Do Your Best, Darwin

In this week's glass-half-full/half-empty news on COVID, half of Americans have now been vaccinated while all adults can be, and thousands of raving, paranoid, superspreading wingnuts just gathered in Tulsa - which evidently didn't learn anything from its last superspreader - to shriek "Q is the truth," argue vaccines are actually "experimental gene therapy," praise public hangings, and burn masks. Its woeful lesson: "Stupidity is the real epidemic."

The (unmasked) scary, crazy and stupid keeps coming. Twitter photo

In this week's glass-half-full/half-empty news on COVID amidst a "staggering" global surge, about half of Americans have now been vaccinated while all adults can be soon, and thousands of raving, babbling, superspreading wingnuts gathered this weekend at a "Health and Freedom" summit in Okalahoma's Broken Arrow - a town that voted four to one against recommending, never mind mandating, mask-wearing, and an apt military termfor a nuclear weapon being lost, stolen or mistakenly detonated - to spread some really dumb, weird, dangerous follies about what is, thanks to the obstreperous likes of them, our ongoing pandemic, like arguing that "vaccinations" are in nefarious fact "experimental gene therapy" aimed at "programming a person's cells." Explaining these sordid truths was a not-quite-renowned roster of garbled speakers like the Pillow Guy, Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn, Dr. Rob Marsh, "Promoter of Faith, Family, health and medical truth," Pastor Greg Locke, an "unashamed pastor (who) refuses to bow to the politically correct idols of our culture," Nurse Erin Olszewski, "COVID is 100% Treatable," David 'Nino' Rodriquez, a heavyweight boxer "who unapologetically loves our country and who could physically dismantle me" (according to the program), a former Project Veritas worker who's "all for public hangings," and actor Jim Caviezel, who once played Jesus Christ but is now obsessed with the left's "adrenochroming of children," a forced removal of adrenaline he calls "the worst horror I've ever seen. The screaming alone, even if I never, ever, ever saw it, it's beyond - and these people that do it, umm, there will be no mercy for them."

Flamboyantly sharing his theme was Lin Wood, former disbarred Trump fan boy turned lunatic faith healer, screeching as he drew in the air, "Here's your Q...Q is the truth...This is about the children for God's sakes." Q, he vowed, "is gonna rebirth you into the spirit world and make you exactly the person you're meant to be." He urged proof be sent to "the politicians - the Clintons, Obamas, Bidens" - with Twitter helpfully suggesting, "Send it to Pizza Hut! Send it to the DMZ! Send it to an abaondoned Toys 'R Us!" The unmasked madness, in a 7,000-person megachurch outside Tulsa, in a state that's seen almost half a million COVID cases and ranks 8th in the country for new cases at a rate double the national average, opened with a guy urging, "Let's get that energy going!" and throwing free t-shirts into a muted crowd - "I got COVID and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" - while limply declaring, "Conservatives can have a good time, some excellent questions: "Who knew there were so many lemmings in this country? Is it possible they've all been drinking from lead pipes for years?" - many less-than-merciful observations - "Stupidity is the real epidemic...May the virus be with them...Do your best, Darwin...That's one way to get your Come to Jesus moment...I see dead people...On the bright side, the state's average IQ will go up a point in a month" - and several mournful conclusions. "Note to self: COVID will be in the US for quite some time," said one, and, "This is how a civilization ends, and a species becomes extinct."

"Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain." - German poet, philosopher and playwright Friedrich Schiller.

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