Appealing to Stupidity
A judge in Cole County, Missouri (which is pretty much right smack dab in the middle of a state which is pretty much right smack dab in the middle of the country or – as those of us who live here like to think of it – “America’s Anus”) has been throwing out dozens of COVID-related orders issued by local health departments which you might think would piss off Conservatives who hate “activist” judges, but it turns out it depends on just what activity those judges are engaged in.
As you might have already noticed: people are hypocrites.
(Also, I’m clearly not part of the “activist” judge problem because just this past Sunday I managed to watch three consecutive NFL games even though the Chiefs had a bye and I really didn’t care who won or lost, so if the NFL played every day there’s a good chance I’d never get up off my couch and I’m kinda pissed off at the medical community which incessantly worries about “bed” sores, but has done so little to prevent “couch” sores and I’m pretty sure that’s not really a thing yet, but – as watching seven seasons of 30 Rock in less than a week makes clear – it definitely could be.)
The center of your being
OK, my “America’s Anus” joke reminded me of an almost-completely-unrelated-but-true story and it happened while I was spring skiing, an activity which means you have to be careful to avoid the rocks that stick up out of the snow because the snow is melting and I really wish the “Current Me” could have been there to warn the “Past Me” because I was talking to someone while skiing down a gentle slope and being a natural-born showoff decided to turn around and ski backwards to make it easier to carry on the conversation which worked out fine until one of my skis caught on something and I fell backwards and landed on about three-inches of rock sticking up out of the snow, which wouldn’t have been all that much of a problem except I landed directly on my tailbone and now that I look at it, a tailbone reminds me of the “Facehugger” that started all that trouble in Alien and my subsequent experiences might prove that’s not a coincidence.
The tailbone is alternatively known as the “coccyx” which also reminds me that the correct medical terms for parts of the body always sound worse than the slang we come up with so next time someone calls you a dick be grateful because they could have called you a penis.
(See? It does sound worse.)
It turns out the treatment for a bruised tailbone is someone who spent four years as an undergraduate and another four years in medical school and three-to-seven years in a residency program handing you a pillow to sit on, a treatment I came up with all on my own without the expense of 11-to-15 years of medical education.
A bruised tailbone takes about four weeks to heal and during those four weeks I discovered that all the poets who talk about the heart being the center of your being and emotions are full of crap because it turns out the center of your being and emotions is actually your ass.
I couldn’t do any ass-related activity without a stabbing pain and when I say “ass-related activity” that pretty much includes everything. Turns out you can’t sit, stand, bend or twist without involving your ass and if I felt a sneeze or cough coming on I was filled with dread and terror because it was going to feel like someone simultaneously sticking a hot poker up my backside.
Having learned how important your ass is in absolutely everything you do, I no longer tell people I love them from the bottom of my heart; I tell them I love them from the bottom of my ass which isn’t quite as poetic, but has the advantage of being a lot more accurate.
Back to our story
OK, so the judge who didn’t like all those health department rules is a Republican and his argument for throwing out the health department orders is they didn’t originate from an elected official and my first reaction to that is:
“Thank God.”
Elected officials do not have a great COVID-related track record and if you think a politician whose previous occupation involved pig farming is qualified to make decisions regarding infectious diseases by the miracle of getting one more vote than his failed-chiropractor opponent, do you think that former pig farmer is also qualified to do heart surgery?
(Which is a cartoon I plan on drawing in the not-too -distant future.)
As their track record shows, most politicians will say up is down and black is white and Donald Trump is a damn genius if it will help them get reelected and right now a bunch of politicians are doing whatever it takes to appeal to a bunch of morons who think the COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips or fetal tissue or think and are willing to say out loud:
“Vaccine mandates will be the start of a sinister plan to annihilate humanity.”
Which is an actual quote from a hearing Kansas Republican legislators called to listen to what people thought about vaccine mandates and apparently this person thinks there’s a “sinister plan to annihilate humanity” and since that would be kinda tough on humans the plan must be part of the Lizard’s People Takeover of planet Earth.
Which is an actual thing some people believe is happening and the Lizard People have already created a lizard-human hybrid race called the “Babylonian Brotherhood” so the plot must be pretty far along if they’re forming fraternities and I’m guessing the initiation rites must be even worse than the weird shit you have to do get into the Skull and Bones Society, which brings up the question of why so many guys that are public homophobes indulge in what seem to be pretty gay activities when nobody else is around to watch them get naked and spank each other?
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. (The gay activities, not the homophobia, and I have the sneaking suspicion that a lot of gay people are having way more fun in the bedroom than the rest of us.)
According to an NBC website, 12 million Americans believed in this Lizard People Conspiracy which was reported in a survey conducted in 2013 and they speculate those numbers have gone higher since then. Here’s the link to that article:
And now a number of politicians are trying to appeal to the Lizard People Conspiracy Fans and what could possibly go wrong with that plan?
What could possibly go wrong with that plan
The GOP is now embracing “natural immunity” as a reason to oppose vaccine mandates and argue that people who have had COVID don’t need to get vaccinated, but while actual scientists who study this stuff agree natural immunity offers some protection, they say vaccines offer a more consistent form of protection and here’s a quote from a Kansas City Star story about that:
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in August that COVID-19 survivors who ignored advice to get vaccinated were more than twice as likely to get infected again. A more recent study from the CDC, looking at data from nearly 190 hospitals in nine states, determined that unvaccinated people who had been infected months earlier were five times more likely to get COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people who didn’t have a prior infection.”
So the obvious conclusion is that the Lizard People have completed their takeover of the CDC.
But wait, there’s more
A Kansas Republican legislator and other Hard-Right Conservatives want to reopen the debate over rules and mandates regarding other vaccines, so they not only want to stop progress, they want to go back to the days when Americans had the God-Given Right to catch polio, measles and mumps and spread them to their fellow Americans.
Which is one of the ways you can tell if your neighbors are actually Lizard People because they don’t catch those diseases and I just googled “what kills lizards” and it turns out they don’t like egg shells, onions or garlic, so you might want to go with a garlic necklace because then you’d also be protected against vampires and if Wesley Snipes and the Blade movie trilogy has taught us anything, it’s that vampires are everywhere, but seem to mainly be employed in the entertainment industry which – depending on whether or not you miss Hee Haw – might include Branson, Missouri, located just south of America’s Anus.
In conclusion
Each and every day we make decisions based on trust so you might want to trust the people who have the best chance of being right (and you’re getting this advice from a guy who once ate tacos out of a metal bucket sold at a Tijuana bullfight, so you might want to question if you should trust me), but if I have to choose between the consensus views of the Medical Community and a bunch of politicians trying to suck up to Lizard People Conspiracy Fans, I’m going with the Medical Community.
Even though they definitely need to come up with better treatment for bruised tailbones and start doing research on “couch” sores.
So many Republicans have become a joke that it is hard to maintain any respect for someone who claims a party affiliation with them. There are some "good" Republicans but they are hard to find since they are on the verge of extinction.