A philosophical resistance to mandates means people need to be persuaded to take the vaccine. But it’s hard to persuade people when they have already been persuaded by the websites they read and the talk show hosts they listen to that the people arguing in favor of vaccination are wicked. The result: Folks in Republican-leaning states (and folks in Republican-leaning media) are dying in greater numbers. And dying to own the libs has electoral consequences, as Breitbart’s John Nolte recently noted. Understanding he can’t make a straightforward case for vaccines to save the lives of his fellow travelers, though, he instead couches the fact that dying to own the libs is nuts by suggesting that the libs want you to die to own the libs.

Source: Washington Post September 21, 2021 17:26 UTC