I have been vaccinated for a couple of months now. What a liberating feeling. I AM IMPERVIOUS!!! To Covid 19, anyway. If only I were impervious to reading the news everyday. Alas, while I believe in science, I also believe in self-flagellation. And not the good kind. No matter what I do, I end up swiping to the New York Times or The Wall Street Journal or some other, more local, newspaper. It is clearly an addiction. But it is an addiction without any upside. Unless rage and frustration have an upside.

This leads me to the many articles about vaccination in this country. In case you were unaware, Americans like to think they are pretty smart. American Exceptionalism and all that. Despite this feeling, there is a great deal of evidence against their supposition. If you want to see some of this evidence for yourself, just take a long drive through the countryside. Here in Wisconsin, the rural landscape has come to resemble a Third World country. Homes are surrounded by whole parking lots of junk cars, farm animals roam freely, lawnmowers are unspeakable abominations created for the sole purpose of taking away freedom. “Woke Machines,” as they are known. The houses are falling apart, ragged and sagging, and in woeful need of a coat of paint. Old barns, half-standing, rot on their foundations. Still, these salt of the earth folks are pretty sure they know more about science than basically anybody. They will be damned if they are going to be vaccinated and get a Bill Gates chip inside of them.

Of course, they learned about the Bill Gates chip from Facebook on their cell phone. The cell phone is, among other things, a tracking device. But I digress.

The reasons (other than the aforementioned chip) for not getting the vaccine are myriad.

“I’m still doing research. They couldn’t have done this safely.” Response: You aren’t doing any research. Your sister, who works as a Nurse’s aide, told you the second thing. She is the one who lost thousands at the casino and was forced into bankruptcy. Apparently, she is more a science than math person.

“We don’t like outsiders messing in our business.” Response: Good deal. The next time a natural disaster rips through your sleepy Mississippi burg there will be no federal dollars for clean up. It’s a local problem. Also, genetic diversity is important, so you might want to rethink that a little. Unless you want a school full of children with teeth sticking out from their forehead.

From Greenville, TN: Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher chime in about the vaccine: “I don’t see any benefit to it,” says Mrs. Fletcher. “I think we have been hornswoggled,” says Mr. Fletcher. The Fletchers, Free Will Baptists, worry the vaccine includes aborted fetal parts (it doesn’t). They don’t trust the government, convinced it has long manipulated Covid case numbers. Response: What the hell is a Free Will Baptist. Fetal parts? I do approve of the use of the word hornswoggled. Though it is probably important to know who is hornswoggling in life. Damned hornswogglers are everywhere, that much I do know.

From Reuben Smucker, a Mennonite pastor who works as a garage-door installer: “There’s a time appointed for every person to die. We should take care of our bodies physically, emotionally and spiritually, but if it’s my time to go and it’s by Covid, well then, it’s my time to go.” Response: Is your name really Reuben Smucker? Why, I’ll be hornswoggled. And does the lord approve of garage-door installation? A friend of mine, who happens to be a Free Will Baptist, said that garage-door installation is the Devil’s work. It’s in the Bible. Right next to the part where you can stone women for wearing pants.

A list of hornswogglers:

Bill Gates

Melinda Gates (who is getting divorced to her hornswoggling husband- sidebar)

Barack Hussein Obama

Anthony “The False Prophet” Fauci

LeBron James

Rachel Maddow

Killary Clinton and her husband, Slick Willie

The New York Times

The State of California, parts of Oregon and Seattle

Madison, Wisconsin

Anybody who listens to the Foo Fighters

Please note: This is an incomplete list. Hornswogglers are everywhere, like ticks on a Redbone hound.

Mark Zuckerberg- forgot about that Hornswoggling son-of-a-bitch. That’s another thing. The vaccine gives you dementia. Then you can’t even remember who is a hornswoggler and who isn’t.

But they will know who you are.

(Because of the chip. Did you forget about the chip already? You probably have dementia.)