Private Mars Rocket II

There is a phenomenon which I shall herewith call "the death spiral of stupid." Many people have gotten caught in such a spiral, the latest is my old friend Wiley E. Coyote, International Super-Genius (just ask him).

Do you know anybody who's ever had smallpox? No. Do you know anybody who's ever had polio? Probably not - if you do they're in their 60s and had it as a kid. Why? Vaccines, of course. But when the COVID vaccines came out, for reasons that still mystify me (Trump, after all, got the vaccines made) they became politically unpopular for certain people.

Now the death spiral of stupid kicks in. Vox Day has gone from "this vaccine is bad" to "all vaccines are bad" and is now quoting people who argue that vaccines did not eradicate smallpox. Since the original anti-COVID-vac position was not based on facts or logic, there's no logical stopping point on the vaccines are bad train.

In addition, the death spiral forces people to take increasingly-extreme positions. That's how one keeps an audience. It's part of another rule - the rule of witch-hunting. The rule is, witch-hunters hunt witches. When you run out of witches, you hunt people who were witch-adjacent, which might mean other witch-hunters. That's why you see MAGA types periodically abandon people who were their leaders or allies. MAGA has spiraled farther down the death spiral.

Years ago, I read a nuclear-war novel about the last ship after the war (not, I think the novel The Last Ship) in which the following was said by a character. "Witch hunters must hunt witches. When they run out of witches, they start hunting people who were merely around witches."

Here's a corollary: "Cold Warriors must keep fighting the Cold War. When they run out of Soviets, they start hunting countries that kinda-sorta look like the Soviet Union."

Specifically, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Cold Warriors started attacking Iraq and North Korea - authoritarian regimes that had some WMDs (at one time) and some willingness to use same. Now, they've moved onto Iran - a country that may develop nuclear weapons someday. The Cold Warriors have gone from existential threat to major pain-in-the-ass to potential pain-in-the-ass.