Why do Republican Parents Hate their Children?

I wanted to find out....

Most normal people love their children. From that first moment when that just born baby is placed in your arms, and you are enveloped in a sense of love and joy unmatched. You want to do the best for your kids: keep them safe from harm, give them a better life than you had, celebrate their accomplishments, and hold them as they learn to live with disappointment. For those who don’t have kids, and who are normal, there is a certain amount of protective instinct regarding children. Sometimes a parent is watching their kid but is momentarily distracted so another adult grabs the kid before he runs into traffic. Horrifically, the teachers who endeavor to protect their kids from school shooters (who, as an aside, have military weapons because of Republicans). You get the idea. Children are our future, and there’s so much they don’t know and therefore rely on responsible adults to both teach them and protect them.

Which brings me to Republican parents.

• A Gallup Poll this month found that 69% of respondents view childhood vaccines as "extremely" or "very" important, down from 94% in 2001.

• Gallup attributed the drop-off to people who lean Republican, noting the percentage of that cohort saying childhood vaccinations were "extremely important" stood at 26% this year, compared to 62% in 2001. Source.

That’s right, only about 1 in 4 Republican parents think it’s extremely important to vaccinate their kids against things like polio, measles, whooping cough, etc.

To develop “herd immunity”, we need vaccination coverage of 95%. Not everyone CAN get vaccinated. For example, I, and many other cancer patients, receive life-saving treatments that strip our immune systems of previous vaccination protection. We have a time period where our immune systems are not strong enough to get vaccines, and after that passes, we need to get re-vaccinated for everything. Therefore, a local outbreak of, say, measles, would be very bad for us as we are neither vaccinated nor have the immunity to fight the disease during that time period. There are young children who cannot be vaccinated with the standard vaccine protocol because of various, and legitimate, health issues. Therefore, they need the other kids in their kindergarten class to be vaccinated to protect them.

But these Republicans (and yes, some other idiots) are opting out of getting their kids vaccinated. How many? The map below, from the CDC, shows the rates of kids who have not been fully vaccinated by the start of kindergarten because their parents got them exemptions.

Within those state numbers, you will find disparities. For example, in NY, which has a very low level of opt-outs, there are pockets of Orthodox Jewish communities where vaccines are eschewed. Here’s what happened:

A total of 649 cases of measles were confirmed, with onsets of rash occurring between September 30, 2018, and July 15, 2019. A majority of the patients (93.4%) were part of the Orthodox Jewish community, and 473 of the patients (72.9%) resided in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, New York. The median age was 3 years; 81.2% of the patients were 18 years of age or younger, and 85.8% of the patients with a known vaccination history were unvaccinated. Serious complications included pneumonia (in 37 patients [5.7%]) and hospitalization (in 49 patients [7.6%]); among the patients who were hospitalized, 20 (40.8%) were admitted to an intensive care unit. As a result of efforts to promote vaccination, the percentage of children in Williamsburg who received at least one dose of MMR vaccine increased from 79.5% to 91.1% among children 12 to 59 months of age. As of September 9, 2019, a total of 559 staff members at the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (7% of the agency) had been involved in the measles response. The cost of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene response was $8.4 million. Source.

I could list out other outbreaks domestically and internationally of both measles and polio, but my guess is that in your gut, you know the horror.

And so, understanding that it’s BAD to get a serious illness if it can be avoided, the question is: why do Republicans want to risk their children’s health, and potentially their lives?

The simple answer is that Republican values are completely skewed, and, I personally believe, amoral. The Grand Old Party used to be okay. They had a different view of the world than we Democrats, and some issues (like slavery and civil rights) sometimes alternated between the parties. But in modern times, up to 2010, it was possible for the parties to work together, compromise, and find a negotiated outcome in most situations.

My favourite of these negotiated outcomes was the enactment and implementation of Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) in 1974. They were enacted, in a completely bipartisan fashion, in response to Nixon’s major cuts to HUD programs. Communities could apply to HUD for Federal grants that would flow directly to local projects. Believe it or not, they still exist, albeit not at the level at which they were first enabled. As part of a “Town and Gown” program when I was in college, we applied for, and received, a CDBG which was used to set up a storefront which helped residents discover, and apply for, programs to their benefit. We students staffed the storefront, worked in both English and Spanish, and legitimately helped people. ALL BECAUSE DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS WORKED TOGETHER.

But then, the world changed when Mitch McConnell famously said:

"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Source.

The GOP had won back Congress, and he was going to impede anything and everything. From that grew the Tea Party, the Freedom Caucus, and eventually the Chaos Caucus. Their supporters were 100% Republicans dedicated to doing anything and everything necessary to impede anything positive.

Therefore, since we, the Democrats, believe in science, and therefore vaccinations, the Republicans are against them. Doesn’t matter who dies, they must be opposed. There is a whole litany of things they oppose, and you know what they are, but the point is that the Republicans have become such a cult, they can no longer think rationally, and they have sadly, painfully, lost all morality.

It’s why when you look at the most recent polling about Project 2025, and you check the crosstabs, you’ll see a much higher percentage of Republicans in favour of the selected Project 2025 line items compared to Democrats and Independents. This has been borne out in previous polling.

If you want to see the cult process in action, I recommend the documentary “The Brainwashing of my Dad.” Link. Regular, normal, people can end up under the spell of the cult. All it takes is some immersion in Fox or the other right-wing media outlets. As an aside, the documentary is older, and if you watch it, you’ll have some exposure to Rush Limbaugh. But whether it’s Rush, Tucker, Jeanne, Steve… they convince through the echo chamber in ways that actually change brain chemistry, and decrease the size of the hippocampus in cult members. I’m not making this up. For those without a medical background - the hippocampus is the part of the brain responsible for memory. It also shrinks in Alzheimer’s.

And so, Republicans are cult members who no longer remember that they used to be moral people, and they have forgotten that they used to love their children. You would have to hate your child to place that little being in a situation that could be fatal.

As a final note, because this fact always makes me remember what the Republicans used to be…Peggy Goldwater, Barry’s wife, was instrumental in the establishment of the first Planned Parenthood in Arizona.