Recap: December 28, 2021

Well, well. Look at that. 

Another politician died from COVID.

A tragedy, said the news. A terrible tragedy.  

Yes, a tragedy. He leaves behind a family. Friends. A job undone. He was so young. He was in the prime of life. And now, he's dead. It's so sad. Yes, yes. So very sad. 

He was a politician, you see. 

He was an elected "leader." 

He was that species of conservative we've grown all too familiar with of late: A vocal antivaxxer, a conspiracy theorist, loudly dismissive of the severity of the disease, profit over people, and who actively campaigned against any measure to contain the pandemic.

Who am I talking about? 

What was his name? 

Is it that guy yesterday from Washington state? 

Or the one last week from Florida? 

Maybe those (several) politicians from Texas or that one antivaxxer who was elected in Louisiana but died from COVID before he could take office?

While we're at it, what about that semi-famous YouTuber, or that media personality, or those various prominent preachers?

I mean, that's the thing, isn't it? 

That, right there. 

It could be any of them. 

Every day, there's another one. Another dead idiot. Another jackass politician, another fanatical preacher, another red-faced talk show host, dead from a preventable disease after a month of sucking oxygen through a tube. 

Do the names even matter at this point? 

It's just another unvaccinated moron, drowned in his own snot. 

Another suicide by petulance. 

Do the names even matter? 

What's that? 

Oh. I see. 

I should be a better person. 

Take the high road, right? Like that. 

Have some sympathy. Think of the families. Think of how these poor deluded fools were taken in by conspiracy and delusion. Have some empathy, man. Be the better person. 

That's what you're saying. Be the better person. Don't cheer these deaths. Don't celebrate these fools killing themselves off. Don't raise up a huzzah to Darwin.

It's not their fault, right? They were led astray. 

That's what Twitter told me, when I mentioned the latest death from stupidity. 

Be the better person. 

Yeah. 

Well, Folks, you can just stop with "be a better person" bit.

Because that just ain't going to happen. That ship not only sailed, it hit a rock outside the harbor and went down with all hands. 

I am all out of fucks to give. 

I'm not going to feel bad for some obnoxious idiot politician, some loud mouthed media personality, some fanatical religious nut, who not only refused to get vaxxed, but actively tried to keep the public from the vaccine. These assholes are killing people. It's bad enough they killed themselves, but they are enthusiastically trying to take the rest of us with them. 

Deliberately causing your own death from a preventable disease isn't a tragedy.

It's evolution. 

And you can likewise stop with the "You should feel bad for his family" routine too. 

His family?

His family, forsooth. 

LOL.

These people, they don't give a shit about their families. Or you. Or anybody else. The only thing they care about is their fanatical ideology. They're willing to kill themselves for it, and they'll take you with them just to own some libs. Let's go, Brandon! Yeah! 

We're years into this now. 

And at this point if you believe Alex Jones and Sean Hannity over actual doctors, then you are a fucking moron. 

You. Are. A. Moron. 

Hell, even Donald goddamn Trump thinks you should get vaccinated. 

At this point in human history, if you're an antivaxxer, you deserve every bit of scorn, mockery, and contempt we can heap upon you. You're a plague rat. You're Typhoid Mary and you should be exiled to a remote island somewhere beyond the edge of the map and left to rot. 

You want me to care about your family when you don't? Fine. Maybe now that another idiot politician is dead from stupidity, his kids will have at least chance for a better life. I mean, hell, if he couldn't be the kind of parent who was willing to put his ideology aside for his own children, then at least maybe his selfish miserable death will serve as a lesson to his children to be better people than their asshole of an old man. 

I dunno. 

Maybe I am a callous son of a bitch, as Twitter accused me of being yesterday.

Maybe I am. 

Twenty years in the military, a couple of wars, there's been a lot of dead bodies along the way, so, yeah, maybe I am a callous son of a bitch. 

So?

So what? 

I just can't see the death of another antivaxxer as a tragedy. Not to me. Not to you. Not even to his family. 

The world is better off without these assholes. 

Folks, the world is full of tragedy. Real tragedy.

Kids going hungry in a nation where we throw food away? Yeah, that's a tragedy. 

People sleeping in boxes under a viaduct while the rich fly into space as a goof? That's a tragedy.

I live in a state that this morning is surging in COVID cases, where deaths from the pandemic are at all time high, where the hospitals are overflowing -- and thus the profits are likewise at all time high. Healthcare for profit, now, that is a tragedy. Down here in The South, every day I see kids with their teeth rotted out of their heads, because their idiot, ignorant, asshole parents bought AR-15s and $400 worth of cigarettes this month instead of dental care. That's a goddamn tragedy. 

In my lifetime, we've spent untold trillions on decades of one futile miserable war after another, wars that left millions dead, millions more maimed, and the world measurably worse off than when it started. And no one was ever held to account. All those lives, all those people, all those families, bombed, burned, maimed, forgotten, and no one politician responsible was ever, not once, held to account. That's a not just a tragedy, that's a goddamn crime. 

There are a million tragedies large and small every day in this world and you want me to feel bad because some asshole politician, a grown goddamn man, who should have known better -- AND WHO NO DOUBT DID KNOW BETTER -- but who was determined to endanger himself as a political stunt, died? 

Died from his own determined and deliberate stupidity?

These deaths aren't an accident, they are on purpose.

Why shouldn't I celebrate that death? Why not? I mean, he got what he wanted. He made his point. Right? 

Callous. You damn right, I'm callous. 

And why shouldn't I be? These selfish miserable bastards, we've tried everything. 

We've tried reason. 

We've tried science.

We've tried appealing to their better nature, their sense of community and duty to their fellows.

They've been babied, cajoled, begged, shamed, and finally mandated. 

But still, they are determined to die and take us with them. 

And so they do.

They die. 

Alone. Scared. Drowning in their snot. 

That's not a tragedy. 

That's natural selection. 

These people, these antivaxers, they're not heroes. 

They're not standing on principle. 

It's not about freedom. 

It's not a tragedy. 

You can't appeal to their better nature, because they don't have any. 

They're just ASSHOLES.

And the world is better off without them. 

Viruses don't give a shit about your politics or your freedom or your idiotic political beliefs.

OR my callous disregard.

Look here: either you're part of civilization and you're willing to do whatever it takes to hold it together or you're not. If you're not willing to put aside your political ideology to protect your own families, and the rest of us, from a preventable disease, if you don't care that much, then I've got no fucks to give for you. 

I have plenty of sympathy. 

I have plenty of empathy.

I bleed for every real tragedy or I wouldn't have spent most of my adult life sworn to the defense of this nation and its people. 

But not for you. 

I have no fucks to give for you. 

If you're trying to burn down civilization, if you'd rather kill yourself and everyone around you, for a political stunt, then I've got nothing but contempt for you and yours. 

You're an asshole and you deserve what you get. 

You don't like that? 

It makes you mad? 

You want empathy and respect and concern for your wellbeing? That's a two-way street. 

You first. Step up. 

Stop being an asshole.