AND THE DARWIN AWARD GOES TO...THE REPUBLICANS

The Darwin Awards salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it in a spectacular manner!   https://darwinawards.com/

The Darwin Award is, of course, a tongue-in-cheek honor that many of us laugh about. Usually the award involves someone who does something really stupid and dies because of it, thus removing themselves from the gene pool of humans. But I couldn't help thinking about the Darwin Award as I watched the news this evening.

Elected officials who are Republicans, at every level of government, seem to be purposefully and stupidly ignoring the severity of the novel coronavirus now causing a global pandemic. I don't think they realize that one very real and statistically probable result of their actions is their own death. So I would call this "accidental" in the sense that they are only thinking about partisan politics and not the real outcomes.

Certainly everyone in this country who understands the concepts of protecting ourselves from a deadly virus has seen the President of the United States and the Vice-President of the United States flouncing around without wearing protective masks or socially distancing themselves! The POTUS appears everywhere without a mask. He refuses to wear one. VP Pence violated posted rules at the CDC when he was the only person without a mask. He again appeared without a mask delivering PPE supplies (actually, empty cartons) to a nursing home - a nursing home!  What are these idiots thinking? 

A Republican member of Congress, Steve Scalese, was in a video committee meeting snd launched into a rant about how ridiculous it is that the members of Congress are not in D.C. He touted the fact that he was there, and he was on the video conference from a small conference room at the Capitol. He gleefully walked his laptop around to show the room, a rather small, windowless room, with numerous staff people working in it - and nobody was wearing a mask! "Our entire committee could be meeting in this room right now" Scalese stated, "and everyone would be fine, just like we are." Time will tell how many of those folks end up in the hospital with COVID-19. 

And so I nominate Republicans, including everyone in the Trump administration, members of Congress, governors who are opening their states even though they have not met the CDC criteria, to be the recipients of the 2020 Darwin Award. Homo sapiens will be genetically stronger for it.  

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