Our local middle school held a clinic for kids this past weekend, and one of my co-workers took her first-grader there. As she drove in, there were some people on the corner directing traffic, so she rolled down the window. A lady leaned toward her, tried to hand her a pamphlet, and said, “Before you go in, here is some information you should consider.”
Yup. The antivaxxers were trying to sabotage the clinic.
Someone called the police and trespassed them off school grounds, but they hung out on the public sidewalk continuing the shenanigans. Eventually a couple of district employees went and stood by them and yelled at everyone to ignore them and head into the clinic.
Thankfully where I live, they are bringing in a law to prevent these stupid assholes from blocking or interfering with anyone. They’ve already been banned from protesting at any health care facility.
I’ve said it before but an over-simplified, idealized way of looking at most things political is;
Republican/conservative = me
Democrat/liberal = we
I just saw a video (60 Minutes?) of some conservative talking head defending conservativism as, and I paraphrase, “We just want to keep things the way they are”. As a former Republican raised in white, Christian, middle class America, even I can see that that is the problem. Great for the “haves/me”, not so much for the “have nots/we”. The maskholes are perfect examples. But even he said that things have gone too far regarding basic civility when it comes to disagreeing.
This might be a good time to mention that I was watching an old movie on TV this morning, a movie that was set in an airport in 1963 - back when air travel was glamorous and America was great and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and all the diamonds and furs didn’t look out of place in the incredibly dingy 1960’s airport……because it was an airport. An international airport.
And every passenger that approached the ticket counter had to show…….wait for it…….their vaccination card.
And no one complained about their freedoms or whined about the Constitution, they just showed their vaccination cards without making any fuss.
Most of my mom’s side of the family does; this is how we find out about deaths and marriages on that side. Dad’s side of the family tends to cross-post all over the place.
Yeah, that question struck me as odd. I’m admittedly only marginally functional on social media (if the SDMB doesn’t count) and have no clue about any hot new trend in the technology zeitgeist.
But that still seemed like a rather sudden transition from the conventional wisdom of “everybody’s getting all their information from Facebook and Twitter and it’s destroying our society’s connection to reality and critical thinking ability” to a new conventional wisdom of “Facebook? Pffft, nobody uses that anymore”.
I know I hit this note often, but: back in 1963 there wasn’t an entire industry devoted to flattering a large fraction of the population and telling them they are Special and they Shouldn’t Have to Do What Stupid Government Tells Them and they are Patriotic and Noble when they Resist.
I mean, there would have been a few right-wingers with radio shows at the time, but there was no “bubble”—no 24/7 environment in which the flattery and fear-mongering could work on people without any contradictory (and inconvenient) facts ever intervening.
That makes a huge difference in the ways in which people define themselves, and in what they perceive as acceptable–or even admirable–behavior.
I don’t use social media stuff, so im not the best to comment on this, but I think a growing amount of
people have realized how toxic and damaging Facebook and Twitter and Instagram are and are cutting back or leaving those places. I don’t think it’ll ever be a significant amount since I see it more from liberals and older people and not anything I’m aware of similarly happening in conservative circles or those under 30 or so.
And I fell more young people are using Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.
