I’ve heard some terrible wingnut arguments in my day, but this has to be the worst one:
Do you want to know why I think Howard Stern is going full-monster with his mockery of three fellow human beings who died of the coronavirus? Because leftists like Stern and CNNLOL and Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi and Anthony Fauci are deliberately looking to manipulate Trump supporters into not getting vaccinated.
Nothing else makes sense to me.
In a country where elections are decided on razor-thin margins, does it not benefit one side if their opponents simply drop dead?
If I wanted to use reverse psychology to convince people not to get a life-saving vaccination, I would do exactly what Stern and the left are doing… I would bully and taunt and mock and ridicule you for not getting vaccinated, knowing the human response would be, Hey, fuck you, I’m never getting vaccinated!
And why is that a perfectly human response? Because no one ever wants to feel like they are being bullied or ridiculed or mocked or pushed into doing anything.
Who wants to cave to piece of shit like Howard Stern (or Jimmy Kimmel or these repulsive doctors refusing to treat the unvaccinated or Bette Midler or, or, or…) Who wants to feel like they’re caving to a guy who’s such a piece of shit he publicly mocks people who have died. And he’s not just a piece of shit mocking them; he’s a piece of shit hurting the families the dead men left behind.
They aren’t caving to Stern. They’re caving to a deadly plague. But I guess they are incapable of understanding that.
However, when you think about it, this is the argument that a lot of people have been making about the vaccine refusniks. “Don’t pressure them into getting the vaccines because they’ll feel humiliated and will refuse to get them.” The premise is that they are children that have to be coddled and cajoled even as people are dropping like flies from the disease they are spreading all over the country. I suppose if that actually worked, I’d be for it. Anything to stop the virus. But it doesn’t work. They don’t want to get the vaccines because they are listening to lies and see the pandemic as a liberal plot to make them look bad. They’re humiliated by everything. It’s illogical and stupid and even in the face of 675,000 deaths, most of the last 100,000 of whom were unvaccinated wingnuts, they won’t change their minds.
The one thing that might work is the employment mandates and requirement that you show proof of vaccination to have any fun. They’re having a full blown hissy fit over it but if the private sector backs it it may bring some people over just for practical reasons. But the rest? They’d rather die. And I don’t know what to do about stubbornness like that.
I think Joe Biden believes that too. This review of “Peril” captures that:
Biden regards the -ism, not the man, as the real threat; Trump put the nation in peril because he evoked and organized a darkness that was already there. And his behavior is more shocking because it serves no purpose greater than salving his own obscure hurts; he is no historic visionary but simply someone who wants the perks of the presidency. Biden observes, on surveying the golf toys that Trump assembled in the White House, including a wall-size video screen so he could play virtual courses, “What a f—ing —hole.”
But that’s the kind of thing Trump’s followers are fine with, especially if it triggers the libs. So much of what drives this is immature contrarianism. Trump is their avatar and the cult thinks it’s just great. Even if they have to die for it.