Heather Cox Richardson's latest letter starts off interestingly:
This morning, on the Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends, personality Steve Doocy told viewers to get the coronavirus vaccine because it would “save your life” and noted that 99% of the people now dying from Covid-19 are unvaccinated. Brian Kilmeade answered that not getting the vaccine is a personal choice and that the government has no role in protecting the population. “That’s not their job. It’s not their job to protect anybody,” he said.
This, it seems to me, goes to the heart of the US dilemma. There's a view that the US should be a nation of rugged frontiersfolk, looking after themselves, with zero interference from the government. From this comes the Republican belief in low taxation, in Grover Nyquist's famous formulation, eventually to reduce the government to such a size that it can be drowned in a bathtub. They apparently cannot see that a modern society cannot work like this - as Prof. Richardson points out, both Abraham Lincoln and Dwight Eisenhower saw the benefits of government and the necessity for its intervention - it was the Administration of Eisenhower, a Republican, that inaugurated the interstate highway system. To present-day Republicans, this is "socialist", and to be avoided like the plague. And, as Mr. Kilmeade quoted above has said, the plague should not necessarily be avoided, even if it costs the lives of Americans (600,000 and counting...). My US agent tells me that 91% of the delta variant cases in Missouri are on respirators, and they're in the 20-40 age group. Yet the craziness such as this persists:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/19/opinion/tennessee-dolly-parton-covid-vaccine.html
Speaking of craziness, and I apologise if this subject has previously surfaced, if anyone has never heard of the, er, art of Jon McNaughton, this sample, "Spirit of 2024", should put you off forever:
