Anti Vaxxers Keep On Truckin’ as Mandates Wind Down
COVID ain’t over. But it may as well be.
Roughly 2500 Americans are dying each day from COVID 19.
On Monday, the 12 ton bell at the National Cathedral rang 900 times, one for every thousand people who have lost their lives to the virus during the pandemic. Fatalities, primarily among the unvaccinated, from the latest wave of infections increased by 25% last week.
BUT, as far as American politicians are concerned, it’s finito. I’m guessing they’re seeing polling indicating public weariness with various pandemic-related restrictions.
The lack of a clear and consistent message combined with the reality that a quarter or so of the population can’t be bothered have worn us down. (Please hold on to that bitter taste in your mouth when you go to vote this fall.)
States with indoor mask mandates are (or will be) dropping them soon, as the national infection rate from the Omicron variant has dropped 62% over the past week.
So, as government imposed public health measures fade, what are the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers going to do? Given that truth has never been their strong suit, I’m sure the noise about “mandates” will continue for a while.
Well, hold onto your hats folks, there are plenty more grievances to be exploited, and chances are good you’ll be hearing about them soon. If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice an increasingly obvious overlap with the book burners, the Capitol seditionists, and their sadist storm troopers.
A multimillion dollar surge of donations from the more well-to-do righties in the U.S. to Canadian convoys organized by grifters, white nationalists, and anti-vaxx types is actually a long term bet on this movement spreading to the mainland in coming weeks.
Tucker Carlson and his appendages at Fox News have jumped on this possibility, with aforementioned talking heads gleefully speculating about the possibility of starvation in major cities as food supplies are shut down.
Given that the right has little more than the politics of NO to run on as the midterms approach, an economic disruption looks like a golden opportunity. And since the Republican National Committee has adopted the stance that acts of violence are just legitimate political discourse, anything will be permitted.
Here’s Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce on the trucker/midterm connection:
This is coming to a nightly newscast near you. It’s not like this country lacks for coal-rolling, cosplaying minutemen-on-wheels, and it’s not like we lack for vandalistic billionaires to fund them. And it’s not like the Republican Party has the will or desire to control them.
Unless I’m wrong about all the symptoms of the prion disease that I’ve observed over the past four decades, it’s going to be impossible for the GOP to resist using this kind of thing during the 2022 midterms. It’s got everything going for it: white working-class male rage, COVID exhaustion, fossil fuels, and really big trucks going toot-toot-toot.
If you’re making a revolution based on a third-grade tantrum, you have everything you need, and every other midterm election since 2008 has been a third-grade tantrum. If you can’t envision, say, a blockade of trucks around the offices of various secretaries of state, or blaring past polling places in “certain” neighborhoods, you haven’t been paying attention. That’s a big 10-4 on elections, good buddy.
I’ve got to include one caveat about this impending domestic trucker convoy business: there is a lot of squabbling going on as the various wannabes try to get noticed by the media and the extremist donor class.
One scenario floating around on the interwebs involves shutting down the Superbowl by choking incoming traffic. This is clearly my favorite, since millions of Americans will suffer the embarrassment of having bought too many avocados and be forced to consider using them in salads.
Almost every map for proposed convoys I’ve seen involves starting on the West Coast and heading for Washington DC. One idea involves creating a blockade along the U.S.- Mexico border.
Given that our country has already seen what happens when wannabe patriots run amok, I’m not sure that any scenario will accomplish what they set out to do. But I’m probably underestimating the ability of the mainstream media to normalize people most Americans would cross the street to avoid.
The north of the border version of this effort has devolved into enough chaos that otherwise polite Canadians are angry. I’d be angry too, if some of these twerps tried to burn down my apartment building after a shouting match.
The website TruckNews.com, which normally serves as a sounding board for transport issues, is having none of this hubris supposedly coming from drivers. What supposedly started as a protest to a requirement for cross border truckers to be vaccinated has now devolved into a right wing mob intent on a coup.
But the reality is, Canada’s arrival requirements for unvaccinated Canadian truckers are completely moot now that the U.S. has put into place its own requirement.
And then Canada Unity, another of the organizers, posted a ludicrous Memorandum of Understanding/Manifesto on its website, which it plans to present to the Governor General of Canada. It essentially calls for the resignation of everyone within the federal government, the formation of a new government comprised of the Governor General, Senate, and members of Canada Unity, and the removal of all Covid-related measures – even those put into place at the provincial level. The trucks will remain until the document is signed, organizers said, dubbing its mission Bearhug.
At an 'emergency' press conference Monday, Trump administration advisor Paul Alexander (of the “let them get infected” strategy) was in the lineup.
It’s a small world.
Alexander happens to be Chief Scientific Officer for The Unity Project, a marketing company that represents and coordinates antivaxxer “grassroots” groups, like San Diego’s Let Them Breathe (school board protests led by Sharon McKeeman), PERK (suing the City of San Diego over mandates) and ReOpen San Diego (led the anti-vaxxer ‘cheerleading’ at the County Board of Supervisors.).
Anna Getty, one of the heirs to the Getty oil fortune, is a top donor to Let Them Breathe (and Let Them Choose).
One San Diego news station, KUSI, has positioned itself as a champion of Let Them Breathe’s cause, featuring dozens of interviews with Let Them Breathe members who often spout anti-mask pseudoscience with no pushback from KUSI’s reporters. Typical KUSI stories on the group include “‘Let Them Breathe’ group says masking children does more harm than good” and “Let Them Breathe’s goal is to unmask our kids and recall our governor.” A search of KUSI’s website turns up more than 30 stories about Let Them Breathe in the past month, all of them positive. Fox News host Laura Ingraham, famous for parroting white-nationalist talking points and promoting neo-Nazis on national television, featured a friendly interview with McKeeman at the end of July.
Amy Reichart, co-founder of ReOpen San Diego, has announced her candidacy in opposition to Supervisor Nathan Fletcher, so she’s found a way to keep her name in the news. This will be a fun campaign to cover.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com