This past weekend, I was at an event where I learned that someone with whom I have shared some good times "hates your fucking guts," as a cousin of his told me. Why do my fucking guts so upset him? Did I kick his cat or shit on his sofa or fuck his son and leave him? Nothing like that. It's my politics. He hates my fucking guts because I don't believe that Donald Trump was a great president and that Joe Biden is destroying the country. And here's the thing: I knew he was very conservative for a long time. I even knew he went full MAGA. But I never disliked him. I disliked his beliefs, but I can separate that out, especially for someone like him who really has been through hell for the last few years for a number of health-related reasons for him and his loved ones. So, fuck it, I just didn't talk politics with him. There's a whole lot of other shit to bond over.
Apparently not, though. I don't know what tilted him into hating my fucking guts. I don't know when it happened. I do know that he didn't speak to me or even acknowledge me at a gathering this weekend. I do know that he wants nothing to do with me. I don't know if he wishes me harm, but what I did find out was that he supported the January 6 insurrection and demands justice for Ashli Babbit, the terrorist shitbird who got her empty head shot when she tried to break through cops guarding Congress. Mostly, at this point in time, I just pity the deluded fucker.
The timing of this weird-ass, playground-level bullshit couldn't have been more perfect because over the last week or so, we've been treated to various levels of shame-shaming those of us who mock the fuck out of the deranged and pathetic losers who die after willfully and proudly refusing to get vaccinated or who do something arugably stupider and treat themselves with the horse and sheep deworming drug Ivermectin if they get Covid after not getting vaccinated.
The pleas for kindness or empathy cross ideological lines. In The Atlantic, Elizabeth Bruenig asks us to "Stop Death Shaming" the unvaccinated and says, "It’s worth considering what an honest persuasion effort aimed at the unvaccinated or vaccine-hesitant would look like," although the answer is "It would look like exactly what was done when the vaccine first came out." Writer Conor Friedersdorf asks us to stop "mocking people" for sucking down horse paste and instead do the "tedious work" of convincing them not to suck down horse paste. In the National Review (motto: "Democracy dies in the darkness we created"), longtime right-wing dickstain John Fund wants us to be nicer to people who ingest Ivermectin because there is a version for humans. That's a common refrain: there's a human version that is widely prescribed in places where parasitic worms are an issue (and I don't mean the Republican Party, hey-yo!), so, you know, those who think it's worth a chance to take it shouldn't be instantly dismissed and insulted.
And all I can say is "Don't be fucking ridiculous. Of course, we're gonna make fun of them. All of them." First, on the Ivermectin insanity, yeah, rich pricks like Joe Rogan can pay a doesn't-give-a-fuck doctor to get the human prescription version, but most of the people doing it aren't rich pricks. They're poor and middle class pricks whose doctors are telling them, "The fuck is wrong with you? Fuck, no, I'm not prescribing the anti-lice and worm drugs for you" so they go to the ol' feed and seed and pick it up. Or, for ten bucks, some Walmarts. It's a tube of paste, for real, often apple flavored, and dumb motherfuckers are sucking it down to prevent or cure their Covid. It's gotten so bad that the FDA and other health officials, as well as the makers of Ivermectin, Merck, have issued statements saying, more or less, "Would you dumb rednecks stop sucking down the sheep goo?" And the goo is selling out at farm stores because you don't need a veterinarian's prescription to get it for your horse or sheep or cow (there is an injectable version that does need a prescription). A Memphis feed store can't keep it on the shelves. A Las Vegas store wants you to prove you have a horse before you can buy it. While, sure, the story about Ivermectin overdoses preventing gunshot victims from being seen at a hospital in Oklahoma was, at best, overblown, the fact is that people are calling poison control in huge numbers after taking the horse drug and they are ODing and taking up space in the ERs with their stupidity.
And you can make all kinds of statements about how we need to understand why people might do this absolutely fucking moronic thing. You can talk about the unfair medical system and rural areas without access to proper care or how desperate people do desperate things. You can blah, blah, blah all fucking day trying to fluff that sympathy cock into a full-blown erection, but it fails for one simple reason. There's a goddamn vaccine. It's free. It works. That's the answer. Anything you try to say after that is bullshit. It's all a lie. You don't want the vaccine because it's "experimental," but you'll eat the horse goo even though it's totally untested for Covid. That's fucking hilarious. You don't want the vaccine because you heard it might harm you and then you got Covid and died. That's so fucking miserable that I better make fun of it or I'll scream at your grave about what a shit-souled loser you were.
I don't hate them. I pity them and feel superior to them because, well, I am (and so is everybody who gets vaccinated and doesn't put a tube of cow paste to their lips). I won't treat them like children. As I've said repeatedly, they are adults who made an adult decision to listen to assholes instead of doctors. So I save my hatred for Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan and Ron Johnson and every scum from the garbage pail bottom who keeps telling their viewers or listeners or voters not to get vaccinated and to try this bullshit drug or that bullshit cure.
No, I don't hate the willfully unvaccinated, but I don't have sympathy. I lost that a long goddamn time ago. And that's because the people we are trying to convince to get vaccinated hate our fucking guts and dream of slaughtering us or at least exiling or concentration camping us. So, yeah, I'm gonna keep mocking them for their refusal to do the easiest goddamn thing in the world. I'm gonna do it because they scare the fuck out of me by their actions that might end up dragging us all down into the ditch with them and joking about it keeps me sane amidst this genuine insanity. Being nice about it is a waste of goddamn time.
Plus, c'mon, finding out that some of these idiots are eating so much horse paste that they shit out their intestinal lining and think it's worms and then think that's a good thing? That's comedy gold.
(Just to note about the opening story: He wasn't a good friend or anything. Just someone who I always enjoyed seeing when a particular group gathered, so his loss doesn't leave a hole in my life. More of a "Huh. That's fucked up.")
