Vampire Riot

Manufactured consent enters its late-stage collapse.

The Senate committee hearing with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr today was repulsive and shameful, and I second what Kennedy said: “I don’t even know what you’re talking about. You’re talking gibberish.” The Senate seems to be the dumping ground for people who are too stupid to do productive work, and it’s getting worse in a hurry. Ben Lujan may be dumber than Sheldon Whitehouse and Mazie Hirono, which would be quite an accomplishment. And I don’t know who embalmed Ron Wyden, but they need to go back to funeral school.

I don’t want to “analyze” three hours of insane gibbering from a platoon of what appear to be syphilitic zombies, and I for sure don’t want you to have to read that, so let’s focus on a single moment that sums up the current problem. It’s at the start of the video above, and here (from Politico) is a version of the much-discussed claim that Warren babbled at Kennedy today:

Warren’s angry theme was that Americans are desperate to get more of these wonderful, lifesaving Covid-19 vaccines, but mean RFK Jr. won’t let them. We’ve all become Medical Oliver Twist.

This is the maneuver that we’ve seen over and over and over again since roughly June 16, 2015: [Thing here] is a fringe belief, it’s a crazy piece of extremist rhetoric, everyone is opposed to it! All decent and normal Americans love our wonderful MS-13 neighbors and our heartwarming and inspiring pediatric castration surgeries for our universally loved trans kids, except the freaks and the whack jobs who are haters. Look out for those extremist beliefs on the fringes! Absolutely everyone wants lots more of these wonderful vaccines!

It’s normative hypnosis, an attempt to make you think you’re alone on the fringes because you share a belief with most of your neighbors. They’re trying to make the normals feel alone.

But Warren’s manic description of a crisis in which desperate Americans are being turned away in their quest for ever more mRNA injections runs into the reality of recent uptake trends. Most Americans turned on these vaccines about ten minutes after they got their first two regretted doses. Sample data point: “Approximately 3.5 million children (4.9% of the pediatric population) received the updated 2024-2025 vaccine as of November 2023.” Among adults, booster uptake is well below twenty percent, and has been for a long time.

So:

1. No one wants this

2. Politicians scream that everyone wants it

3. And they blame someone from stopping everyone from getting the thing they want

4. That no one actually wants

They’re deep into the cycle of fake reality, davidfrenching like madmen. On all the 80/20 issues, they’re screaming and sobbing and slamming the table and framing the 20% position as the 80% position. In riot control, police call this kettling: the tactic of boxing people in and then trying to push them into a space where they’re trapped. Politicians are kettling the mainstream, trying to cut it off and trap it. Why are you extremists clinging to these bizarre and widely despised fringe beliefs, they say to…

…eighty percent of the country.

Fortunately, the people who are doing this are just repulsive. They have no ability to attract or convince, which is why they’re trapped in this endless cycle of shaming and berating.

I share this view of the whole thing:

Today’s shameful spectacle didn’t convince anyone but NPR listeners, if you can hear the tone of voice that I imply by that sentence.