“I HAVE NEVER KILLED ANY ONE, BUT I HAVE READ SOME OBITUARY NOTICES WITH GREAT SATISFACTION." - CLARENCE DARROW

I plead guilty to getting that certain feeling of satisfaction Darrow was alluding to, when I read the following news:

Far right wing Florida talk radio host Marc Bernier, ho called himself “Mr. Anti-Vax,” died from COVID-19 this past Saturday after three weeks of hospitalization on a ventilator. His last tweet compared vaccine mandates to Nazism:

A week before Bernier Made America Great Again with his permanent departure, Phil Valentine, a religious conservative radio host who campaigned against the vaccine, died from the virus. After he was diagnosed in July, his brother told The Tennessean that Valentine regretted “not being more adamant about getting the vaccine.”

Earlier this past month, Dick Farrel, a West Palm Beach Florida right-wing radio personality who was also a Newsmax substitute host, died after contracting the virus and being placed on a ventilator. Throughout the past year, he used his platform to play down the pandemic. When the vaccines became available, he cast doubt on them, tweeting as recently as ten days before being diagnosed with the virus: “Vaccine Bogus Bull Shid!, Two peeps I know, got vaxed, now have Corona, hospitalized critical. Thank you Moderna, FOR NOTHING!’” He erroneously told his followers they would not need the vaccine if they had already survived COVID-19 and frequently said no one should get the vaccine and called White House COVID-19 expert Dr. Anthony Fauci a “power tripping lying freak” and the pandemic a “scam-demic” on his show. According to his wife, when he was in the hospital he ultimately regretted not getting vaccinated.

Jimmy DeYoung, a Christian radio broadcaster in Chattanooga, Tennessee, whose show, Prophecy Today, was heard on 1,500 stations worldwide, made a point of spreading skepticism about the COVID-19 virus and questioned the efficacy of vaccines. In February, DeYoung published an interview promoting the conspiracy theories that the Pfizer vaccine would make women sterile and that world governments were using the virus and vaccine to centralize power. Sam Rohrer, a frequent guest who was on the show that day, said that very few people who were infected lost their lives, calling the vaccine only a “purported solution” and “not truly a vaccine.” He stated that the vaccines wouldn’t deliver on the promises national leaders put forth. Rohrer agreed when De Young asked, “Could this be another form of government control of the people?” When Rohrer finished his conversation about the “deceptiveness” of government officials related to the vaccines, DeYoung called it “very, very important information.” He was hospitalized with COVID-19 on Aug. 7, according to The Chattanoogan, and died from the virus on August 15.

H. Scott Apley, 45, was a member of the Texas Republican Party’s governing board. “I wish I lived in the area!” he wrote this spring about a “mask burning” party in Cincinnati. According to the Washington Post, he once replied on Twitter to a doctor’s post celebrating the effectiveness of Pfizer’s shots against the coronavirus: “You are an absolute enemy of a free people.” On On Wednesday, August 11, the Dickinson City Council member republished a Facebook post implying that vaccines don’t work. On Friday August 13, Apley was admitted to a Galveston hospital with “pneumonia-like symptoms” and tested positive for coronavirus. He was sedated and put on a ventilator. He died on Wednesday August 17..

30-year old Caleb Wallace was the Texas organizer of an anti-mandate “Freedom Rally” on July 4th, a gathering described in a flyer as a peaceful protest by people “sick of the government being in control of our lives.” He also founded “The San Angelo Freedom Defenders,” a group “to educate and empower citizens to make informed choices concerning local, statewide, and national policy and to encourage them to actively participate in their duty to secure God-given and constitutionally protected rights,” the group’s Facebook page stated. He got sick in late July. His wife related that “He was so hard-headed. He didn’t want to see a doctor, because he didn’t want to be part of the statistics with COVID tests.” He then tried Ivermectin, the livestock dewormer for which use in treating COVID-19 has been denounced by the FDA, and also took high doses of vitamin C, zinc aspirin and an inhaler. He died last Thursday.

These reported deaths in these circumstances raise the nagging question: why has this happened so often? It’s possible these are just random anecdotes, but coming as relentlessly as they have over the past month, it feels like a dark, tragic pattern - as if Evolution was trying very hard to make a point.

Did these idiots start to believe their own bullshit and begin to act accordingly? How much have they encouraged others around them to do the same? The connecting point of each of these stories is that they were not merely skeptics, but were rather active spreaders of disinformation.

They were influencers who mocked medical experts, flouted their defiance, and encouraged their listeners and followers to do the same.

Similar messages care broadcast daily on far right talk radio and lead the evening broadcast on Fox News.

One thing we do know is that these people all claim to be “conservatives.” As Charlie Sykes pointed out the other day:

“Good luck finding a coherent strain of conservative principles behind these GOP moves. Until about five minutes ago, conservatives opposed centralized, top-down regulations and fiercely defended the right of businesses to make their own decisions. They also understood ‘personal responsibility’ was not a license to recklessly endanger others.

“Until the latest war on vaccine passports, Republicans had also prided themselves on their belief in the principle of subsidiarity, which former House Speaker Paul Ryan defined as the belief that ‘government closest to the people governs best.’ Big government, he argued, crowded out civic society, which was why conservative supported ‘having enough space in our communities so that we can interact with each other, and take care of people who are down and out in our communities.’

“All of that now feels so last decade. In its place, conservatives have embraced less an idea than a slogan. Opponents of the vaccine and mask mandates insist they are fighting to protect ‘Freedom!’ But their opposition to basic public health measures would have seemed bizarre to earlier generations of conservatives.

“If people were rational, you’d see logic chains that went something like this:

“If you want to get life back to normal—then you are willing to do everything possible to stop the spread of COVID. If you want schools to open—then you support incremental safety measures, such as wearing masks. If you do not want people wearing masks—then you want everyone vaccinated.

“But about a third of the country follows a chain that goes pretty much in the opposite direction:

“No one should be told to get vaccinated. No one should wear masks. Everything should be open and normal. Vaccines are dangerous and should be resisted. But random drugs used for other purposes are miracle cures that everyone should take.”

These people claim to be nervous about taking a tested vaccine meant for humans that has now been officially approved by the FDA, but they are standing in line to guzzle veterinary medication? Seriously! Farm stores are putting out signs saying they will not sell Ivermectin unless the would-be buyer shows a photo of them with their horse!

I’ve said this more than once in the past 18 months: a biologist friend of mine told ne at the outset of all this, “A pandemic is evolution’s IQ test. There’s only one question: are you intelligent enough to take this information and modify your behavior in a way that will maximize your likelihood of survival?”

I’m sorry to say that I am now at the point where I hope they all follow the examples of the denialists whose stories are above. Make America Great Again with your permanent departure!

The South is facing a natural disaster in Hurricane Ida, with no way of helping those who are injured in the event, because all the ER rooms and ICU beds are full of morons too stupid to listen to people who know what they’re talking about and get vaccinated. They’re at the point now where they boo their fearless leader when he suggests they get vaccinated and says he did!

The best writer of fiction couldn’t have come up with this story - they would have dismissed the idea out of hand as completely unbelievable.

In closing...

There were quite a few new paid subscribers who signed on over the weekend. Allow me to say Thank You to all of you! And to those who are not yet a paid subscriber, you’re NATO allies to my America: I’ll complain about you not paying, but I will love you anyway. If you can afford a subscription, however, please do it.

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