Political COVIDiocy: Why the Republican Party is full of Freedumb Anti-Intellectuals

Recently, it's clear that the Republican Party, is full of anti-intellectuals who goes against the public good for "freedom". But how did it all get to this point? 

We may have to go back to some disturbing trends of the Republican party on how they portray what they consider to be American values. 

Let's take a look at a freshman congressman, Madison Cawthron, North Carolina 11th District, Republican, wheelchair user, soon to be divorced. What's notable about him? He was one of those that addressed the January 6th crowed. He blamed democrats for subverting the crowd, and was one of the last to admit there was no voting fraud that elected Biden. He's antimask and antivaccine, claiming that a proposed plan to send people door to door to convince you to vax will lead to g-men to "take your guns" and "take your Bibles". Don't believe me? This is all verified. He just made news announcing to a mostly college age crowd that they should drop out of college unless they want to become doctor or lawyer or engineer. He dropped out of college to work for a politician Mark Meadows, who later told him to run for his own seat, and he won. He considers himself the new face of the Republican Party. 

Cawthron is still an athlete and supposedly trained for wheelchair racing. He still goes to shooting range regularly. This was a relatively recent photo:

Guns are a very sensitive subject around conservative Republicans, because white masculinity is intertwined with gun ownership in the US, even though there is no legal barrier for anyone else to own guns. It is believed that white men use guns as a phallic symbol to reclaim their social status.  

Now, also keep in mind that Cawthorn just declared to a crowd of fellow young conservatives to abandon higher education like he did, at "Americafest" hosted by Turning Point USA. 

No higher education means you're probably stuck at a menial job, and you probably need a gun to make yourself feel like a man. 

But what's really disturbing is the following 14 signs. I won't explain where they come from yet, but I'll just list them, and see how many of them you see in the current Republican party:

1. Tradition
2. Rejection of science and reason
3. Just do it, don't think
4. Disagreement is treason
5. Fear of difference, xenophobia
6. Appeal to social frustration
7. Obsession with a plot
8. Enemy is both weak thus defeatable, yet strong enough to be feared
9. Pacifism is consorting with the enemy
10. Contempt for the weak
11. Everyone can be a hero
12. Machismo and weaponry
13. Selective populism, influencer look as if they represent the everymen
14. Newspeak

How many of these signs did you see? I see a lot of 2 (antivax), 3 (Jan 6th), 4 (polarization), 6 (anti mandate!), 7 (Qanon!), 11 (Lionizing Rittenhouse), and 12 ("Don't tread on me"). I guess Cawthorn himself can be a bit of 13.  

The 14 signs I listed are "14 typical elements of Ur-fascism" by Umberto Eco, originally published in New York Review of Books in an essay. 

Yes, I am stating that IMHO, the US Republican Party is moving toward fascism. And this is VERY disturbing. 

And it's even more disturbing with a new tweet from Rand Paul

How to steal an election: “Seeding an area heavy with potential Democratic votes with as many absentee ballots as possible, targeting and convincing potential voters to complete them in a legally valid way, and then harvesting and counting the results.”https://t.co/LwE3MdeWeG

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) December 27, 2021

This is quite disturbing, because what Rand Paul has described is absolutely legal, and indeed, is the proper way to get your constituents to get out and vote (or absentee vote). He even called it "legally valid way". So why is it "steal an election"? 

It's clear that the Republican party has gone onto "newspeak"... they will randomly redefine a word to fit their own mindset instead of using the true definition of the word. And that's sign #14 above. They are redefining the word "stealing" to denigrade something they failed to do. 

And it is VERY worrying for the future of the Republican party. 

COVIDiocy Denied: Different Judge Threw Out the Ohio Court Order for Ivermectin Treatment, but Senators Politicize Science

 Previously we reported an Ohio case where a judge agreed with the plaintiff who wanted ivermectin treatment for her husband sick with COVID. The hospital refused. and the wife sued, and won the first round. 

A different judge has reversed the previous court ruling. On Monday, Judge Michael Oster issued an order reversing the earlier decision, citing lack of convincing evidence that the drug could significantly improve the patient's condition. 

What the lawsuit had made clear though:

• the doctor who made the prescription, Fred Wagshul, does NOT have medical privileges at the West Chester Hospital, where the plaintiff's husband is being treated on a ventilator. 
• furthermore, Wagshul, without ever seeing the patient, wrote a prescription for 30 mg of ivermectin for 21 days. For comparison, for deworming a 100 kg human (220 lb) the dosage is a SINGLE 20 mg dose. The medicine has NO demonstratable effect on virus, only on parasites. 

FDA has issued warnings that ivermectin is NOT a valid COVID treatment. But conservative media continued to push it. In fact, two senators went as far as accusing FDA of "being political". Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). Mainly because FDA issued warnings about ivermectin when reports surfaced that people are overdosing on ivermectin and ended up calling poison control or visit to the emergency room. 

Johnson reported told NYTimes that he considers FDA stance on approving vaccines and warning about ivermectin to be "all about... the political goal of having mandates", and he claims that he opposes mandates "unless there's some incredibly deadly disease". The only conclusion to be drawn here logically is Johnson does NOT consider COVID to be an "incredibly deadly disease", despite having killed 650K people in the US since 2020 (less than 24 months)

Rand Paul has a similar aversion to inconvenient scientific studies.  According to Paul, FDA doesn't like those who conduct experimental treatments of COVID-19. He basically claimed that ivermectin, similar to hydroxychloroquine, is being ignored because Trump had promoted them and science hates Trump. Given that Paul was once an ophthalmologist, clearly he had forgotten ALL of his medical training, including "do no harm". And since he had claimed that he's keeping an open mind, he must be using "double-speak", where "keeping an open mind" means cherry-picking on what he wants to believe and discarding the inconvenient truths. 

Don't be a COVIDiot. Get vaxxed.