My neighbor Phil

Man, talk about a close call, huh?

Corona almost got Phil.

Hopefully his wife and family learned from his idiocy.

What do people like Phil have to gain from their denial? It's clear what they have to lose.

As the Outlaw Josey Wales said, "I reckon that dyin' ain't no way to make a livin'."

>>What do people like Phil have to gain from their denial?

What they gain is acceptance in the community they buy into and participate in.  We're all longing for community and "find" it in vastly different ways.

i guess he lived his life....

My father in law to a T... the only difference is that my father in law survived so now we get to listen to how "it's no big deal" every five minutes 

Like most addictions, denial is a strong player.  Many people are simply addicted to never being wrong about their beliefs.    
 

That's It For The Unmasked One

Too bad for Phil and folks that choose that stance.

Yesterday NPR had a story about the work to recover and rehabilitate people whom have been engulfed by cults and conspiracies. A had-been Moonie counselor said it takes just as much detailed work and repeated efforts to untangle someone from that web as it did to convert them in the first place.

>>> Looking back on it, Phil was a toolbag. <<<

Kinda' put's a bow on a sad thread. Wow- 48.  As Ned said, hopefully anybody will learn something from it.

Well, if one had to go, I'd perhaps choose him first.....guess that reads cruel, however...he chose to be a pest, dang it!

I wonder how long the virus can survive in a dead body.  Probably not long.

I had heard of a virus that could enter a moth via it's ears...yeah, ears.  Then the moth wouldn't fly well, would spiral down and not survive.

So, the virus evolved to only go in one ear, not both.  Then the moth survived, as did the virus.  

I heard that story the same day I saw this.....

I'm acquainted with one of these people. His brother a denier as well died from Covid. Still calls it fake, and this guy is a rich as fuck business man. 

If there was justice everyone at Fox News would be convicted of murder or at the very least sued into poverty.

Other than ignoring & forcing them into isolation there isn't any better strategy. I just had a conversation with a customer that lives on FOX 24/7.  

We are all fucked.  The notion that their are more of us than them is the false 'narrative' that the right has been looking for.  The median IQ is hovering just over 70 these days. 

Throw in a little anti Biden nonsense from the far left.......        

Hope he didn't give it to his wife and kids.

Darwin Award nominee.

what sucks is these morons put others at risk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons

The story follows John Barlow, who was put into suspended animation by a freak accident involving a dental drill and anesthesia. Barlow is revived hundreds of years in the future. The world seems mad to Barlow until he discovers the 'Problem of Population': due to a combination of intelligent people not having children and excessive breeding by less intelligent people and coupled with the development of more sophisticated machinery that makes it less important to possess intelligence in one's working life (see Fertility and intelligence), the world is full of morons, with the exception of an elite few who work slavishly to keep order. Barlow, who was a shrewd real estate con man in his day, has a solution to sell to the elite, in exchange for being made World Dictator.

^They were thoughtful enough to list the three best times of the week to avoid them. 

Feel sorry for Phil's family.

 if you can't live your life as a good example to others, live it as a warning sign. 

Abbott now blaming Biden for Covid in TX.

really.

>>What do people like Phil have to gain from their denial? It's clear what they have to lose.<<

It's sounds weird, but it's pride & dignity related, I think.
Once having taken such a strong, even seemingly courageous, stand on something, it can be really hard to back down.
Even in the face of irrefutable truth, I think humans are so in need of personal affirmation of worth, that they will take some crazy positions.

The sad truth of it is, it was harder for Phil to face the indignous shame of concession, than it was for him to continue his fabricated reality.
Even in the face of fucking death. My god, that is sad, and tragic, and strangely also some kind of off-handed futile courage in the face of death?

Or maybe just hilarious Karmic idiocy, as absurd as it is horrible.

It should have been different
It could have been easy
But pride has a way of holding too firm to history
And it burns like wildfire

From the song Wildfire by Andrew Marlin of Mandolin Orange

It Wasn’t Kool-Aid That Poisoned the Temple Members:

After the attack on Congressman Ryan and his party at the Port Kaituma airstrip, Jones urged his more than 900 followers in Jonestown that they had to commit suicide or else the Guyanese military will come in and take their children away. From a vat, his people drank the cyanide-laced punch, which birthed the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid,” referring to those who blindly and foolishly follow something. But it wasn’t actual Kool-Aid that was used in the suicides but rather a similar brand called Flavor-Aid. The reference to “Kool-Aid” could be traced to the early reporting in the days after the tragedy, such as this article in The Washington Post. Today, the phrase “drinking the Kool Aid” has mixed, even offensive, meanings to Temple survivors and relatives.

“It…still hurts every time I hear it,” Juanell Smart, whose four children, mother and uncle died in the tragedy, said in The Road to Jonestown. “I hated that people laughed when they said it, like what happened was somehow funny.”

In the 2005 book Dear People: Remembering Jonestown, survivor Mike Carter said he was deeply offended when he first heard that remark: “I thought, ‘How can these people trivialize such a horrific event as the mass suicide/murder of over 900 people.'” And Terri Buford, a Temple defector, said the phrase makes her shudder. “I know it’s part of the culture now,” she said in an interview with Slate, “and I shouldn’t be so sensitive to it. But Jonestown was an important part of American history, and it’s been marginalized.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/jonestown-13-things-you-should-know...

I feel sorry for the family. They have to live remembering his hard headed stubbornness. It's hard to read "Cause of death - Dumbass."  48? Jeez. 

"He died doing what he loved."