How the Republican Party became a death cult
How the Republican Party became a death cult
By Jennifer Rubin Opinion writer at the Washington Post
June 23, 2020 at 2:02 p.m. EDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/23/how-republican-party-became-death-cult/?utm_source=reddit.com
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This week’s Pew poll has mixed news on mask-wearing, a proven method of reducing the likelihood of coronavirusinfection. On the positive side, “65% of U.S. adults say that they have personally worn a mask in stores or other businesses all or most of the time in the past month, while 15% say they did this some of the time. Relatively small shares of adults say they hardly ever (9%) or never (7%) wore a mask in the past month, and 4% say they have not gone to these types of places.”
However, when you break out mask-wearing by party, the numbers are disturbing. “Democrats and those who lean Democratic are more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to say they personally wore a mask all or most of the time in the past month (76% vs. 53%),” the pollsters found. “Conservative Republicans are among the least likely to say they have worn a mask all or most of the time in the past month — 49% say they’ve done so, compared with 60% of moderate Republicans. Liberal Democrats are the most likely to say they have worn masks (83% say they’ve done so all or most of the time, vs. 71% of moderate Democrats).”
The racial and education breakdown of this survey mirrors the polarization of American politics. Nonwhites and college-educated Americans are more likely to be Democrats and mask-wearers. Whites and non-college-educated Americans are more likely to be Republicans and eschew mask-wearing. There is one constant: More older Americans than younger Americans are wearing masks.
This outcome is the triumph of Republicans’ tribal politics, in which identification with the cult and assault on the truth win out over common sense, science and even self-preservation. To be a Republican — at least in the eyes of millions of them — means to adopt illogical, anti-factual beliefs and oppositional conduct. You cannot take seriously the threats of climate change or the novel coronavirus because … well, because that is not what Republicans do, and to do otherwise would be to concede that the dreaded radical left and elites (presumably one can be both) are right. At the extremes, Republicans will engage in objectively destructive conduct to prove their point — hoarding hydroxychloroquine even if the Food and Drug Administration says the drug is ineffective or dangerous, and, of course, going without masks.
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