CR: COVID-19 --Political Talk

[Brisketexan 105383]

3 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:

Role-play scenario: You can get hit in the head with a baseball bat, or you can wear one of these helmets (with no promise of getting hit.)

Ooh I dunno that's a hard scenario...

I used to refer to idiots like this as "too stupid to live."  And these days, they are turning my rhetoric into reality.....

[RDCanecutter 26475]

1 minute ago, cactusflinthead said:

 

Somewhere, a pagan college kid is wondering why the store is sold out of BlueBlack #124.

[babysdaddy 2728]

3 hours ago, HenryJames said:

 

 

here's her follow up

[hayden_horn 11365]

[GreenspointTexas 9678]

30 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

 

Eva Longoria lookin thicker these days

 

that said…. Id still hit it

[elfenix 34334]

Just now, hayden_horn said:

imgur still doesn't work here.

[Biff Tannen 45745]

Just got my second Pfizer. After my j&j from March. And a breakthrough case. 
 

Pharmacist asked if I still didn’t have insurance. 
 

“uh, I had insurance the first time. Gave y’all my card.”

”oh, well it shows we just charged the federal government.”

Gave him my insurance card again. 
 

Pharmacist: “ah fuck it, we’ll keep it the same”. 
 

such a shit show. The vaccine %s are way off. 

[Francisco 2.0 32430]

1 hour ago, Scheiss Meister said:

If, and that's a big if, I had an anti-vax, ivermectin and HCQ fan co-worker who came down with the 'Rona, would it be frowned upon to sign the get well card, "Congratulations on fucking around.  Hope you don't die from finding out.  SM."?  Cause I don't want to get talked about, or shunned.

Alternatively:

 

Edited August 23, 2021 by Francisco 2.0

[hayden_horn 11365]

6 minutes ago, elfenix said:

imgur still doesn't work here.

son of a bitch, i see it.

[tigol 2405]

son of a bitch, i see it.

I see it on tapa.

[HenryJames 66183]

[RomaVicta 30028]

4 hours ago, Post Oak said:

Apparently ol Rex Racer hasn't posted since the 18th.

[cattail 112]

 

And when he gets better and goes home he will think the ivermectin worked! Profit!

This dude might be riding a vent

[HenryJames 66183]

4 hours ago, Post Oak said:

Apparently ol Rex Racer hasn't posted since the 18th.

[pyrohornIII 4823]

5 hours ago, Nivek said:

I should have added that an extreme punishment used in prisons is social isolation.  Being socially isolated in a small town is likely more debilitating as there is a smaller pool of people to interact with.   In a city, I can find homeless people that bark at the moon or find a knitting club.   

When the idiots joined facebook, flat earth society, or the proud boys, they joined because they were idiots, and found other idiots to say 'that is a great point' and welcome them and their violent idiocy.   They linked up with anti-vaxxers and other idiotic people to expand their network.   They homogenized their beliefs, in order to keep that network which has become important to them, both in real life and online.    

Like most of you, I could fuck right off and be fine if our Surly overlords could banned me.   I wouldn't turn into that insane person on the old Shaggy site, posting replies upon replies to himself in an empty room (yeah, I get the irony of stating that after quoting myself).   I have other outlets.   These people however do not.   They are willing to pull guns on unarmed people and engage in a physical confrontation because they need the feedback from their friends.   It is why they attack in groups.   

Try living amongst them.  The term arrogant ignorance runs through my mind a lot.  As shocking as this sounds, this place is my touchstone of sanity.  

I also feel that many of them felt before Trump that this country was going to hell, and Obama was an indicator of that.   Those guys with "Rather be Russian than Democrats" sums it up.  It's a lost cause, so yeah, why go on?   What do they call that?  Suicide by cop?   This is suicide by Covid.  You simply need to look at the rates of suicide for middle aged+ males in rural and possibly suburban areas to see the potential.  But fuck spending money on mental health or education, lets just keep militarizing our LEOs.  

 

[Hanrahan 1306]

1 hour ago, RDCanecutter said:

Role-play scenario: You can get hit in the head with a baseball bat, or you can wear one of these helmets (with no promise of getting hit.)

Ooh I dunno that's a hard scenario...

Sorry, that doesn't hold water when there's a 1/2,000,000 chance that wearing a helmet could lead to heat stroke, which could land me in the hospital or the morgue.  It's a personal choice and, for me, I choose no heat stroke.

[cattail 112]

Interestingly someone made a post asking medical professionals whether they think he would have gotten that sick if he was vaxxed. Someone responded no. Then both posts deleted by mods. The cult is strong with them.

[Brisketexan 105383]

39 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

So.....it's coming in two weeks, right?  Isn't that always the answer?

[RomaVicta 30028]

As usual, you can find succinct, radical right-wing yokel reasoning on Texags. 

The last sentence is being said by both sides of the mask discussion. One side of that debate finds their numbers permanently diminishing and can't figure out why.

[Biff Tannen 45745]

1 hour ago, RomaVicta said:

As usual, you can find succinct, radical right-wing yokel reasoning on Texags. 

The last sentence is being said by both sides of the mask discussion. One side of that debate finds their numbers permanently diminishing and can't figure out why.

And here is the problem.  These walking fence posts use social media and the internet to reinforce these beliefs that are 180 degrees from reality.  This will never end.

[Chooky 13319]

The Cyber Ninjas keep getting buttfucked by irony.  

[956 Worldwide 34787]

8 hours ago, Eastwood said:

My rural roots will always give me an avenue of sympathy for these people. I've been there. I lived it. I know the community pressure they are under. And in a lot of those towns, the youth that would be a benefit to those towns go off to college and never come back because Muleshoe or Iraan or El Campo or Trinity have nothing to offer an educated individual trying to earn the best living possible. 

Unfortunately for them, progress always drags people forward, eventually, no matter how much they kick and scream over it.

This doesn’t get talked about enough. The loss of a cognitive elite is devastating to communities. It’s not just the brain drain of potential, it’s that the people who get left behind become progressively less smart and disciplined. Being around intelligent people who think critically prods others to think critically. Having intelligent, ambitious people capable of making rational decisions and positive life choices provides a pattern to emulate. 
 

And I realize that this will be more controversial but having a cognitive elite that is progressively self-segregated from even average people is not entirely salubrious to the cognitive elite. There is a temptation to assume, even non-explicitly, that most people are about as capable and competent as you are and thus to believe they are all as capable of operating responsibly in the system you’d choose for yourself. And that is an error that can have tragic consequences especially at the policy level.

[956 Worldwide 34787]

1 hour ago, Biff Tannen said:

And here is the problem.  These walking fence posts use social media and the internet to reinforce these beliefs that are 180 degrees from reality.  This will never end.

Well, yeah. 
 

And it’s a mistake to try and reason. Look, there are living and breathing people who will go to Tractor Supply and take a cattle dewormer because they believe that the FDA is conspiring with big Pharma to keep their GP from writing a script for said cattle dewormer. Cognitively advanced people believe people can be convinced by explaining where they are going wrong (ex: “cows are bigger than you so their medicine is different, so don’t take it”). They discount the fact that someone who is so stupid that they will take cattle dewormer from Tractor Supply is not only incapable of understanding the arguments— they are incapable of “reasoning” in the way we use the word. If you can understand and process the arguments being presented, then you have never considered taking cattle dewormer in the first place. 
 

Hence— the need to simply say they either get the shot, or they lose their job and the Golden Corral. You don’t explain why Ivermectin is bad, you figure out a way to get Tractor Supply to not sell it to the stupids. And of course, the rest of us eat the cost of this stuff. 

Edited August 23, 2021 by 956 Worldwide

[Goredho 17421]

8 hours ago, Eastwood said:

For a lot of them, it's a John Locke social contract level of survival. I had a heart to heart with my mom a couple of days ago about how I realize that she moved out of state and lives in a small town and her church group are the only friends that she has. Of course she feels she has to parrot all of the talking points and question the vaccine. Her friendships and social survival depend on it. It's all she hears about every day. She has probably seen others ostracized and banished over opposing opinions. So, no matter how long she has been in the medical field, no matter how many infectious disease continuing education sessions she's been in, and even when her own eyes tell her the real story when she works in a local care facility, her social well-being depends on toeing the line.

My rural roots will always give me an avenue of sympathy for these people. I've been there. I lived it. I know the community pressure they are under. And in a lot of those towns, the youth that would be a benefit to those towns go off to college and never come back because Muleshoe or Iraan or El Campo or Trinity have nothing to offer an educated individual trying to earn the best living possible. On top of that, the internet has become a window into the urban settings that rural youth didn't have in the 90s and early 00s. So, indoctrination of the idea that big city living is a horror show doesn't work anymore, either. Rural America, deep down, knows that it is dying. Not just from COVID, but from lack of progress. The communities that do remain are tight-knit because they feel like they are fighting for survival. Of course they are going to act like this. In a very fascist way, the rural people better hit that like button on Facebook and stay on message, or they lose the only friends and connections they have.

Unfortunately for them, progress always drags people forward, eventually, no matter how much they kick and scream over it.

 

16 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

This doesn’t get talked about enough. The loss of a cognitive elite is devastating to communities. It’s not just the brain drain of potential, it’s that the people who get left behind become progressively less smart and disciplined. Being around intelligent people who think critically prods others to think critically. Having intelligent, ambitious people capable of making rational decisions and positive life choices provides a pattern to emulate. 
 

And I realize that this will be more controversial but having a cognitive elite that is progressively self-segregated from even average people is not entirely salubrious to the cognitive elite. There is a temptation to assume, even non-explicitly, that most people are about as capable and competent as you are and thus to believe they are all as capable of operating responsibly in the system you’d choose for yourself. And that is an error that can have tragic consequences especially at the policy level.

There should be a thread dedicated to the ideas you've expressed.  I 100% agree, and have commented along these lines elsewhere.  There are exceptions, but small town, rural America is in a lot of ways a white ghetto.  Unemployment is high, poverty is high, addiction is high, divorce and incarceration rates are high.  It is an increasingly ugly  environment fostering increasingly ugly people that happen to control 65% of the Senate.

I sometimes wonder if what Magic Johnson has done with business development in black urban areas could be applied to white rural areas.
 

 

[atomheartbevo 89810]

16 hours ago, F250 said:

The helmet thing came up a lot when my kids were little. A lot of Gen-X dads would point out how our generation didn't wear helmets and I would bring up the fact that I had 3 different childhood friends that were taken away in ambulances due head injuries. Risk mitigation mother fuckers!

When I was in 1st grade, had a friend who was ejected out of a car and killed because he wasn't strapped in.

The school/parents decided not to talk about it, and so those of us who asked were told "oh, his family got transferred".

Found out about it decades later when I was looking up some old elementary school friends, and somebody mentioned him and nobody knew what happened.  Found it in the local newspaper from back then.  Told my parents, and they were like "oh yeah, we were going to tell you, but forgot about it, but after the accident, we started making sure you wore seat belts."

Also had a friend who fucked themselves up on their bike.  Well, technically they weren't on their bike when they got fucked up.  They got lucky and just had stitches and supposedly a mild concussion.

The way I see it these days, you can buy a cool-looking helmet for your kid, and most of them don't mind since they see the BMX/skateboarders/mountain bikers wearing helmets and some wearing pads.  Shit, we probably do more stupid shit on bikes/skateboards these days because we are wearing protective gear.

[Woland 749]

Local freedom fighters now posting a request for funds to help out a freedom loving family who have both come down with COVID.

[Aqua Buddha 14621]

Doc, look what I got from Tractor Supply!!!

[Born to Run 6569]

Local freedom fighters now posting a request for funds to help out a freedom loving family who have both come down with COVID.

offer them some bootstraps.

[Post Oak 20277]

2 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

Doc, look what I got from Tractor Supply!!!

Lake Ozark sounds like the dumbest place north of Texags

[Aqua Buddha 14621]

9 hours ago, Eastwood said:

For a lot of them, it's a John Locke social contract level of survival. I had a heart to heart with my mom a couple of days ago about how I realize that she moved out of state and lives in a small town and her church group are the only friends that she has. Of course she feels she has to parrot all of the talking points and question the vaccine. Her friendships and social survival depend on it. It's all she hears about every day. She has probably seen others ostracized and banished over opposing opinions. So, no matter how long she has been in the medical field, no matter how many infectious disease continuing education sessions she's been in, and even when her own eyes tell her the real story when she works in a local care facility, her social well-being depends on toeing the line.

My rural roots will always give me an avenue of sympathy for these people. I've been there. I lived it. I know the community pressure they are under. And in a lot of those towns, the youth that would be a benefit to those towns go off to college and never come back because Muleshoe or Iraan or El Campo or Trinity have nothing to offer an educated individual trying to earn the best living possible. On top of that, the internet has become a window into the urban settings that rural youth didn't have in the 90s and early 00s. So, indoctrination of the idea that big city living is a horror show doesn't work anymore, either. Rural America, deep down, knows that it is dying. Not just from COVID, but from lack of progress. The communities that do remain are tight-knit because they feel like they are fighting for survival. Of course they are going to act like this. In a very fascist way, the rural people better hit that like button on Facebook and stay on message, or they lose the only friends and connections they have.

Unfortunately for them, progress always drags people forward, eventually, no matter how much they kick and scream over it.

A good example is the town I was born in.  It's not too far from Okie City and that county is one of the lowest vaxxed counties in Oklahoma.  Next door is Oklahoma County (OKC), which is one of the highest.  The people on my FB from high that still live in the small town are wildly different than the ones who even lived in the next county as it relates to COVID.  Everything else is mostly equal except the towns they currently live in.

People adapt to the tribe they're in.

[Bojack 2082]

3 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

Doc, look what I got from Tractor Supply!!!

I'll do my part and say some hail merrys.

[Biff Tannen 45745]

1 hour ago, Aqua Buddha said:

Doc, look what I got from Tractor Supply!!!

Is he a cow or a horse?

Edited August 23, 2021 by Biff Tannen
should've said "hog or a cattle"

[956 Worldwide 34787]

10 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

Doc, look what I got from Tractor Supply!!!

I think I’ll save my prayers for the doctors and hospital staff who will soon be confronted by the Mayor of Lake Ozark trying to administer a veterinary medicine to their patient.

[DDD Dad 14351]

9 minutes ago, Post Oak said:

Lake Ozark sounds like the dumbest place north of Texags

[Bozo_Casanova 26570]

I should buy a boat

[Captainant 27796]

2 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

As usual, you can find succinct, radical right-wing yokel reasoning on Texags. 

The last sentence is being said by both sides of the mask discussion. One side of that debate finds their numbers permanently diminishing and can't figure out why.

mfw @BabaYaga and texags both cite the same retracted studies

[Nivek 16987]

Here's the kicker: for the longest time, with respect to certain things, they aren't wrong to think "we're the smart ones."  They know about certain things better than any city-slicker, for real.
When I was high school/college age, we used to go spend weekends at my uncle's S. Texas ranch -- my grandfather was the de facto foreman.  He would put us to work doing various things, most of which were geared at demonstrating how little "country common sense" all of us college boys had.  And he was right.  He'd give us some task that we would puzzle over and couldn't figure out, and after laughing at us for a while, show us the obvious way to do it.  Live in the country, and you learn stuff that the city folks don't.  You don't just reach into the bottom of the chicken coop to grab eggs - you look to make sure there's not a rattler in there eating them.  Gonna burn brush?  Wait till a dry stretch with no wind in the forecast, but not so dry that it's burn-ban weather.  Need to get to the back pasture?  Stick to the path on the left side, because the right side holds mud and you'll get stuck.  All kinds of little ins and outs that you learn from living a rural life.  They ARE experts on that -- that's their subject matter.
Our current hell started when they became convinced that they know EVERYTHING, and they're smarter than EVERYONE.  No.  Stay in your fucking lane.  If I want to know how to keep from getting bitten by a rattlesnake, how to avoid losing my chickens to a raccoon, how to tell which cow is going to go into labor first, I'll talk to a rancher.  If I want to know if a particular plane is fit to fly, I'll talk to a pilot and/or mechanic.  If I want to know about a specific medical treatment, I'll talk to a doctor.  That doesn't mean that I'll just flat take their word for everything, but it means that I recognize that a lifetime of real-world knowledge and experience has real value, and I'd be smart to listen to the guys with that expertise.
Instead, these guys are the functional equivalent of the city slicker out at the ranch who ignores the rancher's advice not to take their Lexus sedan to the back pasture, because that road's shitty and you'll get stuck -- holler "I don't think so, you aren't so smart!"......and 3 minutes later, the phone rings from the back pasture because city boy's Lexus is stuck up to both axles.  "Come get me!  You have to tow me out of here!  And don't you DARE scratch my paint when you do!"

I have had this experience as well. My friend and I went hunting and we stayed at a house my MIL owns which had some old ass spring loaded locking mechanism on the front door. We ended up getting locked out of the house and I got to hear about how 2 geophysicists don’t know how to use a lock, and well one of us must have messed with it to trigger. They didn’t have a key to the house so my FIL broke a window. I noticed in their renovations they removed said locks from the house. Apparently I earned some country credit back with my round placement/distance.

My brother used to brag that he had a PhD to people with them. When they would ask, he would snicker that it was a PhD in life, as if people who have degrees do not live, know anything about the “real world.”

This happens in our modern world as well, your kid could be labeled deficient in math because their experience and access to analog clocks is limited.

[HenryJames 66183]

 

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12301]

3 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

 

That won my internet today.

[Nivek 16987]

[Bookman 4642]

1 hour ago, Woland said:

Local freedom fighters now posting a request for funds to help out a freedom loving family who have both come down with COVID.

I wonder if that counts as bootstraps.

[Bevo14 8378]

31 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

 

Never go full aggy

[pyrohornIII 4823]

2 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

This doesn’t get talked about enough. The loss of a cognitive elite is devastating to communities. It’s not just the brain drain of potential, it’s that the people who get left behind become progressively less smart and disciplined. Being around intelligent people who think critically prods others to think critically. Having intelligent, ambitious people capable of making rational decisions and positive life choices provides a pattern to emulate. 
 

And I realize that this will be more controversial but having a cognitive elite that is progressively self-segregated from even average people is not entirely salubrious to the cognitive elite. There is a temptation to assume, even non-explicitly, that most people are about as capable and competent as you are and thus to believe they are all as capable of operating responsibly in the system you’d choose for yourself. And that is an error that can have tragic consequences especially at the policy level.

This also explains a disconnect between rural counties  and urban Democrats/TDP.

1 hour ago, Aqua Buddha said:

Doc, look what I got from Tractor Supply!!!

Can't get more hick than Mo' Hick BBQ.  But he's all set up in that commie town up there.  

[Chooky 13319]

Did Bethany Wieman really respond to that with emojis?  Goddamnit, Bethany.

[tx 3 putt 77459]

4 hours ago, HenryJames said:

They’re lying to buy more time. Covid isn’t stopping them from hitting send 

[Macklemore 2876]

Now that Pfizer has full FDA approval,  no more pussyfooting around. Don’t be afraid by the words “mandatory” or “compulsory”. Squeeze the idiot adults who haven’t gotten the vaccine yet. Make their world smaller. No football games, plane trips, etc unless you can produce a vaccine passport. Finally, I am having a hearty laugh at Paxton and Abbott. Go fuck yourselves. Biden make the vaccine mandatory.

Edited August 24, 2021 by Macklemore

[Biff Tannen 45745]

2 hours ago, HenryJames said:

 

and the D and A stand for Dangerous Antifa.

[Buzzrock 14944]

 

Instantly sent to the aggys I work with.

[OU Sucks 8916]

5 hours ago, HenryJames said:

So let me guess...they're going to "die" of Covid [disappear] and therefore the audit results won't be released.  Then Q will say they were killed off by the deep state to prevent the report from coming out.  Am I doing this right?

[RomaVicta 30028]

3 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

This doesn’t get talked about enough. The loss of a cognitive elite is devastating to communities. It’s not just the brain drain of potential, it’s that the people who get left behind become progressively less smart and disciplined. Being around intelligent people who think critically prods others to think critically. Having intelligent, ambitious people capable of making rational decisions and positive life choices provides a pattern to emulate. 
 

And I realize that this will be more controversial but having a cognitive elite that is progressively self-segregated from even average people is not entirely salubrious to the cognitive elite. There is a temptation to assume, even non-explicitly, that most people are about as capable and competent as you are and thus to believe they are all as capable of operating responsibly in the system you’d choose for yourself. And that is an error that can have tragic consequences especially at the policy level.

I really do believe there were some people, such as these, who curbed the raw ignorance of rural America. I know they're fictional, but they are based on something. 

Andy wouldn't be elected sherriff if he doesn't carry a gun. Atticus would likely be snatched up by a big city firm.

The downdrag in cities and the hinterlands is the embrace of ignorance. Chris Rock's great bit about who hates N___ers worse, black people or white people is great because it's universal. You want to hide something from most people, put in a book. 

People can pursue or not pursue whatever they want. The act badly if they discourage something obviously good such as reading, intellectualism, good speech. That leads to discouraging vaccinations, masks, and hard core intolerance. Then you get hate. Then you get to where we are now.

I'd like to think that RD Canecutter lives in a small Alabama town. I really think those towns' best hope for intellectual ferment comes from persons of color and women. Given any viable option, I won't vote white man for a while, but you've heard that all before from me.

Anyway, That's a great post that I believe. I bet we'd both be happy to have someone come on here and blow away this conclusion about small towns. I can be a snob towards yokels.