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From: Charles Packer <mailbox@cpacker.org>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.fandom, rec.arts.sf.science, rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: idiots walk among us
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Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2025 09:00:31 -0000 (UTC)
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On Fri, 07 Mar 2025 18:11:04 -0500, WolfFan wrote:

> https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/marjorie-taylor-greene-
promotes-
> measles-parties-for-kids-amid-deadly-outbreaks/ar-AA1At4JL
> 
> you can’t make this up. If someone tried to put this into the plot of a
> work of SF, any competent editor would reject it as too stupid to allow
> suspension of disbelief.

There is an SF story about that, sort of. It's called "The
Waveries" by Frederick Brown. It's about a deluge of radio signals
that turn out to be early earthly radio broadcasts that have been
bounced back at us. What we're seeing in the public sphere
currently is something analagous: a whole bunch of century-old 
cultural memes being bounced back at us. Allusion to real early 
20th century medical practices is just one of them. Think about 
it: tariffs, immigration, a war (Ukraine) full of imagery 
resembling World War II. So it goes. The parsimonious interpretation
of all this is that the nation has been rented out to some sort of
theatrical production.