And Charlie Daniels Is Dead
Mount Juliet in Wilson County, Tennessee is a suburb of Nashville with a little over 23,000 people. Trump beat Biden in Wilson County in a landslide-- 50,296 (67.67%) to 22,254 (29.94%). Their congressman is radical right crackpot John Rose and in 2018 Wilson County performed for him big time-- R+36. Mount Juliet is where Loretta Lynn and Charlie Daniels are from.
Only 48% of Tennessee adults are fully vaccinated, bad enough, but in Wilson County, it's just 38%. In the last couple of weeks, per capita hospitalizations are up 49% in the county and new cases in the same period are up a horrific 195%, an indication of more hospitalizations and, when combined with the low vaccination rate, more deaths. (Florida didn't report today, but Tennessee had the most new deaths per capita.)
At least in part, primitive, selfish evangelical sociopaths should be blamed-- like lunatic fringe Republican Satan-worshipper Greg Locke who has threatened to kick anyone out of his church who dares to wear a mask. While other places are starting to ease into mask mandates and prepare for possible shutdowns, Locke told his congregation on Sunday that "If they go through round two and you start showing up (with) all these masks and all this nonsense, I will ask you to leave. I will ask you to leave. I am not playing these Democrat games up in this church." In a Facebook video he posted after the service he reiterated: "I ain’t playing these stupid games. A bunch of pastors talking about how much they want to see people heal and they’re afraid to baptize people because of a delta variant-- I’m sick of it... They will be serving Frosty’s in hell before we shut this place down."
Locke made similar comments earlier in the pandemic, when he said in July 2020 that he was willing to go to jail before closing his church. At that time, a video showed maskless people listening to an in-person sermon as Tennessee health officials recommended faith groups hold their services remotely, McClatchy News reported.
“We are staying open,” Locke said in his past Facebook video. “You ain’t gotta wear a mask. We’re not social distancing.”
About two months later, hundreds of people reportedly defied mask mandates in Washington state when they gathered to hear Locke speak.
And this anti-USA, anti-Jesus messaging is leaking into Republican campaigns now. In fact Trumpist crackpot Josh Mandel was carrying on about a Judeo-Christian revolution as part of his sick campaign for the open Ohio Senate seat, something the right-wing website, Washington Examiner called "a Trump-aligned brand of cultural conservatism heavily focused on religion."
Mandel, a completely ridiculous pinhead and fervent Trump ass-licker: "The secular Left is waging a war right now on faith, and they're trying to water down the Judeo-Christian bedrock of America. We should be doubling down and instilling belief in God in the classroom, in the workplace, and throughout society. I believe we need a Judeo-Christian revolution in this country... I talk a lot about fighting for good over evil, and I talk about a lot of evil that's going on in our country right now."