Why would people in the Trump-Fox mindset oppose getting vaccinated?
Narrative inertia.
Vaccinations got shoe-horned into a narrative and mindset.
Trump capitalized on a mental narrative that motivates a significant body of Americans, particularly ones that populate the Trump base. Newt Gingrich understood it and shared the insight with fellow Republicans. Rush Limbaugh revolutionized talk radio by giving it voice. It has appeal to a significant market segment, and Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch made this narrative Fox's own.
The narrative: Anger, outrage, and resentment over Democrats and liberals and their various constituencies imposing themselves and their way of life onto regular, normal, White, Christian, native-born, heterosexual people like themselves.
Those people--others--are taking advantage. They are inserting themselves. Worse, they are getting affirmative-action-style benefits that "regular, normal" people don't get. These outside interposers include people of supposed disadvantage, including women, immigrants, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, LGBTQ--all the people who support Democrats and their talk of "equity" and re-distribution. The bad guys also include elites: Hollywood, the highly educated, billionaire liberals, wealthy Jewish liberals, privileged woke zealots in social media, and university academics with their theories on race and gender.
The narrative has political traction. A majority of Republicans in America tell pollsters that they believe that Whites, not Blacks, are the primary target of racial prejudice and disadvantage. Pew Research Washington Post
Because the narrative says the central conflict in American politics is one of Democrats who disrespect "regular" people and impose their will on them, they cannot be trusted. If Democrats are pushing something, it must be something unwelcome. Vaccinations got understood as another iteration of this narrative. Vaccinations are a parallel story to eggheads at universities pushing Critical Race Theory; both are dangerous things created by error-riddled experts. Vaccinations were an iteration of do-gooder, nanny-state overkill.
Resist Democrats. Don't tread on me.
Vaccinations fit the narrative, but awkwardly. Trump said he deserved credit for creating them, but not their distribution. Vaccinations seemed effective and safe, yet they were created by experts and endorsed by the CDC and Biden. What to do? GOP messaging needed some a fictional drama. Outreach to poorly vaccinated neighborhoods transformed into a door-to-door plan of confiscation of guns and Bibles, something unquestionably bad that fits the narrative. Private businesses who brought tourist jobs to Florida--something good--needed to be transformed into agents of state tyranny and stopped from requiring proof of vaccination. The vaccine was an American victory--good--but also one that Democrats liked, so something must be wrong.
And yet reality intervenes to ruin a good story. The delta-variant-fueled epidemic of the unvaccinated meant the good guys are getting sick and the vaccinated Democrats are not. This is a bad look for Republicans. There is workaround to preserve the central narrative. GOP politicians and Fox hosts can nominally support vaccinations. Give a grudging acknowledgement that vaccines are good, but then pivot to criticizing the CDC for their confusing and shifting guidance on masks. Praise individual citizens who refuse to submit to vaccination tyranny for their own good reasons. Blame Biden for the stalled effort to get mass vaccination. Point out problems with breakthrough infections. Point out examples of Obama or Pelosi or Schumer taking off a mask. Hypocrites!
Amid the message focus on Democratic outrages, cover yourself in case things get much worse with the new variants. Tell people to get vaccinated.
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13 comments:
Let’s see what happens in Florida. Right now, their governor doesn’t want the kids to wear masks in schools, cruise ships can’t have a vaccinated mandate. Both strike me as an poor political position to take. Reality of the virus being dangerous becomes more obvious as hospitals are filling up with kids, adults who have not been vaccinated. So many articles of deniers who have denied and expressed their regrets before they died, that they are no longer newsworthy. Well Duh.
"...fictional drama."
You mean lies, right?
Charles Blow of the NYT writes that the unvaccinated carousing about maskless is like millions of Americans playing in traffic. Regrettably, it’s also millions of Americans throwing millions of children into oncoming traffic.
Because the narrative says the central conflict in American politics is one of Democrats who disrespect "regular" people and impose their will on them, they cannot be trusted.
It’s not just “the narrative.“ It’s the reality those people have experienced for the last few decades.
“Learn to code,” they told the folks whose livelihoods they were carelessly destroying. And you’d better be woke while you’re learning or we’ll cancel you.
Governor Ron de Santis of Florida is obviously unhinged, another Republican lacking common sense. I suggest that his reckless behavior in office is responsible for causing many needless deaths and he should be impeached and charged with the crime of murder. This is not a reckless accusation but a simple rendering of the truth as it has transpired. A vast number of Americans
simply refuse to participate in the electoral process, and the tragic
truth is in the ascension to office of an incompetent nincompoop who has
utilized the countless benefits of science we all partake of but refuses,
strictly on partisan grounds, to concede that vaccines are the only answer to a
problem that transcends politics. De Santis belongs in jail, not the governor's mansion. Bob Warren
I was at Trader Joe’s this morning and more people were masked than had been two weeks prior. I quietly asked the checker when I was checking out what her gauge of prevailing sentiments indicated. She said 50/50. Half the people are scared and half of them think the whole thing is a scamdemic.
Then she said, what do you expect when our vaccination rate is 47%? I said actually it’s about 43%.
As I was driving home it hit me how hostage this holds all of us.
(And the “freedom fighters” feel held hostage by restrictions.)
I also think Mr Trigoboff’s point is particularly worth noting regarding rural vs metro Oregon. I.e., Jackson County (minus Ashland).
Those whom they fear (women, immigrants, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Muslims, Hindis, Budhists, etc) are the people that the Republicans will encounter when they need treatment and diagnosis by medical doctors and pharmacists. They are the people who are investing and managing their retirement funds. They are the people who are making the computers, cell phones, media devices, electric autos and trucks.
In order to place the current anti-vaccination irrationality into historical perspective, read this article https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/vaccine-paranoia-why-right-wingers-are-worried-about-their-precious-bodily-fluids/ar-AAN6hsG
I should but don't remember those ridiculous fears from the 50s and 60s but I grew up in an impoverished farm family, with no TV, and my father was very intelligent and grew up in Missouri (Show Me State)
I had occasion to go to Costco yesterday for a particular item, and noted that the Staff are again wearing masks, while the shoppers mostly are not. One thing I did notice is that nearly all the shoppers who appeared to be of Latinx ethnicity were masked. White folks, not nearly as much.
Today the senior living facility where I live has just locked down again. Dining room closed, meals delivered to your door, all gathering events scuttled, no trips to 7 feathers,. Mask up. Two deaths in Josephine Co. two more in Jackson Co. today. Say two Hail Marys, do a little speaking in tongues and shoot a little antiseptic hand sanitizer on your palms and rub like you mean it. My son is in his 13th day of COVID and his girl friend says “The wonderful thing about informed consent is that two people with the same information, can make two completely different choices and neither of them is right or wrong. That is what medical freedom is and should be.”
Oh ,boy. Bite your tongue, Daddy. But I didn’t.
Hope your son recovers, Mr Bowman. I’d actually like to know what you said to this girlfriend.
What's described here as "the" narrative is really a progressive's rather dismissive summary of its supposed implications, as opposed an affirmative summary of the narrative itself.
The real narrative, concerning which Trump is but an opportunistic, half-literate arriviste, is that warts and all America remains easily the greatest nation in the history of humanity. Ingrate, ahistorical attempts to claim otherwise and unduly demonize America are but warmed-over Marxist levelling, using race as the primary wedge this time through.
Human history ain't beanbag, and if anything America and Western Europe are the only happenstance topdogs across globe and time to even give a damn about and try to repair its collateral harm in the first place. White people don't consider themselves the victims of race prejudice so much as the scapegoats or rather the villains in a misbegotten, simplistic leftist civic melodrama.
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