The American right trades on a stew of fears, and sees itself as the only true defenders of liberty. For many, this resides in two basic notion: Gun rights and a distorted version of free enterprise that confuses regulations and aid with tyranny and the domestication of the citizenry. It would be funny if the potential results weren’t so damaging to actual democracy. //
In a t-shirt shop on the Jersey Shore, a woman asks to see a “2nd Amendment t-shirt,” and chats about guns with the guy behind the counter. “I’m ready to strap one to my leg,” she says. He agrees. “God willing.” She poses with a T-shirt. He’s going to put it on his new website. //
Outside the store, a T-shirt hangs. Shows a lion superimposed on a black-and-white American flag: “I’m Not One of the Sheep.” // Cult-like, the right will proclaim its independence. Bark out the same phrases. Disseminate the same canards. “Our ancestors were legal immigrants.” “We got everything through hard work.” “The media lies,” and the masses follow. Only the truly free, they argue, can see through the deceptions. //
The right now embraces “my body, my choice,” but only for vaccines. Abortion is still murder. Homosexuality still a sin. And those who are trans, nonbinary, who do not fall into the neat categories, they are existential threats. //
Immigrants. Communists. John Durham. Hillary Clinton. The Covid vaccine. The world is against the god-fearing conservative. The Trump supporter. // A T-shirt has an image of the White House, says “Stolen Property.” Others say, “Trump 2024.”“DeSantis 2024.” // Ron DeSantis. Florida governor. Banned mask mandates. Downplays Covid as hospitalizations spike. ICUs struggle with record numbers. // “Reports of school employees dying of COVID related illnesses also are emerging,” says Tampa Bay Times. // But masks are for sheep. Vaccines are an invasion. The virus is no worse than the flu. //
“The vaccine does not prevent one from getting nor spreading the Chinese virus,” a Trump backer writes on Facebook. “So a Chinese virus positive person can go into a business and spread the virus.” // He posts a meme:
It’s been 18 months. Covid’s killed 622,000 in the United States. More than 2 million globally. Gutted the economy. This is getting repetitive. How often do we need to say this? // Texas, like Florida, is drowning in cases. California, too, is experiencing a surge. On Long Island, parents tell reporters it should be a parent’s choice and not the school board’s. Not the city’s, the state’s or a “higher government’s.” // Perhaps, the kids should get a say. Or the teachers, who rarely factor in to the discussion. //
Or maybe we listen to the scientists, consider their arguments, their evidence. It’s compelling. Vaccines save lives. // Iceland has vaccinated more than 70 percent of its population. It is seeing a spike in cases, but not in major illness. “Many of the country’s recent infections have occurred among vaccinated people,” The Washington Post reports, “but they’ve been overwhelmingly mild.” Just 2 percent have been hospitalized. “The country hasn’t recorded a virus death since late May.” //
There have been vaccines that have failed or been recalled. But that remains the exception. The Covid vaccines work. They are effective. They are safe. There will be breakthrough infections. We knew that. Vaccines are not perfect. But, by and large, they work. The history of the 20th Century proves this. The list of diseases essentially eradicated or made rare thanks to vaccines is long. // I get the caution. The hesitancy. But there is a point at which hesitancy become skepticism and skepticism becomes outright denial. And that is where we are now. At a place where the right’s politics of fear, its cultish support for Trump, its paranoia about confiscation of firearms, its resentment of the other have merged into a twisted understanding of liberty. // To them, the vaccine is a threat on a par with Nazism. With Italian Fascism. Even as they put their trust in a man whose instincts are authoritarian. Whose only concern is his own future. Who would gladly restrict the rights of anyone not supporting him if he could get away with it. //
Resentment and paranoia are not new. The historian Richard Hofstadter told us that, demonstrated how it has run through American history, influencing everything from economic and immigration policy to whether we should go to war. The current right wing, as Rick Perlstein shows in his four-part history of American conservatism, is not a new phenomena. It is part of this legacy, owes its life, its growth, its entire philosophy to grievance and anger. // It did not start with Trump or Tucker Carlson. With Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh. It’s part of our DNA. //