• 9point6@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I really don’t understand the actual party pushing these conspiracies

    Surely they’re just gonna disproportionately kill off their voters?

    • affiliate@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      i’m getting increasingly convinced by the argument that goes as follows. for the past several decades, the republican party was composed of people who gave tax breaks to all their wealthy friends and fucked over the working class, but those people knew those positions would be wildly unpopular so they used the culture war bullshit as a distraction. and it worked. the culture war bullshit ended up being super popular with their base. but now, their previously young base that bought into that nonsense has grown up, and they have internalized all of it. this generation of republicans fully believes all the nonsense they’ve been fed for the past 40 years. or at the very least, they are competing with people who legitimately believe it, so they need to put on a convincing performance.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      Yes, but not immediately, and before then there’s profit to be extracted!

      • TheDoozer@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        But that’s even more confusing. What profit is to be made from a bunch of people getting the flu? It makes people miss work and it kills people. Who is pushing this? Big Nyquil?

        • catloaf@lemm.ee
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          1 day ago

          No, your healthcare is tied to your job, so you can’t miss work. If you’re sick, you can’t risk losing your job.

          But yeah, on a smaller scale, disease is profitable. I’m not saying “they don’t cure cancer because it’s more profitable to treat” (cancer is a group of diseases with no magic bullet), but it’s significantly less effort to sell nyquil than to produce an actual pharmaceutical cure for the common cold.

      • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Yes, we all do better when we all do better in the long run. But they want to do even more better for themselves now. Because they know how delayed the find out part of them fucking around can be. They’ll likely be dead. And it might be their children’s problem. But it certainly won’t be theirs.