Right-Wing Anti Vaccine Death Scorecard Episode 3, or Here I Thought I'd Be Blogging About TV and Cats and Yeah...Hurricanes

 Yesterday was the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and New Orleans "celebrated" in its own unique way by getting clobbered by yet another Category 4 hurricane, this one with the diner waitress name of "Ida." I'd say I don't know how people live there, except that I have a cousin who does (thankfully, he and his family evacuated and their home is still standing), and they have cool things there like funky people and Mardi Gras house floats in a pandemic and I'm told they have great food (though I've never been there yet) and of course they have my beloved Villalobos Rescue Center, which has a facility in New Orleans itself and another in Assumption Parish, which I believe had the eye pass if not over, then very close.  Villalobos could really use donations since they are not filming their TV show.

 Ida is making its way across Middle Trumpekistan before brushing the Italian-American Diaspora of Northern New Jersey and then making its way out to sea or expiring, whichever comes first. Of course, those great anti-government, Trump-lovin' good Christian denizens of Trumpekistan will be the first to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and rebuild their own Little House on the Flood Plain with their bare hands, thereby living up to the same bullshit American mythology that they demand of others.

Yeah. Right. And I am Marie of Rumania.

Meanwhile, the carnage continues as macho Men Without Masks continue to drop like flies, including, of course, talk show hosts, which makes me wonder how the QAnon nutballs haven't gotten around to blaming the Clintons or George Soros yet. The latest one of these is a guy named Marc Bernier, who went so far as to refer to himself as "Mr. Anti-Vax" and insisting that government advocacy of COVID-19 vaccines for the benefit of public health was JUST LIKE Nazi Germany. I'm telling you, these guys would have been the FIRST ones ratting out their Jewish neighbors in the REAL Nazi Germany. Mr. Bernier has joined his compatriots Phil Valentine and Dick Farrel in wherever hatemongers go to await the form of their reincarnation. We can only hope it's something like garden slug, which would at least be appropriate.

Then there's Robert David Steele, a former CIA officer and QAnon dupe who prided himself on being the first to call COVID-19 a hoax and insisted that Trump would be reinstated, has died of COVID-19  A friend of his insisted that "Steele’s doctors hooked him up to a ventilator only to make Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, look bad."

I have to wonder if we are going to turn into a nation of widows before this is all over. Yes, there are women dying from COVID, but the preponderance of right-wing anti-mask, anti-vaxx, Trumpazoids who are dying seem to be men. Is this resistance just part of the Great American Male Tantrum that has been going on this country since a black man was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2008 and has never really stopped? Or are these all men with underlying health issues like heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and such, exacerbated by rage, who have stubbornly refused to ever see a doctor and when COVID hit, they paid the price?  

Meanwhile, one of the angriest of angry men, young Madison Cawthorn, who the people of North Carolina's 11th district in a fit of madness decided was fit to serve in Congress, is taking his frustrations about his own questionable manhood out by advocating another January 6 insurrection, highlighted by breaking out those jailed for the first one out of jail. This is the fantasy of incel gamers, not something that one used to expect from a sitting Congressman, but Mr. Cawthorn is all about clicks, outrage and attention (what he calls "comms") instead of, say, actual legislating, which may be why Nancy Pelosi is letting him throw his tantrum and ignoring him. The jury is still out on whether this is wise, though perhaps betting on an uneducated boy with anger management issues who once beat the crap out of a dead tree to prove himself a tough guy focusing on saying outrageous things instead of, you know, Congressionmanning,  is ultimately far less dangerous. I'm not so sure. Enough people in hippie Asheville found his story "inspiring" despite press before the 2020 election revealing his pattern of lying about pretty much everything about himself being available.