Thread by @JuliusGoat

The downtown hospital in my MI city is getting National Guard medical to help deal with a massive surge of ~95% unvaxxed Covid patients—and all I can think is next time we have a Republican governor that won't happen b/c fighting deadly diseases is a partisan issue now.

https://twitter.com/LOLGOP/status/1463854474833940482

The great idea of the Republican Party is that government is always bad, and therefore government will always fail ... which led them to strategically try to make government always fail ... which led, eventually, inevitably, to this.

It's a civic murder/suicide pact.

The idea of government preventing a million deaths is, apparently, a more terrible outcome to conservative politicians and the majority of their voters than is a million preventable deaths.

Ideas can act like viruses.

The idea that government is always bad is an idea that reduces to the idea "there is no society."

The idea that there is no society is a viral one, and Covid denialism is its latest strain—a deadly one.

They're not against the vaccine because drug companies profit. After all, conservatives also oppose and vote against drug price regulation currently on proposal.

They're antivax because the government provides it.

They oppose not because it is expensive, but because it's free.

And even the "sane rational conservatives" not actively in favor of a million deaths won't stop voting for politicians who will refuse to prevent the million deaths, because the "sane rational conservatives" have contracted the idea that government is always the problem.

Want conservatives to support the vaccine? Make it too expensive for poor people to get, so conservatives can feel it's something only good people earn, They'll then organize programs to provide it to only the poor people they personally feel have proved themselves deserving.

And sure then a million preventable deaths will still occur, but conservatives will have control over *which* deaths, and the vaccine will stop being such an issue for them.

A government-based solution to a problem? They'd rather die—and take as many of us with them as possible.

Think I'm being uncharitable? Maybe.

Not sure why we'd assume *charitable* reasons for a movement actively working to spread a deadly virus and actively working against the spread of the vaccine, but if you want to find one, be my guest.

I'm just going off what they do and say.

I think it's unacceptable that the rest of us have to exist with this knowledge of so many people in our communities who'd rather kill and die than give up their sense of control over the fate of their fellow humans.

I think it's unacceptable—and I think it's OK to say that.

I particularly find it unacceptable that these people—mostly conservative, mostly white—are systemically given such outsize actual control, and that the distress they feel when we propose taking that control away is treated as trauma equivalent to the deaths of their victims.

The people least concerned with the lives of others are given the most control over the lives of others, as a deliberate foundational feature of our country's political system.

That system has to change. If that makes you uncomfortable, best to examine within yourself why.

I'm not particularly worried about dealing with any conservatives in my family this holiday season.

I'm more interested in becoming the person they're worried about dealing with.

I have no interest in entertaining unacceptable ideas. I think that's OK.