truth tellers, and why aren't they given equal time? Why has insanity become the norm?
Look it's simple. Fox has figured out a way to monetize hate and anger. It's not news, it's 'angertainment'. Come on in. We'll fluff your amygdala, massage your limbic systems and, and, wake your inner reptile.
There isn't really any politics informed by morals and principles here. It's all about the Benjamin's. Dah!
…And I would add that it is misguided entertainment that taps into real anger and fear about the environment, loneliness, underemployment and globalization that has left many behind. People that fall into that rabbit hole of anger do not have to focus on working to try to solve huge problems and changes that are overwhelming. Democrats did not do a good job taking care of the middle of the country during the massive push to globalize. Republicans understand that people are angry and they are taking full advantage of that anger. And, further, knowing that Republicans do not want government to work COVID skepticism is a perfect cudgel to keep them in the game. At the end of the day it no longer matters what republicans say and do. What matters now is how democrats fight this war and that (my personal opinion) democrats win. Make no mistake, this country is at war with itself right now.
Of course, other than PBS, everything on TV (or in the movies or published as a book or magazine) is motivated by the desire to make a buck. But imagine what media would be like without such motivation. Dry, sterile, and of necessity, run by the government, like what TV will shortly be like in Afghanistan.
Although "angertainment" is clever and amusing, "the Benjamins" is not. I'm afraid that it rubs me the wrong way and fails to dignify/uphold the dignity of LFAA.
It no longer simply refers to the $100 bill. It has a double entendre and has been used as such by Bibi, Ilhan and others. Just think about it ... If you are Jewish and reread Charlie's post what does it say? Unless you clarify that you mean the bill, it sounds like a downright insult. Sorry, but words and terms change meaning with culture. So, in truth, clarification goes a long way and these days there are many terms which have become anathema.
Hey, Rowshan. I searched Ilhan's Twitter comment made back in 2019 to get in context. I must admit to you that I am having trouble keeping up with the nuances of many comments that are made here and elsewhere, due, I suspect, to a cognitive decline on my part. I even looked up the term "dah," which in the urban dictionary means "...insinuating that someone is retarded." I'm not sure if Charlie was referring to himself or just being sarcastic in his comment or none of the above.
Anyway, all around the barn to say thanks for your clarification.
We are in a verbal war. The right is using guerrilla tactics while we raise our hands and wait to be called. Nothing will be freely given, we have to fight to get our message out. The Fairness Doctrine is a distant memory.
Of course, one can find 'truth tellers' on CNN, MSNBC and PBS, but the gullible and ignorant don't watch these sources. Go into a hair salon, a nail place, a barber shop, a doctor's waiting room and see what channel the TV is set to.
Won't happen. There probably are anti-vaxxers and Trumpublicans among their membership. I occasionally see them before the cameras on Fox. And that Dr. Atlas to whom the former president gave a top position probably belongs.
I'm sorry, Elaine, but there is no longer any "both sides". There is one side representing common sense and democracy and there is the other side that represents lies and authoritarianism. The sooner we all stop talking about both sides and giving it any credence, the better.
In defense of Elaine, I am disappointed with CDC Director Walensky, whose comments, while truthful insofar as far as they go, sometimes commit errors of omission which mislead people. From what I see directly where I live, there are many more 'breakthrough' Delta infections of the vaccinated than her numbers suggest ... and ignore the fact that the initial vaccinations are beginning to wear off. Not quite lying, but certainly misleading.
Rachel Walensky is not a liar. Nor even close. Why would you say initial vaccinations are "beginning to wear off"? That is a comment that does not correspond with science.
There are dozens of vaccinated people with minor symptoms, if any, right here in my community now testing positive, far in excess of the CDC's percentages, which seem based on those requiring hospitalizaiton. And Pfizer's tooling up for booster shots here is scientifically based, as is the State of Israel's decision to proceed with them. Walensky is not a liar, but she chooses her words a bit too carefully. I am once again wiping down grocery packaging from stores whose probably unvaccinated employees, and those in hospitals here in Floriduh as well, are free to keep their vaccination status private.
Because truth tellers are “bad tv.” Not exciting enough. What happens to a guest who is making sense? That person is cut off by the host. This happens even on npr.
Here is an interesting quote by Bertolt Brecht (10 February 1898 - 14 August 1956). He was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director of the 20th century. You may remember the song "Mack the Knife" which he wrote.
"The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn't hear, doesn't speak nor participate in the political events. He doesn't know the cost of life, the price of the bean, or the flour, of the rent, or the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn't know that from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician corrupted, and flunky of the national and multinational companies."
Rant coming, and I'm aware that I'm preaching to the choir.
The NYT has a recent opinion piece titled What to Do with your Covid Rage. I'm too angry to even read it. My anger is all that's keeping me moving and from falling into despair.
I am a fully vaxed RN and also LMT. I saw a fully vaxed client last week , close contact obviously, and both of us wearing masks, a practice I reinstated recently as I kept hearing about "breakthrough cases". That evening, she called to tell me her adult daughter who lives with her and is an RN at a hospital but refused vaccination, had tested positive. My client tested positive the following day. Now here I sit, ranting to you, instead of the activities with others I had planned for my week. I'll lose a good chunk of income from this quarantine but the worst is not being able to visit with my son, DIL and grandson as planned for the first time in two months (you see where some of the despair comes in).
This is not the fault of immigrants, nor the CDC, nor Biden's administration as Faux would have us believe. This is the fault of a spoiled. entitled, ignorant young woman who, despite having become a nurse, has shunned science, and accepted conspiracy theories as a personal practice. Not only did she refuse vaccination, but in the face of rising cases and a dangerous variant, did nothing preventively to protect her parents at home from sharing the virus with them. No mask, no distancing. I imagine she would defend herself by saying, "Well, if the vaccine is so great, why do I need to do any of that?"
I've been thinking a lot about my mother in law. Dot and I did not always see eye to eye. She may even have voted for Trump in 2016 as she had come to increasingly refer to Obama as a socialist. But she was rightly proud to be a Massachusetts General Hospital School of Nursing graduate and worked as an RN her whole life. She and her colleagues worked like slaves as students at the hospital with no gloves, cloth masks, no protection against needle sticks. She felt nursing as a calling and was devoted, not in a smarmy way but a smart way, to the best possible patient care. She thought critically about things and didn't often hesitate to tell a doctor what she really thought or was afraid was going on with a patient. She nursed before a polio vaccine. I remember talking about universal precautions when I became a nurse in the early years of the HIV epidemic and she said, "you can't tell from looking at who you think your patient is whether they carry a dangerous infectious disease in their blood or body fluids or respiratory tract; we don't know what might be there that hasn't even been discovered yet.". She was a thinking nurse who cared at least as much about her patient's well-being and the public good as her own health and that of her family. She understood that her family's health was tied to the health of the community. She died in 2017 and she would be so appalled that nurses are turning away from what evidence has shown us is a safe, effective vaccine against serious illness from Covid, because they believe, against all evidence, that it might be worse for them than the virus itself. That it's all about them, not the patients, not the 60+ parents, not the public's health, is what she wouldn't be able to comprehend. She suffered no illusions about humanity and she cared for the ridiculous as well as any other patient. But that RNs all across the country could behave this way, that would be shocking to her. I wonder what she would have done with her Covid rage.
Your "rant" is what so many of us are feeling lately. I am so sorry that you, having done the right thing, have to go through this. Let's turn your rant into action. I have scaled back my letters to the editor and to my senators/congressman because I live in Florida, and they don't give a damn about what I think. My congressman, Gus Bilirakis, just sent out his weekly newsletter saying that hordes of immigrants are coming across the border and infecting us. So, let's all change our message. Let's "rant" to the paper and to the congresscritters and governors about how these unvaccinated and uncaring individuals, including nurses, are now causing US to lose our liberty and prevent us from doing the things we want to do.
I've just sent off an email to my father in law to invite him to join me in writing a LTE (a registered republican his whole life, he took a deep breath and voted for Biden) along the lines of my rant, or at least giving me permission to invoke his wife's name if I'm correctly guessing about how she would feel. He is enraged that people aren't getting vaccinated. He got his first shot the same day I was able to as a first responder, January 30, just before his 82nd birthday. Can't wait to read his response.
I just got an email from the hospital I work for. They're hosting a voluntary (sigh) virtual town hall for STAFF, not the public, to discuss "Vaccine Facts and Fallacies". I have a premonition this is a precursor to making the vaccine mandatory, as our friendly competition, Dartmouth-Hitchcock, announced last week they would be doing. I think they're hedging their bets that the FDA is going to confer full authorization on Pfizer within the month, and Moderna close behind. After that it will be much easier for them to insist on a mandate. Hopefully it will still make a difference at that point. Sometimes I feel like we are perpetually too many steps behind.
YES to your letter to the editor! Your MIL would be so proud. And, sadly, yes - the powers-that-be have been perpetually too many steps behind.
My workplace is doing the same and I’m hoping for exactly that reason. I was shocked to hear we’re not all vaccinated. Great idea about your letter ❤️
Interestingly, I learned at an ADA seminar that the EEOC allows businesses to mandate vaccines verification or regular testing. But they cannot force an employee to take a vaccine given by the business. They can request copies of the vaccine card given in the community. Little bit of a distinction, but noteworthy.
Good for Darmouth-Hitchcock! Glad they balked NH’s motto “Live Free or Die”. I had a physical exam there in 1990, so different than the old one in Hanover, where I made several visits in the mid 60s.
The whole idea that immigrants in Texas (who are tested, and quarantined if positive) could be causing infection spikes in Florida is worse than insane, it's homicidal, because it works against unvaccinated people realizing in time that they made a mistake and getting vaccinated.
Meanwhile, as I sit here in MA finally able to socialize a bit more, my vaccinated grown daughter is on vacation on the beach in Miami of all places. She could reasonably point out that she has no more virus exposure there than at her restaurant job at home, where she works with and around folks who are unvaccinated and unmasked. So I'm going to be even less social from when she gets back to when she gets a negative test result...
It reminds me of a little card my Dad used to have in his home darkroom: If you can keep your head while all around you are losing theirs, maybe you don't understand the situation.
Joan, I appreciate your dad's saying, never heard that one before. An early rendition of "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention"???
My vaccinated daughter also works in a restaurant, tiny little indoor place with outdoor seating as well in good weather. They've forgone the masks the last couple months and I said to her last night (she lives here) that she should really go back to it, no matter what others are doing. There's substantial community spread and such is the guidance for crowded indoor public spaces. And a lot of tourists from all over, and no one checking vaccine status at the door. Some days lately I feel like it's just a matter of time.
My adult son with special needs was working at a restaurant before the Pandemic hit. He was set to go back this summer since he was vaccinated but being indoors with people unmasked, even if he wore as mask, was a no for me. Can't take the chance as he is still high risk and the milder cases are where they see long Covid cases.
Dr. Fauci is certainly freaked out about it, and I really listen to that guy.
Dr. Fauci is my hero, for so many reasons!
A modernized variation, to reflect current reality, of Rudyard Kipling's poem "If". https://poets.org/poem/if
Thanks for the link. Still working on that manhood thing....
Great idea, Annette! SInce I have plenty of free time suddenly this week, I'm on it.
I always appreciate a reminder to channel my rage. 🙏
Thanks for articulating this so beautifully. My mom was a science and math teacher. Her best friend, of more than 70 years, was the Dean of the Nursing school at the University of Minnesota. Both of those women are spinning in their graves at the hubris of all who put politics and ignorance over the health of the rest of us. I wish there was a way to summarily fire medical personnel who walk away from science-based public health requirements!
There is a way to fire them. Mandate all personnel who care for the sick to be vaccinated and fire them when they refuse. They can all join a hospital that doesn’t require vaccinations and we must all stay away from that hospital. The mayhem that ensues at that facility will be a testament to the refusal to accept the science. Delta will see to that. None of this is “right” or satisfying for us but we have to protect ourselves so we can get to the other side of this nightmare.
Good idea - and that hospital can specifically cater to unvaccinated people with covid.
I am always astounded to hear of health care workers unvaccinated. Not only endangers those whose job it is to help heal but it gives fuel to the anti-vax as a reason to be wary of the vaccine. My neighbor's husband is head of infectious disease at our local hospita and her daughter an infectious disease ER doctor. She went to her doctor at that same hospital and was treated by a male Black nurse who was unvaccinated. She very politely explained why it was important for him to to be vaccinated and he could help others in his community to stop the spread of the virus and he was receptive to her talk and thanked her. He said he was totally unaware of a lot of what she said. Of course she was horrified with this being a hospital health care worker and went straight to her huband and they set about getting information and talks out to the workers. This was earlier this past winter and they are the only hospital I know of that has a pretty high vaccination percentage. This seems like such a basic given....
Oh. My. Gosh. After I read these comments and knowing that my husband is having a procedure at the local hospital tomorrow, I jumped up and phoned them for reassurance. Guess what? No vaccine mandate. WHAT? The girl told me that of course they mask and use appropriate protections and the majority are vaccinated. I said, "MAJORITY?!" I'm upset, for sure.
Prayers are on their way, Becky.
I'm glad you called them, Becky. They need to hear that their patients are thinking and concerned about this. Interestingly, in the beginning of the pandemic, I heard a lot of people saying they were afraid to seek care because they didn't want to get Covid - from other patients! It never occurred to them to be worried about getting it from their providers, who they trusted would be using lots of PPE and precautions. We were all in the same boat back then, no vaccine. Now that the vaccines are widely available, we assume providers have done as they should to protect themselves from patients and vice versa. But too large a chunk of them have not and it needs to change and fast. Best of luck to your husband tomorrow. All you and he can do now is be vigilant about how well they use PPE with him and take pictures of anything you see that is concerning. VT has one of the best vaccination rates in the country so there's that!
Thank you, Beth.
Some hospitals do. One in Houston took the lead. Now government agencies are following suit, such as Los Angeles County at least requiring routine testing in lieu of vaccination.
Houston Methodist system.
And they beat the unvaccinated employee's lawsuit!
The new religion: instead of confession before one can partake of the eucharist.
Thanx for the rant. I can feel the rage at the abject ignorance around us. I get angry every time the idiot, mass murderer governor of Floriduh, Ron DeathSantis is on TV spouting his unsubstantiated bullshit, then I get more upset that I am YELLING at my TV.
Go ahead and yell and let off steam. I enjoy throwing my slipper or flip flop at the TV also.
This is day 18 of my own quarantine after having been probably exposed to the Delta Variant while being tested for Covid by an ER nurse who was unvaccinated and whose mask did not cover her face. I was fully faxxed and this would have been a "break through." My "friend" was also fully vaxxed, but even though he too was probably exposed, he continued to barhop night after night in crowded venues. So, not only have I been in isolation for all these days to prevent the spread to others, I have ended a five year relationship. Your comment resonated with me so much. It's not so much that he was ignorant (his own mother was an RN and he knows better) but that he was "spoiled" and "entitled" and put other lives at risk. I could not condone that or tolerate it. I share your rage!
"This is not the fault of immigrants, nor the CDC, nor Biden's administration as Faux would have us believe. This is the fault of a spoiled. entitled, ignorant young woman who, despite having become a nurse, has shunned science, and accepted conspiracy theories as a personal practice. Not only did she refuse vaccination, but in the face of rising cases and a dangerous variant, did nothing preventively to protect her parents at home from sharing the virus with them. No mask, no distancing. I imagine she would defend herself by saying, "Well, if the vaccine is so great, why do I need to do any of that?"
Oh, Ellen, I'm so sorry. And I applaud your courage and convictions. One of the hardest things for me about all this is to watch how otherwise good people make terrible selfish choices that don't make any sense. And the unfairness of it all. You and I and millions of others are doing all the right things, likely even overdoing some of it, while millions are throwing all care for others, even those they purport to love, out the window in the name of personal freedom, as if that is the gold standard by which we ever aspired to live. I'm coming to believe more and more that unfettered personal freedom is incompatible with life, but as they say here in the Granite State, Live Free or Die. I guess they really mean it.
Certainly Sunono does, given that he signed the Medical "freedom" bill (I'm a NH resident too.)
Barbara, I know you're part of the KSC, right? I'll be looking forward to hearing what they have planned to prevent him taking Senator Hassan's seat!
So sorry, Ellen. Layers of adding insult to injury. And layers of your losses... May our regard for your righteousness help heal your losses. And of course may your wise precautions keep you healthy--a relative term in today's world!
Clearly, you are a person of ethics. Honor and blessings!
😔
Thank you! My rage comes from my wife of 50 years and 15 days being murdered by the last administration. I am on day 6 of quarantine myself, from a rogue caregiver who -- after switching planes 3 times and 4 different airports -- violated company policy and came into my home the next morning, untested and unmasked.
Only a call from the company telling her to get out prevented her from spending the whole day. I may have killed myself by letting her into my house.
I am so sorry for your situation as well; at least I'm not losing wages as you are....
Gus - heavens to murgatroid! What a horrible situation. I'm so sorry about your wife. That is a heavy, heavy loss. That caregiver should be drawn and quartered, but only after being tarred and feathered! There aren't words for that sort of behavior. A deathly threat to you and a huge liability for the caregiver company. Shout it from the rooftops! At 6 days, have you been tested yet? I'm waiting til day 5-6 unless I develop symptoms. Holding you in steady healing light and please keep us posted on your status and well-being.
Thank you Beth. It was company policy to test all employees returning from vacation. The director called within 20 minutes after she tried to clock in by phone, asking if she had been tested. When she said no, the director told her to "get out of there." The caregiver told me she HAD been tested when I asked her the same question at the door. I asked her to wear a mask, so she went back to the car and got her excuse for a mask. It kept sliding down to her chin because the elastic was worn out. Her nostrils were like a double barrel shotgun pointing at me!
The company had the right policy, and did the right thing. I blame myself this time.
Gus, the caregiver lied to you. Do not blame yourself. If we can't trust our caregivers we can't have a relationship with them. It's on the company to provide plenty of appropriate PPE. In the beginning it was hard to come by but there is NO excuse for that now. I'm glad the director was on top of things, as much as she could be from afar. They should do surprise inspection visits too.
I second everything Beth says, including the condolences about your wife. Must be hell to lose a spouse unnecessarily, after 50 years of marriage.
That is unbelievable, Gus!! I hope you'll be okay.
When a workman showed up at our house a few months ago unmasked, I asked him where his mask was. He said,"I'm not sick." I told him he could be a carrier and infect me and would he please get a mask or I'd give him one. After he inspected our roof, gave me the estimate, and left, I told my husband, "We're not going to give that company our business." And we didn't. Later the company emailed me asking our decision. I told him we weren't going with the company because of the masking incident. End of conversation. I wonder if the company even cared it didn't get our business.
I've noticed more and more that people are being willfully ignorant. They have just stopped following the news or thinking about safety or risk mitigation. If you mention the term "viral load" they look like deer caught in the headlights. They were good for a year but they are done worrying about it or they just don't understand the limitations of the vaccines. One of my friends sent me a comic that said, "Covid is the new IQ test."
I am sorry about your loss. I would rage too.
Best of luck to you, Gus. It’s feeling like the wild, wild, west these days
Oh, I am so sorry! That is absolutly horrific.
I was trying to show some empathy by including bits of my story, and as usual, I received more than I gave, so Thank You to everyone for your empathy and encouragement. This truly is a great community, and this truly is a hot topic. I am becoming so aware of what all of us are going through, and your examples of humanity give me an shot of strength!
Oh, Gus, that's awful!
I am so sorry for what you are going through, and share that "YOU DARE TO CALL YOURSELF A NURSE" frustration and anger. Healthcare workers, though, should never have had a choice whether to get the vaccine or not. Public Health Codes must be Public Health LAW: enforceable across the board. She should have lost her job.
You know what else scares me, MaryPat? That someone so clueless, so incurious, so non-thinking, so selfish is taking care of patients. Covid aside, I would be terrified to be sick in the hospital, dependent on others to evaluate and respond properly to my condition, if there were nurses like her on my team.
Yes, terrifying. And deadly. The American Nurses Association reported in May that 83% of nurses surveyed had been vaccinated against COVID-19, and recommended that ALL healthcare facilities require vaccination as a condition of employmen:
https://www.nursingworld.org/news/news-releases/2021/ana-supports-mandated-covid-19-vaccinations-for-nurses-and-all-health-care-professionals/
Thank you, MaryPat.
Thank you for your rant, Beth. Your mother in law was spot on and so are you. I am sorry your client's daughter has decided jeopardizing those around her is more important than protecting them. You are in my thoughts.
Thanks, Daria, much appreciated. Be safe yourself.
My heart goes out to you Beth. Pinellas County FL, where I live, has a current positivity rate of 18.47% according to the CDC (Florida public health posts lower numbers, and hides most data). This is the highest positivity rate since Covid began. We are also experiencing the highest hospitalization rates ever. Masks mandates, vaccine requirements, and reduced capacity are now forbidden in our state. Madness.
If the R's were really only against *requiring* masks and vaccines, and they valued human life, they would mount campaigns to get people to wear masks and get vaccinated voluntarily. They do not. All the evidence says they are in favor of increased infections and deaths.
I believe some good investigative journalist could put together some data that proves this. Hope someone gets on it quickly
I wonder what percentage of the population are retired and wealthy. Hitler euthanized the elderly and stole their inheritances.
Oh.
😡😨😣
And now we find out GOP states are intentionally increasing morbidity and mortality due to Covid as a political game to try to make Joe Biden appear like the Pandemic failure of TFG. People dying. Political theatre. 😳😳💔 https://www.wjhl.com/news/local/ballad-ceo-rising-covid-19-inpatient-numbers-and-pediatric-icu-patients-may-cause-er-delays/
I was reading Tara Parker-Pope's piece in the NYT about updated guidance for the fully vaccinated. A commenter from Texas - of all places! - stated in sorrowful polite terms what she could only have heard on Faux : that it's Biden administration's fault for following CDC guidelines in June that vaxed folks could go without masks, along with those vaxed folks "mixing" with the unvaxed, causing the Delta which she said was discovered in India in March and quickly spread here (uh, more like December but you got the second half right) and then mutate! The only redeeming thing about her comment was she mentioned that the media scared her family so much about Delta that they did rush off to get vaccinated - they had been waiting for more data! So it's all the fault of the CDC, Biden, we vaccinated and the media. I ripped her a new one.
Excellent. A little of the old "Verbal' unanimity."
Political theater with a fatal curtain call.
GQP madness is killing our country, our children.
And this may just be the saddest thing of all 😢
Political murder.
I hear you Beth! I think one of the things that has to change, is adding basics of immunology, epidemiology, and fundamentals of Public Health in our Nursing Schools and Medical Schools. They need more training and pandemic preparedness. We need to pay them more when they have taken these courses. Health Care workers at every level need to be aligned with Public Health officials. Otherwise they are vulnerable to the demagoguery lead lies that are prostituting as leaders and policy.
Actually, we had such training in 1991, when I took my CNA course. We trained with LPN's stopping short of their particular skill practice, but all the beside care is the same. It actually depends on the individual and how much they absorb of the training.
In the hospital, I alerted Infection Control of 2 possible nosocomial problems, which they remedied. (IVAC electronic thermometer with a red & blue probe and inch apart when Clostridium dificile was rampant. And, sharing blood pressure cuffs on an oncology unit with immuno-suppressed patients - with Candida in their armpits)
This from a CNA, the lowest in the Medical Practice hierarchy.
Thank you for your service AND for keeping the IC folks informed!
(I'm a retired RN of 47 years experience.)
Barbara, if you haven't already, would you consider contacting Concord Hospital and letting them know that as a retired RN (maybe from there???) and community member, you want them to make vaccination mandatory for CH employees? It sounds from your other comments like you're aligned with this idea ;-)
I even had some public health in my Army medic training, on the off-chance that as an infantry medic I might be the only medical personnel in a town or village. Water supplies, waste disposal, infection control. Air, direct contact, and 'fomites.' Primary inoculation portals: eyes, nose, mouth, wounds. I have never forgotten that training.....
The CNA, closest to the person as patient, most knowledgeable of the person in the bed. Most important team member!
We do teach these critical public health topics in all nursing schools, along with requiring observation in community health agencies for the ADN level, and community health experience for the BSN level. Nursing instructors also follow specific criteria for evaluation of students which include ethical standards and critical thinking skills. I fear in these times of nursing shortages and con man presidents, those standards may not be enough.
Hardly, and not enough, and I don't mean as a topic, I mean as a graduate level course in order to get that nursing or medical license. These schools have proven inadequate in teaching Public Health and have failed in pandemic response. There should be no debate with a HC worker about vaccines, mask mandates, and testing. Around me is a population of nurses and a few doctors that believe Fox News and their FB feed over their county Public Health Director, or they are scared to speak out locally for fear of offending their republican patients. I'm in a Red state and the population of nurses and some doctors ignorance is astounding. Speaking with several doctors from around the country on this issue of education and training, most admit they did not receive adequate Public Health fundamentals as a part of their med school nor residency.
This stuff is taught but some ppl have belief systems that are cultist and therefore unreachable. My wife was an RN the same time I became a CNA. (I helped her with her nursing studies, and was no stranger to working as a para-professional in free clinics in the '70s New Orleans & India.) Nurses must take CEU courses and even CNA's get in-service training.
However, there is discord on beliefs. During the AIDS pandemic, I was vocal in the local press and my wife & I often wrote Op-Ed letters in tandem. (I wrote them but the byline was always Brenda Boyte RN & Rob Boyte CNA) We wrote against the prevailing fear where politicians wanted mandatory testing (useless considering the window period for antibodies at the time and your next hi-risk behavior).
We briefly subscribed to a magazine in 1994, "Revolution - the Journal of Nurse Empowerment" but found the supported the stance that health care workers should all be tested for HIV, so that patients could decide if it was safe to have them providing care. Well, because of discrimination against HIV+ ppl, the laws made that diagnosis "superconfidential" and we as well as the ANA were against mandatory testing/disclosure for this disease. The mag got a lot of pushback from nurses including us and we dropped the subscription (as well as nursing schools) and got our money back. The "Nurses" like FL Gov. Ron DeathSantis, never changed their erroneous, useless & wrong stance and doubled down on it.
So, with some ppl, facts don't matter if the facts go against their cult belief system (or political posturing with the idiot voters).
True. I am sad to have to post so many 😣 faces. But I am also glad for all the activist work you and your wife have done. I, too worked at a free clinic in the early 70"s, when I was a nursing student. I told my favorite nursing professor, Dr. Henrietta Eppink, all about it, and she toured the clinic then set up a regular rotation of nursing students to help staff it! Dr. Eppink, in 1971, drove a VW Beatle, and always parked at the farthest corner of the parking lot, in rain, sun, snow or sleet. A model for environmentalism and health as well.
😣
Its interesting that in 1918, there was a HC worker shortage because of WW1 mobilization. There was also slow communications and censorship, so no one knew there was a pandemic. Today, there is a shortage of HC workers because many are burnout or even refuse to work in high risk places anymore, mostly due to too patients have too much misinformation and wrong information that is moving too fast for people to make common sense of it, only making it worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrNIFZ-TlJw&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR2OjgDRbnmkujH0EfrDnYxOJld5OrTO2T7AIRBvy1xqNLG-wYBR62tvuhg
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=630714347721666
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/children-are-dying-of-covid-at-an-alarming-rate-in-indonesia/articleshow/84747251.cms?fbclid=IwAR1qL89kZBRNb47Rdoi0V4wvbdmhCDkPhMEwn2sxkCxE20oxe0EVsLXfGk0&from=mdr
There are actually courses, such as microbiology, that cover many of these topics. public health is a required course in BSN level education. What I don't understand is the people who have passed state boards refusing the vaccine. Wilful ignorance.
It's a cult of willful ignorance and they meet on FB. I too cannot comprehend how one could get through nursing school, tough anywhere, pass the state boards, also no picnic, and not get in line for a vaccine.
I don't know how anyone who looked through a microscope in microbiology can refuse a vaccine. Infuriating.
The nursing program here and many places are inadequate. (Im not bashing all nurses nor ALL nursing programs). Our nurses need more Public Health awareness, Pandemic History, immunology 101, Vaccine 101. We had nurses holding house party's with upward of 70 to 100 people in their houses for birthday party's etc during the shut downs and in defiance of Shelter in Place orders. We have far too many nurses listing to the TV and FB, that are anti vax, that are telling their friends its not that big of a deal. It is absurd.
Sounds like Bedlam. Idiocy unlimited. Idaho?? gonna be hell to pay off that karma...
Yeuup. It’s gonna get bad here.
Where the hell are you that your nurses are so off the rails?
Idaho. and our vaccination rates are as low as the southern states less than 40%. Our state Epidemiologist just released a report that doesn't paint pretty delta future. No one is listening to her. Only two school districts in the entire state have mask mandates. It is as if the Pandemic is over for 75% of the state. Idaho's coming disaster will be in the news soon.
"Well, its eight o'clock in..." but its a lot of Republican's doctors and dentist too.
And we have several doctors and dentist spouting off Scott Altas's bs.
What Rob said.
8/6/21 SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California will require all of its roughly 2.2 million health care workers and long term care workers to be fully vaccinated by Sept. 30 as the nation's most populous state is losing ground in the battle against new infections of a more dangerous coronavirus variant.
Great news, MaryPat! I did write to our Chief Clinical Officer today to express my support in making the vaccine mandatory at our hospital system, and also to suggest making the viewing of the informational meeting Vaccine Facts and Fallacies mandatory as well. We have numerous annual mandatory compliance things we have to view and test on that have nothing or little to do with clinical care. I don't see why this shouldn't be one of them. If they have it be voluntary, the people that most need to hear it, those that are dead set against vaccination, aren't going to bother.
Excellent Work Beth!!! Yes to both!!
The only statement our completely clueless governor has made about all this is that "Mask mandates aren't a good idea." At least he hasn't gone as far as DeSantis and tried to basically outlaw them. He'd get a LOT of push-back from mayors in Atlanta and Savannah, who've defied him before.
You betcha! And a few others in overwhelmed rural places with tiny hospitals too. They figured Kemp wasn't going to bother with South Georgia, not enough votes down there. If I remember correctly they were right.
I'm very proud that my sister, a nurse, ran the COVID vaccination program in Fairfax County VA. I'm so sorry about your client's daughter, and that because of her you have to quarantine. You're definitely entitled to your rage. If I were running the show, I'd mandate vaccines for everyone who lacks a good medical reason for avoiding them.
That's awesome, David. She must feel so gratified to have the opportunity to do that. She really made a huge difference! I worked in our hospital's employee vaccination clinic once a week for the first three months and it was one of the best things I ever did. These were people who had already decided and gone through the process so I didn't have to convince anyone really, but in some you could sense the doubts, the hesitancy. The very first person I vaccinated was a late 40s PT who made it very clear right off that she was only there for her elderly mother's sake. I validated every reason everyone had for being there and did my best to soothe every frayed nerve. We laughed a lot and had a lot of fun. Mostly people were so relieved to be able to get the vaccine, they were overjoyed to be there.
Thank you Beth! Both about my sister and for your work in the vaccination clinic. I'm sure my sister is very gratified, although it was so much work that she was glad when it was over. She was working much longer days than in her regular nursing job.
I was among the relieved and overjoyed when I got vaccinated. I can still feel the smile that was on my face the day I got my second vaccination (Pfizer). (April 13)
Beth, I read your "rant" with a tremendous amount of empathy AND shared rage. I had my own recently departed mom in my mind the whole time I read your comment. She graduated nursing school in 1944 and worked as an RN until she retired in 1986--having served the last 9 years as director of nursing at the Northeast Georgia Medical Center here. She was old school to the max, and was VERY highly regarded by doctors and staff here as a "damn good nurse". (One very old doctor (hitting 90) actually came to her funeral service and kept telling me how they always knew that when "Mac Sellers" was running things, they knew there was nothing to worry about.) In her book, "old school" meant that the care and comfort of the patient was HER primary responsibility. It was "hands on" in a way that isn't done now to much degree. Call it TLC, call it "bedside manner", but the last few times she was in the hospital she noticed and bemoaned what she saw as a lessening of quality, compassionate care from nurses. It was interesting when she would talk to the nurses charged with looking after her--and certainly after they learned exactly WHO she was--they would come in and want to talk with her because she was this "living history book" of nursing. Nurses who would come to the house a couple times per week for home care would end up just talking to her. They were fascinated by her. ("Your mom is AMAZING!!") She also did not mince words, nor suffer fools gladly. I KNOW in my heart of hearts she would be infuriated at the state of things if medical personnel did not take proper precautions to ensure patients' (and colleagues') safety. I remember she said so many times since Covid showed up how glad she was she did not have to deal with something like that, and I know her heart went out to the people on the front lines of this pandemic. I'm pretty sure she would have little patience for medical personnel not getting the vaccine, and I'm sure she'd have been the first to want to make them mandatory. I can just hear her! "Then find some other field!..." or words to that effect. She trusted science implicitly--she remembered in medicine then being among the first users of penicillin and how they thought then it was nothing short of a miracle. Same with other vaccines. I guess it's a generational thing, maybe, but I still cannot conceive of the mentality of putting yourself and your loved ones, AND YOUR PATIENTS in such danger. Were my mom here, she'd be solidly behind every word you said! These old nurses were a hardy lot!!
Thank you, Bruce, for sharing your mom's story. I loved it! To tell you the truth, those old time nurses scared the hell out of me as a new nurse, but I learned more about how to organize myself as a nurse on a busy maternity unit from a crusty old nurse (who raised 5 boys while nursing full time!) on the graveyard shift than from anyone else. And as a patient delivering there myself, I knew that while she didn't have the gentlest bedside manner, I wasn't going to bleed out from a postpartum hemorrhage on her watch! She didn't miss a trick.
Those old nurses were dragons full of knowledge! And, typically, a sly humor.
Great description, Kim!
Sly humor! Yes!
I, too, felt nursing was a 'calling.' After 40 years, I no longer recognized the profession in the profit-taking enterprise of "healthcare.' Had to leave. Love your Mom!
Agree, it's very hard to be even at a not for profit hospital and see the decisions that get made from on high. Lots of admin, not enough providers.
Truth!
"Profit-taking enterprise of 'healthcare'." I am borrowing that.
Feel free, my sister.
Bruce, you must be close. My wife and I were/are frequent flyers at Northeast Georgia. In Gainesville, before all the additions and after, and Braselton. I have left a lot of tissue in both places....
My son in law is the acting director of security for the whole system, and when that gig ends this fall he’ll go back to supervising over at Braselton. He volunteered for the Graves Detail there, rather than endanger any of his officers, so I am very proud of him. If you ever need a name to drop, see me....
Cool! Almost no one is around from when my mom was there. A couple of the medical center top brass did show up at her service, which was very thoughtful, but almost all the doctors she worked with are long gone. She really was considered one of the last links to the old Hall County Hospital days...when she went there in 1956/57 it had all of 90 beds (they added 57 beds in '58) and maybe 20 doctors. Ambulances ran out of Little & Davenport Funeral Home. The whole system has really changed over the years. Fortunately *touch wood*, I've never been in the hospital here (that may change by the end of the year...), so I don't think I'll have any need to drop any names...at least I hope so! Thanks!
You betcha.
So tell us how you really feel!
All kidding aside it's killing me that healthcare professionals are still vaccine hesitant at this late stage.
1. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines started on 3rd base with the initial testing. The mRNA part had a long history of testing. Adapting it for COVID-19 was like tweaking an existing formula. It was tested before going live.
2. We are now 160 million vaccines given. A few side effects have cropped up, but EVERY vaccine/medicine has some side effects.
3. Final approval is right around the corner.
It's reasonable to be hesitant when there's not a lot of data but there was a lot of data with the rollout and now there's 8 months of post rollout data proving no big problems.
A lot of the hesitancy is due to people not wanting to be told what to do by the person who won a free and fair election by 7M votes and who are exerting the only thing they have left: their precious white privilege. Just a variation on the mindset behind Jan 6 imho.
Exactamente. I participated in a local school board meeting before 50,000 students return to school tomorrow (brick and mortar, no remote learning option open) and thought I was in an alternate universe. Of course masks and mandates and adult tantrums were on full display.
Oh yes. This board has also initiated a “moment of silence” to start each school day in every school in the county. It begins tomorrow. Participation expected by all in spite of separation of church and state since it’s “silent”.
God help us.
Oh mon dieu! Heaven help ya'll! The new swamp fever in FL is going to crash that state to the ground.
As Gus said, an excellent summary and pretty much what I've been saying to vaccine hesitant people for months. I've been vaccine hesitant myself in years past so I get it. But 8 months in now we are way beyond reasonable vaccine hesitancy. Now it is just stubborn obstinancy pure and simple.
A great summary that I am stealing from you!
I give it to you, stealing is bad Gus. ;-).
Love your rant, Beth. "You can't tell from looking..." is spot on. Women named Dot are extra gifts to those of us who get to have one in their life.
You’re so right, Lynell! My mother was Dorothy. I used to love when her siblings visited, and I got to hear her called Dot.
Love your MIL. Mass Gen was THE nursing school back in the day.
I graduated in 74 with a BSN, got an MA at Teachers College, Columbia, and a doctorate from USF. I think the ignorant young nurse, and all the others like her who are refusing the vaccine, need to have their licenses challenged. Clearly, there is a deep knowledge deficit regarding infection control (IC). IC is one of the most difficult subjects to teach as it involves things one cannot see without a microscope. However, IC and prevention is core curriculum for nurses. Clearly, this person didn't get the message.
I share your outrage at these so-called 'health care workers' who deny protection to their families, people who are patients, and their community. Inexcusable ignorance. One of the first lessons we teach in nursing school is that the nurse must care for her/him self. Otherwise the nurse cannot care for others. Basic.
Deep empathy for you and your family, Beth.
Yes, kimceann, this, exactly.
Michigan State University, '74.
Jane Mayer, in her August 9, 2021 report on the rich conservatives funding Trump's Big Lie about the 2020 election, documents the myriad dirty tricks wealthy, anti-democratic forces such as the Bradley Foundation deploy in their attempt to overthrow what's left of representative democracy in America and maintain the oligarch's hold on power. It's a grim account of the Trump republicans ongoing assault on voting rights and the lies they spread to distort the perceptions of ordinary Americans.
"Since the 2020 election," Mayer writes, "this movement has evolved into a broader and more aggressive assault on democracy. According to some surveys, a third of Americans now believe that Biden was illegitimately elected, and nearly half of Trump supporters agree that Republican legislators should overturn the results in some states that Biden won. Jonathan Rauch, of the Brookings Institution, recently told The Economist, 'We need to regard what's happening now as epistemic warfare by some Americans on other Americans.'"
Mayer's valuable piece confirms that we are now indeed on a wartime footing in our politics in this country, a war started by Trump and his band of miscreant outliers. By identifying the players and in exposing their deceits, including their attempts to falsely blame Biden's immigration policies for the spread of the Delta variant, Mayer has performed a valuable service by making it clear who the enemies of democracy are and thus helping lay the groundwork for prosecutors as they work to hold these grifters accountable.
Reading the Jane Mayer article in The New Yorker was a visceral shock to my whole being: physical and mental. It presents the magnitude of the assault on American democracy and paid for by hundreds of dark money organizations...all of which are tax exempt non-profits. I am literally shaking. American democracy is truly in danger from the Republican party. I can now understand why Republican senator Adam Kinzinger wept when he talked about his reason for joining Pelosi's Select Committee. I feel helpless and hopeless.
Well girl, you can collapse, but you must stand up again with some grit and intentionality to do your active part in securing our democracy.and it will mean going out of your comfort zone. Taking feet on the ground actual action. Heaven knows we need your smarts, teeth, and determination.
Now is no time to falter. And no need to feel helpless. Simply by keeping a strong sense of what is right within your self will give you a confidence that will influence those around you, and may allow you to more readily see and seize opportunities to spread hope, and counter fear and hatred. Keep the light alive!
Thank you, Syd,
Yes, helpless and hopeless 😢
Biden’s team is making progress. I wouldn't underestimate them. The scatterbrained hare will exhaust himself before he reaches the finish line and the slow but sure tortoise will sedately, with the dignity that comes from being honest, step across and win.
Mayer's article is excellent, but the fact is that we, small-d democrats, should have seen the threat decades ago. Kim Phillips-Fein's Invisible Hands lays out the foundational story of the anti-democratic movement that grew out of the reactionary response to the New Deal and led to the communist witch hunts of the 1950s, the hard-right politics of Barry Goldwater and to the election of Ronald Reagan. A bold line can then be drawn from Reaganism, to Gingrich, Cheney/Rumsfeld and to Trump.
We, democrats, have been arrogant, naive and complacent while the storm gathered around us. Only now are mainstream voices finally recognizing the events of the past year as a coup attempt. It was not an insurrection. It was a multi-part coup attempt, much of it executed in plain sight. January 6th was just its climax.
But it "wasn't" a coup attempt, as in past tense. It is ongoing.
And we must confront another deeply disturbing aspect of Trumpism. Yes, there is a hard core group of nihilists who seem set on "burning it all down." But more influential in the movement, and more
dangerous, are Christian and Jewish millennialists who are hoping for, and actively seeking to bring about, the discord and devastation that is to precede the coming of their Messiah.
This is the end to which they embraced Trump as a very effective means, just as the secular elements of the GOP coalition came to do.
Once we recognize this hard fact, we can better understand the seemingly self-destructive politics of the religious right. Climate change, global pandemics, racial strife, culture wars, and eventually, a religious hot war on secularism are features, not bugs, for this Book of Revelation cult.
Great thoughts. Thank you for defining that it is a a sub-group of Christianity and Judaism. The majority of us don't think that way, and are just as horrified about it as you are.
I think we have enough to be guilty about, without adding this to it....
What a horror, the situation described in painful detail by this article of Jane Mayer’s… It’s vile. It’s back to the Weimar republic and the Nazis’ backers. (Remember that Nazi racism drew inspiration from Jim Crow America…)
But now I’m going back to white South Africa and that classic rhetorical question:
“Would you give a vote to a baboon?”
No, I wouldn’t.
A pity, though, because baboons’ survival instincts and skills are without question far superior than those of human beings.
Especially human beings whose brains have been addled by decades of exposure to virtual reality and the black arts of Rupert Moloch et al. Always bearing in mind that stupidity is no respecter of persons or political allegiances, and dangerous stupidity (“higher stupidity”) is largely the preserve of persons with high IQs, well equipped to stampede the herd…
The above remark does not cover the strange being that got itself into the White House in 2016. Its defense politics resemble those of baboons and its baaskaap is quite as absolute as that of any baboon pack leader—absent the wisdom…
"Rupert Moloch." Perfect! Absolutely fitting. He has single handedly wrought more destruction to functional politics around the globe than any person I know of.
I’ve heard this current state of affairs we find ourselves in referred to as a “Cold Civil War”. I find I can’t disagree with this.
Even before January 6th I called it a slow-burning coup.
I thank the Creator every day for a free press. Even if it has to include the one note FOX free liars.
Is this Jane Mayer piece in the New Yorker? I want to find the article.
We believe this is the link, Laurie: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/09/the-big-money-behind-the-big-lie
This article needs a CSI whiteboard to connect all of the conspiracies and players.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/09/the-big-money-behind-the-big-lie
August 9 issue, pages 30 - 41 or the links below.
See below
yes
A friend of mine who asked an acquaintance if she had been vaccinated got the response "Of course not - I'm a Republican".
Blaming immigrants is despicable. I know it is simplistic, but parallels with 1930s Germany are unavoidable
My reply to her (and to same others I’ve encountered) …”so, your Republican leaders (put in your own choices) such as Trump, Hannity, Cruz, Voldemort..oh, I mean Scott, Tuckems, DeSanitize, Abbott…. They’ve all been vaccinated but their followers are not allowed the pleasure?
Hmmm. Sounds like you’ve been punked.”
Gloves off. Resisters do not respond to logic and thrive on looped argument. I’m resorting to implied insult and “ reverse conspiracy theory” (I just made up that term 😜) banking that it will fester and stay in their brains later. It’s what got them there in the first place.
Your comment “gloves off” really is an important one. It’s time…past time…for the rest of us to counter this BS. Fox has a megaphone spouting this nonsense and what do I hear from Main Street? Certainly not a great deal of opposition.
Opposition a-plenty, Annette. Just not loud enough, sly enough, bratty enough etc. I’m changing my tactics. Thousands of children starting school tomorrow in my state and now being used in the battle. Unacceptable. And I have a glint in my eye that always is there when children are being mistreated. Time to even it up.
Talk about fierce! May you have 1,000 angels at your back, Christine and Annette...the young 'uns are counting on you!
Love it. I’m in Florida too, so count me in!
https://youtu.be/XLhxF-Un39k
Yes, the Information Virus. Once you infect their brains, there is no antidote that can remove it. Insidious. Spread the word
I so agree with the 'gloves off'. These sinister bastards take advantage of politeness and say anything they feel like saying to get reactions. A stunning thing for me to hear is how Democrats are all about mind control. A supposedly educated nephew of mine ranted about how 'forcing people to wear masks' was just a Democrat plot at mind control. There's no talking to him...he just yells...do I just conclude that he's nuts?
Tell him that yelling anything about an inanimate paper mask like it is a black widow spider crawling up his sinus cavity is about the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard. Tell him what is needed is idiot control and to get some family pride in his brain or you will open a can of whoop ass control. And then sniff haughtily, toss your head, and walk away.
In such situations (ex: check out clerk at Home Depot), I reply "That's okay so long as you're good with being an accessory to the murder of others."
Or “Hope your ACA policy is a good one”.
Ooh, nice one, Jack!
You might be interested in a letter from me published in today's Palm Beach Post (circulation about 100,000):
"We should accept the fact that the Covid19 pandemic will last far longer than we expected it to because of the adamance of some who, for a variety of reasons, still refuse vaccination. The unvaccinated, besides risking illness or worse, also provide an expanding environment for the virus in which it can grow, spread and mutate, posing a threat to us all. But with few exceptions, attempts to identify the unvaccinated, these allies of the virus, meet with social and often ambiguous political opposition.
It then remains the job of the vaccinated to let everyone know who they are by wearing an “I’m Vaccinated” sticker. I purchased a roll of them online and offer them to others. Vaccinated people, if enough of them wear such stickers, will be able to more easily identify those with whom they might wish to avoid contact. A typical exchange might be: “Are you vaccinated?” followed by “Great, here’s a sticker to wear” or “No? Well, you should be! Bye.”
Wearing the sticker along with a mask is a great idea!
You might even try wearing the sticker ON THE MASK. When I run out of my current mask supply, I'll look for an N95 or KN95 with that printed on the mask.
Good for you having a letter published! Bravo. And the stickers are an excellent idea. I just ordered a very nice bracelet from Etsy "Vaxxed". It was quite inexpensive and there are lots of styles to choose from. Just a thought.
I have ordered these bracelets as well.
The last time I looked every single one of us is descended from immigrants. It’s the height of hypocrisy to castigate immigrants for anything. I think we are starting to see the gene pool self correcting, I know that I’ve been vaccinated and can swim.
It’s interesting to me (in a horrifying way) that the misinformation spreaders are sharing posts paralleling 1930s Germany pointing to tearing down statues and banning/burning books rather than the attacks on immigrants. It’s like the cheaters who accuse their (faithful) spouses of cheating on *them*! Projection, deflection and it succeeds in stirring the pot.
As well as Hungary few years ago and currently.
Honestly I believe so many Republicans ARE vaccinated, those with power and influence especially. However they choose to promote anti-vax and no masks. People with such power and influence should not be given the luxury of secrecy on such an important life or death issue.
I don't know if this administration can actually get to the point where they are willing to play hard ball. Biden apparently (according to reports over the weekend) is contemplating holding up funding for schools that refuse to have mask and vaccine mandates. Somehow I doubt that will work.
In my world this is a "Time's Up" moment but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the mindset of the White House. My suggestion: start hitting Fox Not-the-News with dozens of lawsuits and start making a lot of noise about it. Start talking about sedition laws and introduce legislation that makes disinformation--the deliberate lying--about crisis situations subject to them. It's a little John Adams-onian but it would be interesting to see what happens. Use Op-Ed people as mouthpieces of more extreme round 'em up and stick 'em on an island tactics. Yes: I really am done.
In the meantime, Garth Brooks, who has never been someone I think of as a hero, told people who wanted tickets to his concert in KC that they could get a ticket to the front row if they got vaccinated AT THE CONCERT. I am not sure but I think ticket sales were dependent on vaccination status (I think his entire tour is vaccinated-only). Apparently so many people who claimed they were having "trouble" getting vaccinated (it's free at EVRY CVS DRUGSTORE IN KC) lined up for the jab to get a ticket. Hmmmmmmm.
The Democrats are playing badminton while the Republicans have a pitcher throwing 100 mph fastballs directly at the dupe holding the badminton racket. The Murdock’s understand one thing, lawsuits, they have the money to defend but it costs them a lot to do so. All of the lying bastards that work for them should be named as well, while they have deep pockets they are fractions of what the Murdocks have. Talk about draining the swamp, when they look at how quickly their bank accounts are emptying, it might help to focus their minds, just like the clown’s lawyers who will most likely have to pay for the legal costs to defend against their frivolous lawsuits. When I think about what an insidious family they are it makes me want to vomit.
That is one of the best analogies for how Democrats and Republicans "play ball". I hereby announce that I am stealing that, may make a meme out of it. If I do, I shall report upon the responses I get from my RWNJ element.
RWNJ... some acronyms just out themselves...
That is so funny, Stephen. Ally, I looked for one second and was like, Girl, geez what does RWN…. and got it that quickly. Hahahahahaha. Some comic relief. This is a dark day.
What about a class action lawsuit? I think a large firm such as Morgan and Morgan should start the ball rolling.
To Mr Moloch
Our Controller
Eating people
is normal
Meat-two-veg-
And-potatoes
Daily
Weekly
Monthly
And forever.
I had to run into my local Walgreens Saturday morning . I was met at the front door by a nurse with a clipboard in hand. She asked everyone coming in if they have had both of the C-19 vaccines. An older woman ahead of me said, "no I couldn't get through to the County to get an appointment, so I gave up. The nurse said great you will have you first one today and I'll give you a reminder for when to come back for your second one. " The woman seemed so relieved. It did make me think, how many older folks aren't vaccinated because they don't have the patience or knowledge to get through to get their shots. She also said she hasn't been to the Doctors in 2 years.
I'm glad your local Walgreens is taking a proactive approach with incoming customers.
Daria, I agree. I was quite impressed by that.
Here in South Carolina, the vax is free to all those eligible and most medical practices, pharmacies, and hospitals have been taking walk-ins since the vaccine has been available. There hasn't really been any excuse for not getting it. Heck, my GP called when they got their first shipment and asked how many in the family needed the jab and when did we want it. And one of those isn't insured at all. (Unemployed, possibly unemployable, doesn't qualify for disability, not eligible for Medicaid, no ACA premium discount. DON'T get me started.)
I live in Central New York. From the start there were the age restrictions. However, that softened as vaccines became available. When I got mine, they had opened up our OnCenter Convention Center and very quickly Syracuse University and other local colleges opened their gymnasiums.
It worked best for people with computer access or family members who could help out, but not undoable if you had to rely on the County and calling in. There were definitely snafus with the communication factors. As far as I am concerned, with the exception of the elderly that didn't know how to get into the system, all that's left unvaccinated in NYS are the covidiots.
I love Garth and we need more of our cultural icons to be making the same kind of noise. Where have they all gone? Talk about a time when they could be making noise about the most existential matters... say voting rights... all I hear are crickets. Save for wonderful Willy Nelson at what, nearly age 90?
Well, COVID took John Prine last year.
I still get a tear when I remember that. 😢
Don’t forget about dolly, who gave a million to development of the moderna vaccine. But younger country stars remember what happened to the Dixie chicks after the invasion of Iraq. And when 58 people were killed in Las Vegas, at a country music concert, not a word about any sort of firearm regulation. Politically, country has been conservative. And now they can all be tarred with the same brush, “shut up and sing.” reluctant vaxxers need to tie getting vaccinated to something irrational, such as their love of a country singer.
Willy is 88 and still truckin'
FREE! It's freaking free everywhere you turn! And it's been free all along! Maybe if people had to pay for it they'd trust it more.
I'm done too. We are way past the "time's up" point. I understand that Biden wants to be perceived as a quiet, gentleman president but we're beyond that. There's not a single Democrat, Independent or Republican, in or out of office, who is successfully countering the anti-vaccine, anti-mask, anti-science message. The vehemence and strength with which the TQRs are spreading and reinforcing their false messages is a force that needs to be challenged aggressively, now.
“Maybe if people had to pay for it they'd trust it more.”
You’ve said it!
But it ain’t even an American phenomenon, this ultra-libertarian crap. We have it in a big way here in France.
And yes, animals can be wiser than humans, they aren’t subject to ideas and ideologies—and those can turn men and women into a mindless liberticidal herd driven to stampede…
Unfortunately there’s no cure for stupidity, no vaccine for pandemic psychoses. Only fear may work—but by then many will have died.
Especially among those whom white supremacists want to see dead.
Maybe some Americans will remember these words from a Frenchwoman on her way to the guillotine:
“Liberty, what crimes are committed in your name.”
Peter, you are so right...the ultra-libertarian phenomenon not just an American thing. I wonder what the tipping point will be for the "it's my right to live without your rules" crowd? Do their kids have to die? Their spouses? Do they have to lose their jobs and not find other employment? At what point is personal liberty an infringement on the common good?
The Americans who remember the words of Marie Antoinette have already been vaccinated.
Thank you, Daria. Someone sent me an item wondering how Londoners would have taken it if people had claimed the right to keep their lights on during the blitz…
(Oh, the lady here was not poor Marie-Antoinette but Madame Roland—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Roland)
Yikes! Mea culpa! Yeah, London would be an ink stain on a world map!
If the unvaccinated are potential murderers, can we lock them up til this is over?
Oh, if we could just...
Yes. I think we need to be more aggressive against disinformation.
Sorry, but there was no "vaccine check" for those attending the concert, according to the link I found.
Where are the moderate leaders Republicans like Mitt Romney? Why are they not standing up and taking the megaphone away from demagogues like Ron Desantis and Rand Paul? Their silence is as much to blame for the state of our country as the screed coming from the immoral power hungry autocrats.
Where are the news casters on ABC, NBC and CBS? WHY are they not hammering on the daily spew of lies fox "news" (entertainment) puts out?
That is the question! I’ve stopped watching “This Week with George Stephanopolis” because he always has folks from “the other side” and never pushes back. We need our Main Street Media to inform with truth.
Because, Lynn, the broadcast channels’ news orgs are also FOR-PROFIT.
That is the question. Why is disinformation not called out more. Ironically, Fox often “calls out” these networks.
I would bet Those news casters bosses are in someone’s pocket.
Rosie and Lynn, it’s really all up to Fox News, I think. Romney can’t “take the megaphone” away from DeSantis or Paul, meaning Romney can’t keep them from appearing on Fox. Fox decides who gets the megaphone, and how often. Similarly, it doesn’t matter what ABC, NBC, CBS, NYT, WaPo and HCR broadcast and publish about the lies spewing from Fox. Fox viewers will never know, because they’ll never see it.
Please don't put your hopes on the likes of Mitt Romney. He is all for discriminating against people who don't fit his mold. As governor of MA, he openly talked about gay people in the same ugly ways that Trump talks about immigrants. " Why some of those people are even having children!" he exclaimed, in a tone reminiscent of Trump's screed against Mexicans..."they're bringing drugs, they're rapists..and some, I assume, are good people." .?? He wasn't against gay people, he said, just against same-sex marriage, but his off the cuff remarks said otherwise. Romney's a privileged opportunist devoid of empathy and a bigot of the first order.
Recall, also, the following: referring to Obama voters...
"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.
Romney went on: “[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
(https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/secret-video-romney-private-fundraiser/)
Mitt's words are right out of the Reagan playbook.
Reminds me of the saying: "Oh, Lord, make my words tender and sweet, for tomorrow I may have to eat them."
Romney is a privileged, white plutocrat, guilty of all that you list. He’s also one of the 2-3 “least horrible” Republicans. Try not to compare Romney to decent, compassionate human beings. Compare him to Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis or Marjorie Taylor Greene.
If they're the standard for comparison, what's the point? We're already lost, and nothing short of another revolution will help. Hmmm....not so bad an idea.
Revolutions seldom turn out well. See Iran, Russia, Cuba, et al.
The thing to appreciate regarding Romney (and Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, Murkowski and a few others) is that they may start a Republican civil war. Trumpists vs. plutocrats. If it comes, sit back and enjoy. We don’t have to root for either side, just enjoy them tearing each other apart. And remember what Napoleon said, “Never interfere with the enemy when he is in the process of destroying himself.”
(...and we already know how much Susan Collins WON'T help.)
🤣 Rosie you are delightful. Sorry: Mittens is not going to save us.
Alas, my guess is that Mitt's moderation in all things is unappealing to the rabidly self-righteous, ringy-dingy-right-wingers.
Thank you, Heather.
If immigrants were truly bringing and spreading COVID, all the more reason to protect ourselves: vaccines for all who can and masks in schools. These methods have been proven effective by the credentialed scientists who study them, the highest authority we have on medical issues. Any politician who claims to know better is delusional and dangerous.
I had the same thought. DeSantis and Abbott are claiming that Covid is spreading rapidly in their states because of immigrants. Let’s set that debate aside for a minute, because it doesn’t matter if Covid is spreading because of raccoons on bicycles, or immigrants, or the rapid transmissibility of the new Delta variant. The proper response from a governor doing their duty to protect their citizens is to issue mask mandates, issue social distancing directives and expand vaccination efforts. Republicans are shouting “nasty immigrants!” while at the same time screaming “Freedoms! You can’t make us wear masks or get vaccinated!” Seems wise.
That would be common sense. They and their followers have embraced mendacious madness.
I often refer to the philosophy of the Republican base as “belligerent ignorance”.
Upvote for "belligerent ignorance" a precursor to intentional stupidity.
This reference just replaced my go-to “willful ignorance.” Thank you.
" Any politician who claims to know better is delusional and dangerous." Seems we have a lot of those kind of politicians. Dangerous for sure. Stupid, definitely.
The trouble with trying to be Trumpian is that unless you too are a sociopathic liar, your little bit of conscience will doom you. Good luck, DeSantis et al.
Opportunism is his one and only guiding star. Ethics will never cloud DeSantis’s judgement.
Yep. But Hutchinson is now considered a weakling because he feels bad about the carnage.
More bold hypocrisy in the great wide open. It works because their followers are not capable of Critical Thinking - even as some are "smart". The more they get away with this, the more they understand they can keep at it. And keep at it. And perhaps win all.
Authoritarianism does not happen suddenly. It’s like the collapse of the Florida condominium. Just like the concrete, over time democratic principles erode slowly, and suddenly our democracy comes crashing down.
Can it be repaired before it does?
As F. Scott Fitzgerald said about bankruptcy, "It happens slowly and then suddenly." The same can be said of Fascism.
I heard about a Holocaust exhibit at a British museum that walked people through a time line of exhibits showing the gradual takeover of German government by fascists until they turned a corner and found themselves inside a boxcar.
Like the frog in a pot of gradually heating water!!
Powerful.
That’s a great (and sad) analogy.
Yes, we watched it quite blatantly for years with Moscow Mitch. But behind the scenes there has been a lot of planning and dirty work going on. That is how insidious fascism roots itself in a trusting democracy. You cannot have a democracy without the majority trusting in its' premises. We have lost ours. If we want it back we are going to have to get our "huevos" and fight strongly.
Infrastructure disaster in Florida condo makes immigrant carriers a great diversion for de Santa’s.
It’s amazing how much history I’ve learned in the last year. Had never heard of these immigrants before: 😳
“During World War II, numerous ethnic paramilitary units collaborated with Germany to fight against Russia and the Allied Forces. The Bulgarian National Front, the Romanian Iron Guard, Ukrainian Nationalists, The Hungarian Arrow Cross are a few. When the war ended and displaced person camps were established, members of these groups as well as members of the Waffen S.S. found their way into the camps. The camps were run by the Displaced Persons Commission. Within the camps, the various ethnic groups were allowed to keep their networks intact.
A law enacted in the U.S. Congress in 1948 authorized 200,000 admissions to the U.S. over the next two years, and in 1950, it increased that number to 415,000. Many of those admitted to the United States were members of these ethnic groups.
Entities that would later be identified as affiliated with intelligence agencies were also involved in the camps. At the end of World War II, some of our former fascist enemies became our allies in the fight to stop the spread of communism. Nazi scientists were “laundered” and brought into the U.S. space program under Operation Paperclip.
Ethnic Groups in the United States and the Republican Party
After the immigration of many members of these units, starting in 1952, the Republican Party began to establish “heritage groups.” One example of this effort comes from Bellant’s hometown of Detroit. Arrow Cross was the Hungarian equivalent of Germany’s Nazi Party, and former members were moved into southwest Detroit, where there was a Magyar church and a large Hungarian population. Laszlo Pasztor came to the U.S. in the 1950’s and joined the GOP’s Ethnic Division.
Pasztor was one of the leaders of the 1968 Nixon-Agnew campaign’s ethnic division. According to Pasztor, Nixon promised him that if he won the election, he would form a permanent ethnic council within the GOP. After Nixon became President in 1969, the Heritage Groups Council was formalized, and Pasztor was made the organizer of the Council.
Bellant marks the Nixon Administration as the true beginning of the “New Right.” Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, adhered to politically extremist ideology. He believed that the need for law and order justified severe restriction of civil liberties. He brought conspiracy charges against critics of the Vietnam War, likening them to brown shirts of the Nazi era. Mitchell advocated for “no-knock warrants” and preventive detention. He once told a reporter, “This country is going so far to the right you won’t recognize it.”
The goal of a country dominated by Christian Anglo Saxons, controlled essentially by one party and secured through harsh and punitive law and order, is still alive and well in the New Right.” From Steve Hassan’s interview of Russ Ballant on his blog: https://freedomofmind.com/political-extremism/
Having done well for themselves for forty years by squeezing Americans economically and using the resulting distress and money to blame “those other people”, Republican politicians have gone one step further by effectively promoting the coronavirus pandemic. Their apparent goal is to weaken the country further, creating chaos and fear to feed their fascist campaigning.
Deadly lies. Twisted information. We are at risk for more than Delta. It has nothing to do with immigrants. Who is behind this quest for fascism? Who wishes to fell America to the idjts of authoritarianism? Why? This grand experiment quivers in the cross hairs of some potential despot. And other, perhaps more lethal, variants will arise. Fearful of our future, waiting for actions of congresscritters and DOJ to be timely and meaningful.
Don’t they realize that if our democracy fails due to their efforts that it will be open season on them, it would be the least we could do to honor our ancestors. Remember how the French Revolution turned from the monarchy to themselves, once you start swinging the sword, beware because it cuts both ways.
YES, WHO IS BEHIND THIS? WHO ARE THE PAYMASTERS?
And, apart from plain greed and grossly overweening conceit, what is the motivation, what is the purpose of it all?
We all know the hacks, the fools and the flunkeys, the carbon-copy Goebbelses, the political whores, the pseudo-leaders with egos like zeppelins…
But what about those behind them, those who should be behind bars and stay there?
Some 2000 years ago, Seneca remarked that “FOR GREED, ALL NATURE IS TOO LITTLE”. He can have had no idea of how far greed could come… Now the goal’s to own the Solar System; the reality, to turn it into endless desert.
Rather more recently (yet pre-Trump) I noted that:
Greed makes men stupid.
Greed rules the world.
So why be surprised that we are ruled by idiots?
Heather Cox Richardson is 100% right. A million percent right!!! We are being led by FOX FIX Tucker and Sean and Trump and Rupert Murdoch to follow Viktor Orban and Hungarian fascism. Mussolini and Hitler are smiling.
The Republicans are complicit and quiet.
This is deadly.
It seems to me that is is rather clear that Fox News is a prime source of the disinformation going round, from all the references to what they purvey. And beyond that is the sea change in our communications media as a result of the FCC Fairness Doctrine being revoked in 1987, which allowed outlets a free hand to broadcast lies. There is little hope of a shared set of facts under these circumstances.
FCC FAIRNESS Doctrine did not cover the cable TV industry. The AIRWAVES belong to the people of this country and could be regulated. Cable and now the internet are not regulated by the government. As we are now struggling with. The Fairness Doctrine is as old a a Stage coach as a vehicle. We are light years past it and need to debate this with more vigor. Creating what? …in a free speech country…….laws? I believe beyond a doubt that there needs to be strong, and harsh consequences for those people who support lies, like the “the BIG LIE” fox and other disinformation creators need to be dealt with now! But how?
Thanks for the additional facts and clarifying details for the problem. The "how" is hard.
Another super spreader in Sturgis right now. No masks. Hospitals filled up again. Fox. Rand Paul. Big dark money. Florida. Texas. Send the children back to school. Stones. Glass houses. Nightmares. Lies. Stupidity. Colossal nerve of x45 iDJT mass murderer to even show his face in public. Blaming immigrants! Can you imagine?
Desperate times call for “Despot” measures and Donald Trump is a Desperate man. We have to remember that as overwhelming as this all is WE are the MAJORITY!
The most important fight of our time is the right for ALL of us to vote and the count to be fair. Let’s focus on that one fight and keep our Democracy. Call and write and March. Now is the Time!
Rupert Murdoch
Well, I'd simply amend by saying it takes us one step closer to civil conflict. I recently watched a prospective "If there were a second civil war, what would happen video." A lot of it was impossibly contextualized or supposed. One thing it, interestingly, restated (it was a 2nd version) was that the threat of gun-owning/leave-me-alone types actually DON'T band together and move to violence as a cohort very well. I'm not enough of a historian or sociologist to agree or disagree, but what I think we DO know is that many leaders of The Right, are willing to do exactly that: do whatever it takes to stir up, keep stirred up and yes, as we saw on Jan 6, move people to violence. In fact, I think Jan 6 made them more dangerous in a way. I think several of them, since then, have inured themselves to any previous fears they had about the consequences of civil unrest. I believe they WANT to push for the next step. Again, as I say almost daily: vigilance. We must remain aware of exactly WHAT is going on, what it means, and the ramifications. Ordinary citizens cannot let their weariness--of the bickering, the lies, the pandemic, etc--allow them to withdraw and not pay close attention.
If there were a civil war? I think 100 years from now (if we endure as a species) what will be recorded is that a 2nd civil war began in this country on November 10, 2016. When and how it ends seem out of reach at the moment.
If you take the long view, in my opinion it was well before November 10, 2016. It was Ronald Reagan who gave this debacle its start.
I see your point. I think we’ve been distracted and grown complacent since Reagan, though. Lots of reasons for that. 11/10/16 was the moment of awakening for ALL of us, the horrified and the elated. It’s when mobilization and organization for democracy began again in earnest. But if you really want to take a long view, Heather might say the first civil war hasn’t ended yet. The South has never surrendered or given up on slavery.
I agree 100%.
To me it’s pretty simple with respect to the anti-vaxxers: Don’t want to get vaccinated? Okay. But, freedom of choice does not mean freedom from consequences. So, that means that your health insurer should be completely free to hike your rates and deny coverage for any Covid treatment that you may require. Hospitals should be able to bill you whatever they want for Covid treatment. Oh, and lest I forget, any medical bills necessitated by Covid treatment should not be permitted to be discharged in a bankruptcy filing.
Note: None of this would apply to anyone who has a medical issue that prevents them from getting vaccinated.
Along with personal 'authority' (read freedom) comes personal responsibility. I'm surprised this hasn't already started.
And while I'm at it. Why is it that the right to do what you want with your body applies here in conservative thought but not when it comes to women's 'right to choose'? I know it's a rhetorical question.
Rhetorically, the answer is "Protecting the life of the unborn...or innocent babies." It's a powerful response with historical precedent in religious beliefs that God ordained the creation of the child and the mother's life is only the vehicle. So much in our contemporary society stems from "antediluvian" reasoning. (My own response to that argument is, "Strange that God would change his mind. One-third of first pregnancies miscarry." Or, "I wonder why God would choose an incestuous rapist for the father?")
Strange that "God" would let weapons of mass destruction be created and handed out like candy to the citizenry so all those children (including those they might save) who were once in someone's womb can be massacred at schools and other places. Is that not blasphemy in their world? Sorry, that was too rational for 2021.
Interestingly, most ppl of faith had no problem staying out of women’s health&wellness concerns until the Rs decided they needed to tap the large Christian electorate. Their plan? Make abortion a religious issue.
Just Another sneaky way the Rs have slithered under the radar, building toward this frightening mess we find ourselves in.
Hope, THanks for the clarification. I have trouble thinking in 'antediluvian terms. Love oyur come back quesitons.
Oh, dear, Charlie. I just read the other day about a Democratic governor in a red state who said words to the effect, "Show you're pro-life, get the vaccine." Of course I can't remember who said it, nor can I find the article!
Oh, this is being talked about on my RWNJ feeds.
Right Wing Nut Job?
I wonder how the health insurance companies are actually handling it? It’s true, I get a better rate when I do preventative healthcare. That rule should apply to being vaccinated against the virus! The lies spewed by the right wing are despicable too! Do these people really realize that they are paving the way to the destruction of our Democracy, in favor of an Autocracy? Heaven forbid!
The ACA policies can’t discriminate based on pre existing conditions (including willful ignorance). Don’t know about company provided health insurance. We really don’t want to make health insurance any more political than it already is.
That in itself sounds pretty fascist and authoritarian.
Excuse me, but how? This is simply allowing the free market (in this case, insurers) charge what they want for risky (in terms of health) behaviour. It further places the onus on those who make the choice not to get vaccinated. I think that you're conflating freedom with anarchy. Being part of society involves both rights and responsibilities. It's not a one-way street.
Besides, I don't see how insurance companies charging more for risky behavior has anything to do with government. People who use tobacco pay higher rates than people who don't. People who don't wear helmets while riding motorcycles pay higher rates than those who do wear helmets.
I pay more to live in a hurricane zone.
You’re really good, Elaine. Most trolls arent as subtle and are, therefore, much less effective.
Yeah. It made me think of tattooing them on their wrists so we would all know.... then I came to my senses because I know too much history. How did I do that? Critical thinking skills?!
You've hit upon a core! We are reluctant to belie our own democratic beliefs with "their" tactics. However, time and again "we" are pushed against a wall while the authoritarians keep on acting out and gaining ground. Witness Fox News and the Jan 6th insurrection as prime examples. (It first was touted as "Freedom" of speech, assembly, et al.)
For the hope the letter of Aug 7 brought, this one dashes that little spark. I'm so tired of reading about the lies being spewed by Faux Follies. Where are the truth tellers, and why aren't they given equal time? Why has insanity become the norm?
Look it's simple. Fox has figured out a way to monetize hate and anger. It's not news, it's 'angertainment'. Come on in. We'll fluff your amygdala, massage your limbic systems and, and, wake your inner reptile.
There isn't really any politics informed by morals and principles here. It's all about the Benjamin's. Dah!
"Angertainment". Another thing that I am stealing from today's commenters. Boy, does that describe the process going on over "there".
Ally, please use it widely and wisely.
…And I would add that it is misguided entertainment that taps into real anger and fear about the environment, loneliness, underemployment and globalization that has left many behind. People that fall into that rabbit hole of anger do not have to focus on working to try to solve huge problems and changes that are overwhelming. Democrats did not do a good job taking care of the middle of the country during the massive push to globalize. Republicans understand that people are angry and they are taking full advantage of that anger. And, further, knowing that Republicans do not want government to work COVID skepticism is a perfect cudgel to keep them in the game. At the end of the day it no longer matters what republicans say and do. What matters now is how democrats fight this war and that (my personal opinion) democrats win. Make no mistake, this country is at war with itself right now.
Of course, other than PBS, everything on TV (or in the movies or published as a book or magazine) is motivated by the desire to make a buck. But imagine what media would be like without such motivation. Dry, sterile, and of necessity, run by the government, like what TV will shortly be like in Afghanistan.
Although "angertainment" is clever and amusing, "the Benjamins" is not. I'm afraid that it rubs me the wrong way and fails to dignify/uphold the dignity of LFAA.
?? What has a ref to $100 bills feeding the angertainment industry got to do with the dignity of this newsletter?
To some it may appear to be an anti semantic slur? Not sure, wondered myself. Usually I’m in complete agreement with Rowshan.
I am not familiar with the "the Benjamins" term.
It refers to the $100 bill that has a portrait of Benjamin Franklin.
Okay, thanks. So agree with your comment above, Rob.
Bob, Diane, and Lynell,
It no longer simply refers to the $100 bill. It has a double entendre and has been used as such by Bibi, Ilhan and others. Just think about it ... If you are Jewish and reread Charlie's post what does it say? Unless you clarify that you mean the bill, it sounds like a downright insult. Sorry, but words and terms change meaning with culture. So, in truth, clarification goes a long way and these days there are many terms which have become anathema.
Hey, Rowshan. I searched Ilhan's Twitter comment made back in 2019 to get in context. I must admit to you that I am having trouble keeping up with the nuances of many comments that are made here and elsewhere, due, I suspect, to a cognitive decline on my part. I even looked up the term "dah," which in the urban dictionary means "...insinuating that someone is retarded." I'm not sure if Charlie was referring to himself or just being sarcastic in his comment or none of the above.
Anyway, all around the barn to say thanks for your clarification.
I don't think that Charlie intended any ill will except towards 🦊 -- I just wanted him to know that it can be offensive
We are in a verbal war. The right is using guerrilla tactics while we raise our hands and wait to be called. Nothing will be freely given, we have to fight to get our message out. The Fairness Doctrine is a distant memory.
Of course, one can find 'truth tellers' on CNN, MSNBC and PBS, but the gullible and ignorant don't watch these sources. Go into a hair salon, a nail place, a barber shop, a doctor's waiting room and see what channel the TV is set to.
I’ve noticed a change. It’s now HGTV or endlessly streaming Law and Order. Maybe voices are making a difference.
Must get the American Medical Association to bar Fox news in waiting rooms.
yes, it is a public health issue!
Won't happen. There probably are anti-vaxxers and Trumpublicans among their membership. I occasionally see them before the cameras on Fox. And that Dr. Atlas to whom the former president gave a top position probably belongs.
I’m grateful I live in a liberal state where the medical offices usually have the tv tuned to local news!
You have to be careful of that "local news" as well. It is often infiltrated with Sinclair poison ... they own many local stations.
Mine, too. Poisons local minds.
Both sides lie to one degree or another. Truth is hard to find.
"Both sides?" Didn't you get the memo? That is a derogatory, offensive catch-phrase used by a white-supremacist big-lying disgrace of a POTUS.
I'm sorry, Elaine, but there is no longer any "both sides". There is one side representing common sense and democracy and there is the other side that represents lies and authoritarianism. The sooner we all stop talking about both sides and giving it any credence, the better.
you here to sow discord? Truth is not hard to find.
God Help Us!😰
Elaine — Are you related to Hugh by any chance?
Too subtle???? C’mon, guys ….
In defense of Elaine, I am disappointed with CDC Director Walensky, whose comments, while truthful insofar as far as they go, sometimes commit errors of omission which mislead people. From what I see directly where I live, there are many more 'breakthrough' Delta infections of the vaccinated than her numbers suggest ... and ignore the fact that the initial vaccinations are beginning to wear off. Not quite lying, but certainly misleading.
There are criteria for counting a 'case.'
Rachel Walensky is not a liar. Nor even close. Why would you say initial vaccinations are "beginning to wear off"? That is a comment that does not correspond with science.
There are dozens of vaccinated people with minor symptoms, if any, right here in my community now testing positive, far in excess of the CDC's percentages, which seem based on those requiring hospitalizaiton. And Pfizer's tooling up for booster shots here is scientifically based, as is the State of Israel's decision to proceed with them. Walensky is not a liar, but she chooses her words a bit too carefully. I am once again wiping down grocery packaging from stores whose probably unvaccinated employees, and those in hospitals here in Floriduh as well, are free to keep their vaccination status private.
Probably because Dr. Fauci has suggested booster shots may be needed as early as this fall.
Because truth tellers are “bad tv.” Not exciting enough. What happens to a guest who is making sense? That person is cut off by the host. This happens even on npr.
Here is an interesting quote by Bertolt Brecht (10 February 1898 - 14 August 1956). He was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director of the 20th century. You may remember the song "Mack the Knife" which he wrote.
"The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn't hear, doesn't speak nor participate in the political events. He doesn't know the cost of life, the price of the bean, or the flour, of the rent, or the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn't know that from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician corrupted, and flunky of the national and multinational companies."
Odd, i spent all day yesterday on Brecht’s 3 Penny Opera.
Yes, that is odd. I'm sure you had a great day with it!. "Oh the shark bites..."