Amish and Mennonite populations have had a lot of vaccine hesitancy for a long time.
Unfortunately, vaccines are a victim of their own success and people born into a situation in which certain diseases are virtually nonexistent because of those vaccines can craft or fall for a bullshit narrative about how it’s always been like that, and the vaccines were not even necessary “because mah immune system”. 🙄
It’s so wild to see the discussions around this - mostly about trying to revert to more “humane” ways of killing someone, when the very obvious thing here is to stop killing people?
And then there are the bloodthirsty types that seem to be everywhere talking about “how dare you talk about this, how much did you even see liberals showing any empathy for her victim but now they are all bleeding-hearts about a killer? Liberals just love criminals and death!” Talk about a strawman, JFC?
I think it’d be incredibly hard to have them revamp things from the inside. Suppose a pastor/minister/preacher wants to do something like that and subtract the “branding” of churches being really boring, stodgy, and often problematic (pedos)? Might be really tough to pull that off, and they’d still be a church in the end. I think most people would still nope out.
I’m thinking of using the same locations and turning them into some kind of super community center. Maybe even combine it with low-cost daycare and being a nexus of after-school activities. It’s mostly just a pipe dream, but honestly, I think the right kind of effort/people doing this could have this sweep the nation, under some kind of commonly-recognized naming/branding.
Especially after social media, Covid lockups, AI psychosis, etc…I really do think people of all ages have a real thirst for a physical third place where everyone could find their thing and just be in meatspace with others.
I always see Meetups that lose their location due a business closing or moving or no longer having an employee from the Meetup working there, etc. This could be another way something like this could fill the gap - offer that space for rent at deep discounts such that Meetups could afford it. Add in things like food drives and pantries and bingo nights, etc… to round out the calendar so there is always something to do, and it won’t seem to be some anemic thing of the past.
I’d be for revoking corporate charters.
The cherry on top is how they all act like they are “growing everyone’s food” for charity or because of altruism, and that everyone else should kiss their red rosy because of it.
I see them trying to make that happen online, too. It’s like they see all the pomp around the military and want all that adulation, too.
I grew up a very red and rural area, and that was my experience. The welfare they all got didn’t count; only the welfare that “people in the city” got did. Oh, and if you think “people in the city” was dog whistling, well, no, because they would very much use lots and lots of racial slurs, too. So you didn’t even have to read between the lines, LOL.
It took a lot of things and courage was not any part of it.
They skipped right over the First Amendment of course and got so excited by the Second that they basically stopped thinking.
Xtianity is dwindling in the U.S. But even if 100% of the country was xtian it would not change the fact that we were founded as a secular nation.
Not sure where that might have showed up. Looks like it was about 63% xtians in 2022 (down from roughly 90% in the early 90s) and estimated to be about 62% now (depending on poll).
I think I’ve read the decline that was happening - where it was roughly 1% decline per year for many years - has mostly leveled off.
Ironically, trying to disappear Hispanics from the country may serve to drive the percentage of xtians down further.
I keep thinking about all that property and buildings already there and people being hungry for third spaces and how I could start some kind of movement that was like open source for software but something for third spaces and done as non-profit.
Something that could host things like makerspaces, quilting groups, book exchanges, swap meets, reading clubs, game day/nights, still rent out for meetups and even weddings/wakes, things like that.
Seems to me that people are dying for third spaces that don’t involve having to cough up money just to be somewhere that is not home, school, or work.
And many people don’t want to be involved in a church per se.
I still experience dumbasses that really do believe that “at least he’s good at business”. I mean where the fuck to even start with such delusion?
I wonder how many Republicans are completely delusional about 2008.
They may believe that everything turned awful the day he took office in 2009 and was absolutely terrible until the day donnie failed his way into office in 2017 and started to be a “golden age” at that point.
I keep eyeing certain computer components and thinking I should have bought last fall. Some drives are up more than 2x what they were, and memory is nearly 5x in some cases. I have a few low-end boxes that are going to have to try to “get by” until prices become reasonable again. I’m not buying at what is probably the height of this insanity…and that’s without even getting into GPUs. $7000 for a RTX 5090???
2014? I remember 2008-2009 being pretty bad, but what happened in 2014?
Apparently, not ICE.
Someone has to implement tiny-d donnie’s vibes, though.
Yes, we know he’s all-in on the actual cancel culture that cons crave, so donnie picked him for that reason.
I’d love to see this smug asshole thrown in prison. The way douchenozzles like him pretend they are being above board on everything while gaslighting everyone.
Ageism is a plague on the workplace. I see it everywhere.
They’ve been vaccine hesitant from the outset. However, if you have the general population holding to at least herd immunity levels, you don’t have much of a problem. Amish are .74% of the PA population. I was trying to figure out how many Mennonites are in PA, but I’m not finding reliable results - since they are commonly confused with Amish (and Hutterites).
What is different now is the vaccine denialism in the wider culture. The idiotic vaccine denialism has been ticking up as older generations (that knew better) die off, but now we have an actual vaccine denialist running the HHS. I’m sure having donnie and him having a platform where they spread absolute fucking nonsense has had, and is going to have, more people opt out.
This is from a year ago:
https://www.wesanews.org/health-science-tech/2025-09-30/routine-vaccination-rates-decline-pennsylvania-kindergarteners