In the dusty outskirts of Seminole, Texas - just past the cotton fields and under the relentless spring sun - Peter Hildebrand stands outside a gas station, his eyes rimmed red and voice cracking.
"Mennonites" while the husband is dressed like a completely modern dude probably works a normal job and does whatever the fuck he wants while his slave wife stays home and raises the kids
Mennonites skewed anti vax before it was trendy, like a long time ago. Old religious vaccine exemptions were basically for them, IIRC.
Like, I remember hearing about these folks when I was in school in Texas.
What I’m getting at is that they're not quite the same as MAGA-zone vaccine skepticism. There’s some overlap, but they're more old school and broad than that, with a more general technology-hesitant slant, while MAGA skepticism seems more driven by social media and influencers.
By and large, Mennonites do skew pretty crazy and conservative in a lot of ways, but I think it's worth pointing out that there can be a tremendous amount of variation from one church/community to another, there's not much in the way of a larger overarching organization, a lot of policies, beliefs, interpretations and such are sorted out at the local level.
Some Mennonite churches are practically indistinguishable from the Amish, but there are some around that are very liberal. I live in an area with a pretty large Mennonite population, and the churches kind of run the entire gamut from horse and buggies to some of the most modern and liberal churches I've ever heard of.
They do, like I said, tend to skew more towards the conservative end of things, but there is a lot of variation there.
Yeah, it skips the religious purism (and the sometimes very real attempt at pondering deep morality), and goes straight to modern attention hacking mixed with timeless demagoguery and conspiratorial urges.
That’s what I’m getting at. I empathize more with old school religious communities acting this way… to some extent. Some transcripts in the article are not very flattering.
Like, I remember hearing about these folks when I was in school in Texas.
You realize that none of have any context for that, right? You could have been in school in Texas 3 years ago. Or it could have been in 1965. We don't have any clue.
That being said, I fully agree with your overall post. I'm just nitpicking.
i heard about them through a yotubers channels who had a guest with mennoites connecitons. she said they were different brand of crazy from the amish groups.
they claimed...that Big Pharma used vaccines to make money, at the expense of people's health.
I see this all the time with vaccine sceptics and I mean, yeah... Can't we unite on the fact that vaccines should be public and not some private investment
I'm still pissed how the COVID vaccine (and practically every medication) was researched a d developed with public funds, but the patent is owned by private companies.
The public paid for it, it should belong to the people.
There's just more and more of this lately. We give money to the govt, they fork it over to some company, they use money to make a product I have to pay for, again.
Sorry that's just fucking dumb. Don't bail companies out or give huge grants, make them compete for contracts and have the people own a portion to reduce cost to the US consumer. It's socialism, sure. But at least we'd come out ahead instead of getting hosed again.
If the government is so bad and untrustworthy, why not instead of just accepting that they're bad and trying to not let them do stuff.... we change the government to make it more trustworthy.
I don't know your political leanings but the Republicans in congress almost all universally thin that government sucks and is bad, and they do everything in their power to make that assumption a reality
On the one hand I feel like no parent should have to lose there child. That'd a terrible loss that hits really really deep.
On the other hand WTF. Your kid dies because you didn't vaccinate them and you meet with RFK Jr.? Your kid died because you were mislead. Honestly with all the crazy misinformation I can't necessarily blame them but you would think the loss of your own child would be a pretty big wake up call.
'She did not die of the measles,' he said of his daughter, Daisy. 'If there's one thing you should know, it's that. She was failed.'
After his visit, RFK Jr wrote on X: 'The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine.'
I mean to these people see children as kind of like a numbers game so give it a year or two and they'll just keep popping out more children and rolling around the floor, talking in tongues praising Jesus.
Imagine you kill a kid and you actually get the parents to show up for a photo-op so you can show the world they don't blame you and they just go along with all the lies you have been telling and everything goes fine really.