198
Opinion: How to survive the broligarchy: 20 lessons for the post-truth world | The Observer
(www.theguardian.com)
We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!
Posts must be:
Comments must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.
And that’s basically it!
What strange land do you live in? In my corner of the US, being both anti-mask and anti-vaccine is very solidly a trumper thing. That’s regardless of the confusion very early in the pandemic or what one politician on a given side might have said once.
Oh it's definitely a right-wing thing but I wouldn't exactly blame Trump for all of it. He even got booed at his own rally for telling people to get vaccinated.
If I recall the order of events, that was after many months of peddling anti-vax ideas and getting anyone who would listen to him riled up at the prospect of there even being a pandemic. So I don't think it's much praise to note he tried, once, ineffectually, to push for people to get vaccinated, especially when he lets those booing him shut him down so easily.
That clip of him getting booed at the rally in August 2021, to me, especially shows why Trump deserves so much of the criticism. As president of the USA he was probably the individual with the most power and resources at his disposal to keep people from dying, from getting sick, from transmitting the disease. Not only did he actively make things worse for the first entire year of the pandemic being declared in the USA, when he finally does start telling people to get vaccinated it's once he's no longer in charge. On top of that, when he does it in the place with the lowest rate of vaccination in the entire country (according to this article published at the time: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-booed-alabama-rally-after-telling-supporters-get-vaccinated-n1277404) he lets himself get booed into a soft, non-committal "I recommend you take it, but still you need to preserve your personal freedoms, also I took it so haha guys if it doesn't work you'll be the first to know!".
Trump definitely deserves the most blame for repeatedly stoking the fire of an already bad situation. So much so that there are articles that exist titled "a timeline of how Trump failed to respond to the coronavirus" (https://www.vox.com/2020/6/8/21242003/trump-failed-coronavirus-response). Sure, if you want to be a bit pedantic, he's not responsible for "all of it". I don't think anyone here is exactly claiming that either.
He definitely downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic in the beginning. No disagreement there.
However I still don't quite agree with the suggestion that he's anti-vaxx. Operation warp speed was his pet-project after all. He has made some vaccine critical comments in the past but personally I never got that impression of him during the pandemic.
He literally mainstreamed anti-vax and anti-science and all you can say is no big deal. And oh look he said to get vaccinated one time so it's okay.
That is a lot of fucking apology with a big side of lies. Not to mentioned disingenuous as well. Have fun trying to gaslight more people.
You can say that but can you back it up with evidence? Because if not, it's actually you whose spreading lies here.
Where have I said "no big deal"?
What have I lied about exactly?
What anti-vax claims has Trump made during or after covid?
Trump leads, and his party follows, on vaccine skepticism
Trump doesn't rule out banning vaccines if he becomes president: 'I'll make a decision'
And he nominated RFK, Jr., a noted anti-vaxxer, for Health and Human Services...