- A note about my post about Atwood’s THE HANDMAID’S TALE;
- Florida ends vaccines mandates, because you shouldn’t be forced to follow laws, right?;
- How the GOP suddenly realizes some people should not be allowed guns;
- How Trump has learned to speak to his MAGA base.
I just finished a post about Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel THE HANDMAID’S TALE, which is about a religious theocracy that responds to a dramatic change in human fertility. It’s about how human morality adjusts to changing circumstances. And how religions respond by reinforcing the most basic tribal morality: survival above all. That was then; this is now. Such thinking applied to our current environment goes haywire. Conservatives don’t think anything can be learned.
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NY Times, 3 Sep 2025: Florida Moves to End Vaccine Mandates for Schoolchildren, subtitled “The state would be the first to scrap requirements that children be vaccinated to attend school, among other rules.”
“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body?” Dr. Ladapo, a vocal denigrator of vaccines, said to applause during an event on Wednesday in Valrico, Fla., near Tampa. “Your body is a gift from God.”
Well, that final comment gives his game away, and undermines anything he might say that purports to be rational.
Who am I to tell you to stop at stop signs? Or wear seatbelts? Do whatever you want! It’s your body! Never might whatever collateral damage you might cause. You’re free!!
This issue for conservatives is concern about contamination. They’re deathly afraid of injecting anything into their body. (Never mind, as I saw a piece about today, the conservatives TV hosts puffing their faces out with Botox.) No amount of scientific explanation, or data about the success rates of vaccines, can convince them. They know what they know. They are driven by base fears in human nature of contamination.
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Similarly:
JMG, 4 Sep 2025: Sen. Ashley Moody: People Are Rushing To Move To Florida Because We Do Things Like Vax Mandate Bans
No, they’re not. Why not eliminate all laws, as threats to freedom?
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(again the link to an image on JMG does not work.)
JMG, 4 Sep 2025, from Daily Wire: DOJ Plots Banning Trans People From Owning Guns
What? The GOP advocating gun control? This is nonsense on so many levels. It derives from conservative belief that transgender people are mentally ill. Even so. Many school shooters are White. So why not ban all Whites from owning guns? And so on.
Also, at a guess, I think transgender people are the least likely people in the world who want to buy guns. It’s telling that conservatives think *everyone* wants to buy as many guns as possible. (I don’t own a gun and have never felt any desire to.)
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Another.
AlterNet, David Badash, 4 Sep 2025: ‘Republicans are coming for your guns!’ Trump DOJ ripped over ‘legally illiterate’ policy
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Epstein. Epstein. Epstein. Epstein. Epstein. Epstein. As some of my Facebook friends say everyday. The latest rumor is that they are redacting all Republican names in those files, and leaving the Democratic ones in. But this is just a rumor. This relates to how Trump keeps changing the subject.
Salon, Chauncey DeVega, 4 Sept 2025: How’s Trump’s health? He’d rather talk about the state of his soul, subtitled “Like an evangelical preacher, the president knows how to speak to his MAGA flock”
He doesn’t believe any of this. He’s playing to his base.
Like other authoritarian populist movements, Trumpism is a belief system for its members. As scholars have documented, successful religions satisfy the core emotional needs of believers. This is especially true for converts, who tend to be more zealous than people who are born into a given religion or faith tradition. It tells them how to think, defines the boundaries of their reality and dictates who they love and hate. It shapes how they live their day-to-day lives. MAGA itself is a surrogate family for many die-hard members who travel the country to attend Trump’s rallies, and for those who gather online via Truth Social and other right-wing echo chambers. Journalists have routinely described Trump’s rallies as a mix of an old-time Christian tent revival, a rock concert and a festival. Because of their sense of linked fate with Trump, his talk about heaven feels deeply personal and sacred.
