Apparently it runs from liberal to conservative to stupid. One of the latest examples of stupid extremism is this Newsmax "reporter" who tweeted: "Dear Christians: the vaccines contain a bioluminescent marker called LUCIFERASE so that you can be tracked. Read the last book of the New Testament to see how this ends." CNN says the claim has been "debunked" in that the vaccines do not contain luciferase, but that would seem to miss the point.
FYI, luciferase is a name for a group of bioluminescent enzymes, including the one that produces the firefly's flash. It's called luciferase because lucifer is Latin for "light bearing," and originally referred to the planet Venus as the morning star. It became an appellation for the (non-existent) antagonist of God in Christian mythology because he was thought to be a "shining angel" who fell from heaven. Whatever.
Anyway, luciferase is used in biology labs to keep track of cells during experiments. No doubt it was used in some of the work to develop mRNA vaccines. CNN is correct, it is not actually in the vaccines themselves. But even if it were:
- It would be harmless
- It could not be used to "track" people
- It has nothing to do with Satan
But this is what conservatives do. They make up stupid shit based on something like a coincidence of a name or a gross misunderstanding of science, in order to scare people, and then manipulate that manufactured fear for political purposes. They have no policy solutions or truths to offer. Just fear-mongering bullshit.
4 comments:
And, as I think our friend Mo would agree, the fear-mongering works. It’s time for Biden and others to step up and call out race baiting, dog whistles, and fear-mongering for what it is. Time to say, Okay, we won’t teach “critical race theory,” but we’ll teach the real history of what happened in this country so that all the Caucasian folks can learn why they’re walking around feeling guilty. That way, they won’t be susceptible to all the stupid fear-mongering shit based in racism and ignorance. Bring on the light of truth and it will kill all those stupid fear-mongering shit and germs. We have to address the reality of racism, the reality of our history, the reality of decades of conservative fear tactics based on the fucked-up falsehood that there’s more than one human race.
Don -
Two problems with that approach:
1) You may run afoul of the Streisand effect; combating the falsehood will draw more attention to it.
2) Reason isn't a good weapon against unfortunate human tendencies far older and more deeply embedded than our ability to apply logic.
Perhaps we should create a parody of far right tactics featuring the same techniques they use to manipulate their marks.
How about a shadowy character called "A" (for "Attuned", or maybe as in "Q&A") who claims to have mystical powers to understand the hidden agendas of other people and groups. He exposes "truths" like these:
MAGA stands for Misleading All Godfearning Americans.
Trump is actually the Antichrist (that actually works for me).
COVID-19 was designed to destroy people who had the potential to see through Trump's lies.
Satan is creating an army to fight for him at Armageddon by impregnating women with his minions. (Think Rosemary's Baby.) Unfortunately women sense the evil growing within them. That's the main reason they get abortions.
Critical Race Theory trains people to see through the right wing lies fed them.
And then let social media's algorithms do the rest.
Yep, you’re right. That works a lot better, and it’s a hell of a lot funnier, too.
I second Chucky on this one. I've said for years that you can't reason a man out of a position he didn't reason himself into. The basic problem is that these people are radically alienated from all traditional sources of social authority and will not trust messages coming from those nodes. We need to actually be the radical anti-authoritarians we dream of.
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