Went out for a walk. Group of jerkwads in a pickup covered in conspiracy slogans about Bill Gates, beaches, and Wal-Mart were driving around shouting about not believing stuff and “freedom.”

First time we got stuck at the same light, I studiously ignored their attempts to get my attention. (I was the only one at that corner, and I was wearing a mask.)

But when they drove by again later I couldn’t help but shout “GROW UP!” as they passed.

So much for a relaxing walk.

The whole mentality of “I object to this solution, therefore the problem must not be real and everyone is lying about it as the direction of some powerful person/group” just doesn’t make sense to me.

Nobody actually likes the lockdown. But most of us understand it’s the only practical thing we can do right now to avoid overflowing hospitals and massive death while people figure out what we can do long-term.

But of course it’s the same attitude that a lot of conservatives have about climate change. They don’t like some of the proposed solutions, so instead of proposing something else, they insist it can’t be real because “leftists” or “statists” are just using it to push a “socialist” agenda, all the while insisting that they’re just looking at it rationally, and I look at these screeds and think…there’s nothing rational about that line of thought. At all.

Opened up a spam trap I’d forgotten about and found ~40 copies of some — well, I hesitate to call it a newsletter, but it was a long collection of headlines, summaries, and links to news items and dubious reference sites that looked like someone had taken a few dozen conspiracy theories, put them into a blender, and then splattered them onto the page like Jackson Pollack.

At least, I want to believe it’s some horribly-mangled computer-generated aggregation…but it wouldn’t surprise me if it turns out to be someone’s serious attempt to create a newsletter without being able to write a coherent sentence.