Consuming raw milk could lead to the spread of bird flu. Republicans don't care
Essentially, for Republicans, it seems like avoiding raw milk is the new masking — and they’re just not going to do it in order to prove a point.
For instance, in April, Infowars host Owen Shroyer called the Food and Drug Administration a “gangster mafia” who wanted to “make raw milk illegal.”
“So, now that more people are going to local farms and farmers markets and consuming raw milk, this angers the FDA,” Shroyer said. “This angers Big Milk. Say, ‘No, you need to pasteurize milk, it’s a lot less healthy for you.’ See, eventually, they’ll just make it illegal. They’ll just make raw milk illegal. That’s what this is all about.”
Really, it's very different. Avian flu is estimated to be more deadly, and also less contagious among humans. Covid was most dangerous to the sick and the old, as well as first responders and medical professionals.
In other words, the people who were careless about Covid19 precautions were not the people who suffered the most.
With Avian flu, and really anything else you might get from contaminated milk, the person who will suffer is the person who is being careless.
So if Conservatives want to ignore the best advice of smart people and drink poison, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. I feel really bad for their children, of course, but I can't stop them from where I'm sitting.
Indeed, but the fact that they appropriate certain bits of language like "Big Milk" (which is continuing their campaign against "woke milks") while championing drinking raw milk has a lot of irony to it.
Yeah because raw milk has two important factors: 1) it's (kinda) illegal for health reasons "guv'ment not tell me what do!" And 2) it's largely a white people thing.
Grown adults in most of the world can't digest milk, because they are not children. Close to 80% of the world is lactose intolerant as an adult. Guess which demographic overwhelmingly ISN'T lactose intolerant? White people. From the same areas Hitler liked.
Once upon a time this was called "virtue signalling" but I think "vice-signalling" is better. A historian named David Perry defined it as such:
a public display of immorality, intended to create a community based on cruelty and disregard for others, which is proud of it at the same time.
In other words, being an asshole just to prove you belong with the other assholes in the rectum. And then you realize that everything the right does (and has been doing for decades) to "Own TEh LiBz!" can be ascribed to this:
Drinking raw milk
Anti-masking
Anti-vaxxing
Destroying their Dixie Chicks CDs
Not watching Disney
Destroying their Yetis
Tanning your Tucker Carlson
Claiming the Battle Flag of Virginia as their heritage
Etc.
That's why right-wing boycotts are usually ineffective- on the surface they might be mad about something, but since they're only performative said boycotts don't last long.
On a deeper level, however, this is more disturbing as it's another step on the road to fascism. Fascist groups are all about their purity and so members are driven to prove their inclusion in the in-group lest they be purged next. This creates a downward spiral of more and more extreme acts to maintain that facade of inclusion, which gets worse and worse for the people who have to exist with those assholes.
This could also work as a euphemism for exposing yourself in public. As in, “Bobert’s husband went jail for tanning his Tucker Carlson in front of some teenage girls at bowling alley.”
Someone needs to tell them that the libs are extremely owned when they not just tan their undercarriage, but when it gets a nice, red hue in the entire area. To the point where there is later peeling.
The libs really, really, really hate this. Spread the word!
Politics outside the US can get pretty goofy, but Americans just seem to be on another level... just a shame that we all end up having to deal with the consequences :(
With these kind of articles, it's a safe bet that almost nobody at all, Republicans or otherwise, cares or even knows about raw milk. It's a non story.
You know, I’m inclined to just let them fuck around and figure it out the hard way.
They pulled the same shit with coronavirus, and it killed a small - but electorally noticeable - fraction of the conservative population, over and above the rates that the general population saw. Given that this is a regressive segment of the population that generally tends to hurt the rest of our society, I’m not going to object too strongly if they want to thin their own herd out with Darwin awards. Please, continue “owning the libs” by harming your own political base.
Skydiving is OK, but only because it's regulated. What really pisses the libs off is skydiving out of your buddy's crop duster with a homemade wingsuit.
Government: A new disease is sweeping the nation! Side effects include instant death! Whatever you do, don't lick any lightbulbs!
Famous Republican/Right-wing Influencer: THE GOVERNMENT IS TRYING TO STOP US FROM LICKING LIGHTBULBS!!!!!! GO OUT AND LICK ALL THE LIGHTBULBS TO OWN THE LIBS!!!!!
I remember them hyperventilating over CFLs (mostly because Gore backed them, if we are going to be honest). Now that those are to be phased out, I wouldn't be surprised if they now hyperventilate over THAT.
So. If we do nothing, Republicans will go drink raw milk? Sounds ideal! Unless they also want the rest of us to drink raw milk. I'm vegan so it doesn't affect me, but sounds like a thing you just let them go crazy on. Then we can talk about COVID25 and the rise of madcowcovidbirdflu v2.1.
Apparently for some, this is where right-wing political philosophy starts and ends. Everything else seems to be retrofit around this principle, regardless of its rationality. Even if the party in question is giving you sound advice, like not to drink raw milk, and is doing nothing to prevent you from doing so if you please.
I used the word "evolve" when talking about new strains of viruses to a co-worker who was a Young Earth Creationist. Dude was so triggered - it's like I threw holy water on him and he barks out: "that's NOT evolution! it's not like cats turning into dogs or a monkey turning into a human!!!111"
Not even kidding. Where to even start with these people? Did they just entirely skip bio 101 courses? This guy actually went to university (but not anywhere near a coastal city) and got a bachelors in science. WTAF.
Dude, the amount of engineers and technical people I meet that are creationists are astounding.
Like, you went through all that math and science. You know how it works. You trust it enough to get on an airplane or crawl under your heavy thing supported by a frame you built and worked the math out on.
You trust the material science, that you didn't actually do, other scientists did.
And yet you don't trust the math and science that went into proving the earth is older than 6000 years or whatever fucking random number they made up in your one fantasy book.
The mental gymnastics is just mind boggling.
Then they pull the, (well god put all that there when he created the earth to make it look like its that old)
That's about when I introduce them to the concept of the last Thursday theory.
One dude had the gall to say the Bible is the oldest written story, and I'm like DUDE! have you no idea about the Epic of Gilgamesh?
These people are in their own reality. It's a cognitive dissonance wrapped in layers of shoddy reasoning and tribal beliefs to keep it from unwinding. You can't rationally reason with them and any attempt to do so will be seen as a personal attack. It's the classic "you can't reason somebody out of a position where they didn't reason themselves into."
Best you can do is going along, acknowledge their pain or fear that's somewhere at the basis of this cognitive dissonance and ask some questions that might get them to thing like asking them to explain who taught them this or the "so why would God cause a new pandemic?" type of questions from time to time.
It's weird. They used to take such great pride in not being like the French.
Then again, they also used to think the Iraq War was a great idea (unlike those filthy French).
Do they even eat chocolate that taste like barf anymore? Man, if old Hershey was still around, he'd set them straight. Or the other thing. Either way, he'd do it decisively.
Uh, "new"? The lunatic fringe has been at this kind of thing since at least the 90s. Now, they just might be flooding the zone with shit, as Bannon so colorfully puts it, a bit more successfully and mainstreaming their bonkers position on raw milk to the typical RWNJ, not just the Hatriot Radio/Black Helicopter types from the 90s....
Yep. I've told this story before but I'm turning into a rambling old man so I'll tell it again. Several years ago I got into making my own cheese as a short lived but delicious hobby. It's legal for me to go buy raw milk from farmers so I did. A lot of the people I ran into while getting it were absolutely bonkers q-nut types.
It's more recent (2016), but Schitt's Creek had an entire story arc around raw milk for an episode. It doesn't get into the black helicopter crowd stuff, though.