You don’t have to tell us that you’re old and out of touch, Sam. It’s sufficiently obvious from the contents of your posts.
What, you think Republicans don’t fall for health scams? How do you think Alex Jones makes all his money? It’s not like he gets paid per grieving parent he harasses. He uses his show to peddle a never ending line of bogus “health” products - including scam Coronoavirus cures.
Let’s compare with a THC bath bomb, shall we? The specific claims here are, “relaxing AF,” “opens your pores,” and “helps with pain relief.” Which is likely true: hot baths are relaxing AF, and are good for treating aches and pains. Note that the bath bombs aren’t even claiming to get you high. They are, no doubt, hoping that people will see THC/CBD and assume it has health benefits/will get you lit and buy one, which is a little sketch, but they don’t seem to be making any claims about their product’s effects that are falsifiable.
So:
Liberal “health scam:” “Ohmigod, this bath bomb has THC in it? Isn’t that wild? Should we get some and try it? I wonder if it would be good for my back? It’s only $20, let’s try it!”
Conservative health scam: “I can barely breath, and I just started coughing up red spots. I don’t need a doctor, though: I already know it’s not coronavirus, because that guy on YouTube who shouts about gay frogs sold me a tube of anti-Cornoavirus toothpaste! I just need to drink more of the bone broth he also sold me, and I’ll be fine, just like he said.”
So, we’ll this add this to your pile of false equivalences, shall we? My, they do seem to be stacking up.
I don’t think either party corners the market on believing stupid bullshit. I lived in Ann Arbor for six years. It is the mecca of liberal woo.
COVID deniers are predominantly Republican because Trump told them not to take the virus seriously. He decided to use it as a political wedge rather than treating it as a national health crisis. Evangelists have always been skeptical of modern medicine so it was an easy weakness to exploit.
But the anti - Vax movement and the anti - GMO and obsessively organic crap came from overeducated liberals with too much time on their hands. I once worked at a monkey sanctuary with a bunch of liberal vegan hippies and they believed all sorts of stupid bullshit. Like, “let kids roll around in mud to develop their immune systems rather than poison them with vaccines.” These folks are ripe for manipulation as well.
Although I’m not sure what a THC bath bomb is, I’m willing to stipulate that it’s an overpriced and frivolous purchase.
Let’s say I’m living in a large city with a high cost of living, making $3000 a week. My rent is $3000 a month and my other fixed expenses are high.
I might see that $20 bath bomb in the window of the healing store and buy it just because it’s pretty, and if it smelled as good as it looked, I might buy one once or twice a week. It’s not because I think the bath bomb is going to heal me, it’s not that I don’t know the bath bomb is frivolous. Maybe I just like the smell.
I buy it because it’s only $20, so why not? I spend a lot of money that way. Advertisers love me.
One thing about living in an area with a high cost of living is that the stuff that costs the same everywhere, the widgets and gadgets, start to look inexpensive and you can afford a lot of it, because the financial situation I described gives you lots of disposable income.
By contrast, the guy that’s living in a rural area with a low cost of living might make $500 a week and pay $500 a month in rent and have other comparably low fixed expenses. He might have the same basic standard of living as our urban dweller - he might even have a bigger or nicer house.
But he’s not going to have nearly as much money to sling around on $20 bath bombs. He might even see that $20 bath bomb in the store window and muse about how gullible someone would have to be to buy one.
But it’s really more because of the disparity in disposable income.
And I don’t think liberals are more gullible to medical woo, not at all. As the Dr. Oz show moved from health tips to the promotion of increasingly sketchier supplements and treatments, they slid to the right until Dr. Oz became a full on right wing Trump shill. Just saying.
If anyone doubts that conservatives are particularly gullible to medical scams, just look back to April and the hydroxycloroquine fiasco.
The entire right wing was convinced that this was going to be the miracle cure for Covid-19. There was absolutely no valid reason for anyone to believe this.
There was absolutely no evidence that this drug would work, just a couple of small observational studies that had not been properly regressed or peer-reviewed, and the flapping lying lips of Donald J Trump. But this was enough for half of America, including shills like Dr. Oz.
A lot of time and money that could’ve been used on productive Coronavirus measures was wasted on this shit. It was nothing more than blind wishful thinking and false hope. On one side only, pretty much.
Like when Republican controlled Oklahoma bought $2million (the equivalent of 100,000 THC bath bombs!) worth of hydroxychloroquine and then tried to return it?
Don’t be too sure about that - we get a lot Republican supporters buying CBD and other such things where I work. I hear that in states where THC is legal it crosses party lines with no problems.
No, because being glad is a rational response to the passing of a terrible human being, and Rush was undeniably a terrible human being.
Should it be illegal to fire someone for being glad that Rush Limbaugh died? No. If it happens, well, sorry you worked for an asshole. If you tell me where it was, I’ll avoid giving them money.
There are “opinions” and then there are “misinformation and lies”. If I say “the weather is bad”, that is an opinion. If I say “The sun rises in the west”, that is a lie. If I say “Joe Biden is evil”, that is an opinion. If I say “Joe Biden stole the election through massive voter fraud”, that is a lie. If I say “The government isn’t taking the right actions to deal with the pandemic”, that is an opinion. If I say “Coronavirus is a hoax being used to control the population”, that is at best a lie and at worst outright insanity. Everyone has the right to their opinions. But as we’ve seen over and over again recently, spreading lies can be lethal.
Some of Carano’s posts were opinions. But some were nasty little lies.
Yeah there are many on the right who are gullible. The average IQ is 100 and it’s not surprising that there are people of all political ideologies that are foolish. What excuses the deliberate blindness to economic and scientific fact that the so-called educated left engage in in order to pander for political power? Being dumb is one thing and generally out of the control of the individual, willful malicious ignorance and distortion is far less understandable.
What is surprising is how supinely conservatives in general have acquiesced in right-wing media attempts to make them gullible and foolish by peddling delusional conspiracy theories and made-up “alternative facts”.
While natural stupidity levels are indeed likely to be pretty constant across ideologies, the Republicans/conservatives have a massive lead these days in artificially enhanced stupidity. Ordinary Americans with normal potential for critical thinking and awareness of facts get fed through the Fox/RW media propaganda machine and come out as low-information delusional paranoiacs.
That’s not happening on the other side to anywhere near the same extent. Liberal/mainstream media doesn’t always get every detail right and is not immune to bias, but it’s far more reality-based than conservative media, and consequently has a much less “stupidizing” effect on its audience.
Economic and scientific fact are pretty much in alignment with the positions of the “educated left” these days, ever since the right wing decided to plump for “creating their own reality”.
