How to Defuse Trumpian Trolling on Vaccines

And why sophisticated Americans can’t solve that problem

Image by Marco Verch, from Flickr

Many Americans decided the Covid pandemic is a political rather than a scientific medical issue. They decided this because politics is fun, science is boring, and Americans have been infantilized by decades of indoctrination in consumerism.

Many Americans don’t want to rescue themselves. They want to be entertained.

The Farce of the US Pandemic Response

Thus, the quarter of Americans who belong to the Democratic tribe pride themselves on their professionalism and intellectual sophistication, so they signal their virtue by deferring to the medical experts who tell them to wear masks and to get vaccinated.

The quarter who belong to the Trump cult are aggrieved and out for vengeance against the establishment figures they despise for their smug cosmopolitanism. The Trumpian Republicans repudiate the medical experts, dismissing their recommendations as part of a sinister conspiracy against the God-fearing, white, rural salt of the earth. Trumpians don’t wear masks in the pandemic, and refuse to get vaccinated.

(The other half of Americans are either too busy to care about politics or they’re enlightened and see through the tribal ruse.)

As a result, the US is seeing a surge of Covid cases, centered around the intransigent red states that could infect the more dutiful blue ones.

Meanwhile, the corporate media outside of the Trumpian bubble castigate the Trumpians for their recklessness and for not discharging their civic duty. As a matter of public relations, that strategy is bound to fail for the same reason that when a parent lectures a child who’s throwing a tantrum, that parent’s cluelessness will compel the child to double down on her obstinacy.

Reasoning with someone who belongs to a cult is as foolish as arguing with the wind or the rain. Reminding Trumpians that they should respect science and Democratic presidents is as futile as chastising a progressive person for not wanting to attend a white supremacist rally. Neither Trumpians nor Democrats would care about those respective criticisms.