Essentially, for Republicans, it seems like avoiding raw milk is the new masking — and they’re just not going to do it in order to prove a point.

For instance, in April, Infowars host Owen Shroyer called the Food and Drug Administration a “gangster mafia” who wanted to “make raw milk illegal.”

“So, now that more people are going to local farms and farmers markets and consuming raw milk, this angers the FDA,” Shroyer said. “This angers Big Milk. Say, ‘No, you need to pasteurize milk, it’s a lot less healthy for you.’ See, eventually, they’ll just make it illegal. They’ll just make raw milk illegal. That’s what this is all about.”

      • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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        Really, it’s very different. Avian flu is estimated to be more deadly, and also less contagious among humans. Covid was most dangerous to the sick and the old, as well as first responders and medical professionals.

        In other words, the people who were careless about Covid19 precautions were not the people who suffered the most.

        With Avian flu, and really anything else you might get from contaminated milk, the person who will suffer is the person who is being careless.

        So if Conservatives want to ignore the best advice of smart people and drink poison, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. I feel really bad for their children, of course, but I can’t stop them from where I’m sitting.

        • Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          The best thing you can do to help their children is ensuring that public education continues to be funded and safe for all children

        • Wiz@midwest.social
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          15 days ago

          I feel really bad for their children, of course, but I can’t stop them from where I’m sitting.

          It’s worse than that, because if you warn them that their stupidity is dangerous to them and their family, they will dig in their heels and want to do it even more. They are intransigently stupid.

        • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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          In other words, the people who were careless about Covid19 precautions were not the people who suffered the most.

          I thought there were measurable differences in how many t-rumpians died vs. normal Americans?

          • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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            There is some correlation between political affiliation and community death rates, especially as it relates to attitudes towards vaccinations.

            But that doesn’t mean the anti-vaxxers are the ones who suffer. It means the communities where anti-vaxxers live suffer. That’s not the same thing at all.

            We know how Covid works. We know how viruses work in general. Every infection is an opportunity for mutation, and every unvaccinated person increases the risk for the entire community.

            A young, healthy individual has a relatively low risk of dying from COVID19. They should still get the vaccine, and take precautions against transmissions, because every infection is an opportunity for mutation, and every unvaccinated person increases the risk for the entire community.

            I’ve heard from so many morons, “it’s just the flu, it’s no big deal, it’s not worth the inconvenience.” And they’re probably right, for them. But it’s far worse than the flu, it is a big deal, and the minor inconvenience of wearing a mask or getting vaccinated is nothing compared to the lives it would have saved if we had mandated these basic things.

    • Veedem@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      While that sounds straight forward in theory, these same idiots will give their children this same milk and wind up killing them.

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    Wild that people choose to dance with Captain Trips.

    Choosing to drink a product that contains a virus currently killing 50% of whatever it infects is absolutely detrimental to a long life.

    Sucks that if it does make the jump to human to human spread we are fucked beyond belief and these ass hats will probably be the catalyst.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    Also, “Big Milk”? LOL, these are probably some of the same dumbphucks that agitate against almond milk, oat milk, soy milk, etc…

    Good god, these people are so stupid.

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    15 days ago

    Democrats need to start attempts at banning more things for them to defend. For example:

    • huffing glue,
    • trepanning,
    • russian roulette,
    • Flavor Aid with Valium, chloral hydrate, cyanide, and Phenergan.
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    Once upon a time this was called “virtue signalling” but I think “vice-signalling” is better. A historian named David Perry defined it as such:

    a public display of immorality, intended to create a community based on cruelty and disregard for others, which is proud of it at the same time.

    In other words, being an asshole just to prove you belong with the other assholes in the rectum. And then you realize that everything the right does (and has been doing for decades) to “Own TEh LiBz!” can be ascribed to this:

    • Drinking raw milk
    • Anti-masking
    • Anti-vaxxing
    • Destroying their Dixie Chicks CDs
    • Not watching Disney
    • Destroying their Yetis
    • Tanning your Tucker Carlson
    • Claiming the Battle Flag of Virginia as their heritage
    • Etc.

    That’s why right-wing boycotts are usually ineffective- on the surface they might be mad about something, but since they’re only performative said boycotts don’t last long.

    On a deeper level, however, this is more disturbing as it’s another step on the road to fascism. Fascist groups are all about their purity and so members are driven to prove their inclusion in the in-group lest they be purged next. This creates a downward spiral of more and more extreme acts to maintain that facade of inclusion, which gets worse and worse for the people who have to exist with those assholes.

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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      Someone needs to tell them that the libs are extremely owned when they not just tan their undercarriage, but when it gets a nice, red hue in the entire area. To the point where there is later peeling.

      The libs really, really, really hate this. Spread the word!

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      14 days ago

      | Tanning your Tucker Carlson

      This could also work as a euphemism for exposing yourself in public. As in, “Bobert’s husband went jail for tanning his Tucker Carlson in front of some teenage girls at bowling alley.”

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    You know, I’m inclined to just let them fuck around and figure it out the hard way.

    They pulled the same shit with coronavirus, and it killed a small - but electorally noticeable - fraction of the conservative population, over and above the rates that the general population saw. Given that this is a regressive segment of the population that generally tends to hurt the rest of our society, I’m not going to object too strongly if they want to thin their own herd out with Darwin awards. Please, continue “owning the libs” by harming your own political base.

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      I’ve been at this stage for a while. Popcorn out, schadenfreude mode ready, and remaining uninvolved.

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    15 days ago

    I hear the libtards also hate skydiving and jaywalking across busy highways wearing dark clothes in the middle of the night.

    That’ll own 'em if you do those things, too.

    • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
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      Skydiving is OK, but only because it’s regulated. What really pisses the libs off is skydiving out of your buddy’s crop duster with a homemade wingsuit.

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        Gravity’s a woke scam anyway, just jump from a tall place and drink those lib tears.

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    The more of them get infected, the greater a reservoir of infected exists in which the virus can mutate into something that can spread more easily.

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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      I used the word “evolve” when talking about new strains of viruses to a co-worker who was a Young Earth Creationist. Dude was so triggered - it’s like I threw holy water on him and he barks out: “that’s NOT evolution! it’s not like cats turning into dogs or a monkey turning into a human!!!111”

      Not even kidding. Where to even start with these people? Did they just entirely skip bio 101 courses? This guy actually went to university (but not anywhere near a coastal city) and got a bachelors in science. WTAF.

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        Dude, the amount of engineers and technical people I meet that are creationists are astounding.

        Like, you went through all that math and science. You know how it works. You trust it enough to get on an airplane or crawl under your heavy thing supported by a frame you built and worked the math out on.

        You trust the material science, that you didn’t actually do, other scientists did.

        And yet you don’t trust the math and science that went into proving the earth is older than 6000 years or whatever fucking random number they made up in your one fantasy book.

        The mental gymnastics is just mind boggling.

        Then they pull the, (well god put all that there when he created the earth to make it look like its that old)

        That’s about when I introduce them to the concept of the last Thursday theory.

        One dude had the gall to say the Bible is the oldest written story, and I’m like DUDE! have you no idea about the Epic of Gilgamesh?

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          Huh, had to look up the Last Thursdayism thing.

          I remember bringing up the Vedas when xtians bring up the “but the bible is the oldest written story”, and they were like…ve-what? The thing is that even though several people like this make their way through uni, they treat it as just a fancy vo-tech track and either shut off their brain entirely during anything unrelated to their narrow goal or consciously just learned to say what they thought “they” wanted and immediately discarded it. Certainly, they seemed to not have changed their mind on anything vs. what they believed leaving high school.

          What’s even worse is when they get into discussions of morality - so many of them really do believe that people would not behave themselves and could not even have a society with a belief in their specific interpretation of their preferred version of an Abrahamic text. It’s just so provincial. Even if they had a philosophy course - it all just seems to bounce right off their skulls. They really do think that if their Jehovah/Allah/Yahweh didn’t supposedly set down rules like “don’t murder” that people would still be doing it.

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          You don’t even need to go as far as engineers. How regular people trust all the science that makes their cell phones and cars and fast food, but none of the tech that scares them or challenges their understanding is hilarious. They’re like Amish people who got addicted to cell phones and mass produced food.

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        These people are in their own reality. It’s a cognitive dissonance wrapped in layers of shoddy reasoning and tribal beliefs to keep it from unwinding. You can’t rationally reason with them and any attempt to do so will be seen as a personal attack. It’s the classic “you can’t reason somebody out of a position where they didn’t reason themselves into.”

        Best you can do is going along, acknowledge their pain or fear that’s somewhere at the basis of this cognitive dissonance and ask some questions that might get them to thing like asking them to explain who taught them this or the “so why would God cause a new pandemic?” type of questions from time to time.

        • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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          Yeah, I find asking questions often tends to put them into a space they are not used to being in, depending on the question.

          For instance, recently, I was visiting another relative during some larger gathering. I was flipping around channels and left it on CNN for a minute. Another relative (known for being a magabrain) drifts over to the TV and says, “CNN, eh?” and expects me to react in some prescribed way. I just shrug and ask “is there something wrong with CNN?” They honestly had no real answer. You could see them kind of thinking it through, esp. given the current content was something very innocuous.

          I think I asked that anti-evolution type what they thought the difference between mutation and evolution was when they were objecting to the term “evolution” in regards to new strains of viruses. That was ages ago, it was probably around SARS or avian flu.

          More recently, I asked one of those people going on about “gain of function” in relation to Fauci and Wuhan labs, etc., that I knew also to be an anti-evolution. I just asked them what they think gain of function means?

          It’s not about trying to find trick questions - that tends to just have the blowback question. I find just trying to ask more innocent questions, ask them to define their terms, or what they are parroting means to them seems to have them go quiet for a while. I’m assuming they are mulling it over. It might not change their mind, at least not any time soon. But if I can at least get them thinking about what they are mindlessly repeating, I figure that’s a win.