The party of evil
It’s particularly satisfying when Fox News puts their finger on the hypocrisy of Republicans. When interviewing the Texas state attorney general Ken Paxton, Chris Wallace asked him if the stated official position of Texas is to safeguard an employer’s right to decide how to protect their workers and the federal government should stay out of it, why is Texas telling employers they can’t issue vaccine mandates?
“You’re saying,” Wallace put it to Paxton, “that businesses should take care of their own workers and the governor is saying they can’t take care of their own workers as they see fit. They are prohibited, if they so choose, from issuing a vaccine mandate. That’s not consistent.” Paxton danced around the question all the while never satisfactorily acknowledging the contradiction.
The real underlying point (as opposed to the ostensible one) isn’t that they want Texas companies to have any actual freedom. The real point is they must oppose vaccines if they don’t want to lose votes, even if it means ultimately killing their constituents. Paxton doesn’t want to come right out and say this because it sounds evil. It sounds evil exactly because it is evil.
This has been the problem with the Republican position on vaccines all along. They take a stand in the name of “freedom” — in this case the freedom not to get vaccinated — but what they’re really tacitly acknowledging is that a lot of their constituents are anti-vaccination loonies and morons who vote, and they don’t want to lose those votes.
Yes, Republican politicians know perfectly well that vaccines are safe, effective and positively brilliant at preventing coronavirus. That’s why most of them have been vaccinated themselves. But they also know there are a lot of very stupid people out there who are actually dumb enough to believe that vaccines have microchips in them, and other mallet-headed nonsense like that.
Republicans know perfectly well that a huge swath of people who vote for them “think” that vaccines will turn them into zombies, or something. So they came up with this idea of “freedom” to choose — in order to ensure that the cretins who vote for them go right on voting for them. But what they are secretly catering to is the idiotic fantasy that vaccines are evil. If they come right out and do anything less than thwart vaccine mandates they will give the game away.
This Republican shell game is causing Republicans to die in huge numbers. Yahoo news (among other outlets) recently reported that “[for] COVID cases, deaths [are] notably worse in red states than blue states.” Statistics reveal that the current death rate due to coronavirus is as much as four times higher if you’re a Republican.
So the so-called party of pro-life will gladly sacrifice your life in order to stay in power. This is no surprise, of course. This is the same party that opposes measures to prevent global warming, the same party that for decades championed the rights of big tobacco, the party that favors the death penalty and opposes tax breaks for the poor.
The only things Republican politicians care about is protecting their money interests and staying in power. Therefore they will continue to support anti-vaccination stupidity even though America is on track for a total of a million coronavirus fatalities by the end of next year. Make no mistake about it, Republicans are the party of evil. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.