Right-Wing Anti Vaccine Death Scorecard Episode 1, or Sure, What The Hell, Let's Do This

 Two weeks ago I pondered how much compassion we should have for those who chose to refuse COVID vaccination  for political reasons and then became seriously ill. Since I mentioned Tennessee right-wing talk show host Phil Valentine, a particularly vile breed of climate change-denying, faux-deficit-hawk, Hillary-hatin', and yes, vaccine-avoidin' hatemonger in that post, I should now mention that he will never be able to become the most "pro-vaccine person who ever lived" because he died yesterday after being on a ventilator, his lungs destroyed from COVID Delta, for two weeks.

In December 2020, he wrote on his blog (not going to link to it; you can find it yourself:

How's that America workin' for ya now, Phil? How'd that "personal health assessment" go?

Then on Thursday, a South Carolina legislator with the It Doesn't Get Any More Southern Than This name of Presley Stutts has died after six days on a ventilator. Before he was put on the ventilator, he was tweeting Big Lie and COVID conspiracy theories right down to the bitter end.

Here he is calling vaccination an "ungodly initiative" in June:

 

And this racist hatemongering from July 23:

I could screenshot for days the bile that this particular MAGA cretin spewed out, but I'll just leave you with this delicious piece o'irony:

I have to wonder how many other people guys like this infected before they were hospitalized. Look, if these guys think that Dying for Trump (and that's essentially what this is) is what they want to do, because freedumb, well, that's between them and their families. I frankly don't care if a few more voices of misinformation, white supremacy and misogyny are silenced. But since they can be contagious days before becoming ill, and even after they are being hospitalized, they are putting everyone else they come in contact with in danger -- some of them NOT willing to Die For Trump (even in Tennessee and South Carolina), I'm sure.

Valentine's brother Mark expressed his opinion of what he THINKS his brother WOULD have said had he been able,  But we don't know that. Valentine was "taking Vitamin D like crazy" and had a doctor agree to provide a prescription for Ivermectin (a horse de-worming medication), neither of which have even the degree of study that the vaccines have, but Phil Valentine was unwilling to be vaccinated.

I remember when Lee Atwater, who was basically the architect of the racist-dogwhistle GOP that gave rise eventually to Donald Trump, and the architect of the forever-infamous "Willie Horton ad" of 1988, was dying from glioblastoma -- arguably the worst, most terrifying cancer in existence. I remember seeing photos of him, his face bloated from steroids and practically unrecognizable. I'm honest enough to say that I thought he got what he deserved, but I'm also human enough that I felt badly for him. Part of the reason for that was that Atwater at least acknowledged the damage he'd done to the body politic before he died. Phil Valentine did not. And Pressley Stutts was posting racism, The Big Lie, and white resentment on Facebook right up until the propofol kicked in and the vent was inserted, thus silencing him forever.