Here we have another case of clowns to left and jokers to the right on the question of vaccine passports.
First, let's start with the joker to the right - Oklahoma GOP Chairman John Bennett likening vaccine passports to Jews being forced to wear yellow Stars of David in Nazi occupied Europe:
The Star of David, when they put that on the Jews, they weren't sending them directly to the gas chambers, they weren't sending them directly to the (incinerator), this was leading up to that. They gave them a star to put on and they couldn't go to the grocery store, they couldn't go out in public, they couldn't do anything without having that star on their shirt. Take away the star and add a vaccine passport.
Now Bennett isn't the first Republican to invoke the yellow Star of David concerning vaccine passports. North Carolina freshman GOP Congressman Madison Cawthorn did so last March as did Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene.
While there are many jokers on the right where it concerns vaccine passports there are also clowns on the left. Enter Acting Boston Mayor Kim Janey who likened vaccine passports to slavery:
There’s a long history in this country of people needing to show their papers — whether we talking about this from the standpoint of, you know, as a way to, after — during slavery, post-slavery, as recent as, you know, what the immigrant population has to go through.
We’ve heard Trump with the birth-certificate nonsense. Here, we want to make sure that we are not doing anything that would further create a barrier for residents of Boston or disproportionately impact BIPOC communities.
If I lived in Boston that would have cost her my vote. Alas I live in Cambridge where we don't have direct mayoral elections.
Now one might not agree with the policy of a vaccine passport. But to invoke Jews wearing a yellow Star of David or slavery with regard to the merits of a vaccine passport is just plain demagoguery built on the foundation of ignorance and stupidity.
The yellow Star of David singled out Jews and slavery singled out African-Americans rendering both groups not only second class citizens, but subhuman. Vaccine passports are a public health measure which apply to all people regardless of their religious beliefs, race, gender or sexual orientation.
We are poorly served by politicians, be they left-wing or right-wing, who engage in such foolish behavior and in so doing discourage people from getting vaccinated.
Sadly, demagoguery, ignorance and stupidity might very well be the only things which might unite the Left and the Right in this country.
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