December 9, 2020

By Thom Hartmann

Politicians in New York State are discussing making Covid vaccination mandatory, and, predictably, Republican cultists are freaking out. “Freedom!“ they scream as they run around maskless, assaulting their fellow citizens with virus-laden breath.

GOP cultists claim that vaccine manufacturers are participating in mind control experiments and public health measures are “un-American,” while we are dying from the highest rates of Covid infection and death in the developed world.

GOP cultists on the Supreme Court even say the Founders of our republic and the Framers of the Constitution would never go along with preventing churches and synagogues from holding large superspreader events. It’s all a lie.

Just like George Washington signed the first single-payer healthcare legislation – it was to pay for medical care and hospitalization for civilian sailors – he also participated in a mass quarantine event during an epidemic in the summer of 1796.

From 1790 to 1800 Philadelphia was the nation’s capital. When the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 recurred in 1796, that city’s government, with the cooperation of George Washington and Congress, ordered a block-by-block evacuation of parts of Philadelphia.

Pretty much every signer of the Declaration and Constitution were still alive, and many were in Congress and on the Supreme Court. All supported the lockdown. Churches not only couldn’t meet: they were closed down entirely for much of the year.

From their bans on teaching sex education and evolution in our schools, to denying climate change, to this latest campaign against public health, Republican’s hatred of science has damaged America’s standing in the world and destroyed the lives of millions.

Thomas Paine, in his time, wrote about “The Age of Reason.“ Today we have “The Age of Intentional Republican Stupidity.“ And they don’t just embrace it for themselves: they are hell-bent on imposing it on every American, from schoolchildren on up.

They’ve rigged elections by making it hard to vote, promoted racial and religious bigotry and violence, destroyed our public school systems, gutted our unions, and rewritten our tax system to screw the middle class.

Since the election of Ronald Reagan, Republicans have damaged America more in 40 years than our worst enemies could have dreamed of accomplishing by invasion, boycott or blockade.

These Republicans are not patriots: they are traitors to reason, science, education, human rights, democracy and now, unbelievably, public health. They are traitors to humanity itself. The only way to deal with a death-dealing cult is to end it. Defund the Republican Party.

Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of the War on Voting and more than 30 other books in print. His most recent project is a science podcast called The Science Revolution. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute

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