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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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I considered making this an edit but I think it would better serve as a separate comment.

I disagree that vaccine mandate demands were the result of grassroot popular demand foisted upon politicians. I think the evidence for this is stronger than it is for lockdowns, because the explanation for why someone might wants them depends quite specifically on official statements about the properties of covid, vaccines, and those who refuse to take them. Official statements that frequently turned out to be wrong. All to set up the axioms required for popular support for vaccine mandates: That those who refuse to take the vaccines are not merely wrong, not merely evil, but instead are actively dangerous to you, because unlike the righteous vaccinated, they can still have and spread covid to you and murder you. This is not an organic belief. It cannot be an organic belief because the entire pro-restriction tale of lockdowns is that your organic beliefs about vaccines are all wrong and the only legitimate source of information about vaccines is from the government, which specifically lied about vaccines stopping transmission.

In the absence of government efforts to make people believe the axioms that lead to vaccine mandates, that randomly half-way through 2021 people would have a fever dream and subsequently believe the government should own their neighbours veins is even less coherent than the equivalent for lockdowns.