What do Snake Handlers and Anti-Vaxers have in common?

 

I was talking with my friend Coranell from back home.  She called to me "on the cellular" to fill me in on some hometown gossip, something rare these days of people keeping to themselves because of  COVID, and she mentioned someone who we had gone to school with who died of the virus. 

I asked if there were calling hours, and she said no. 

"The family decided to bury him fresh in some cemetery by their home church in Kentucky.  I think it was St. Maudine of the Rattlesnakes or some such.  I wouldn't be surprised if they loaded him into their minivan and drove the body down themselves."

Can they do that?

"Cookie, are you supposed to cart firewood across state lines? No.  Do people do that?  Yes.  Does it matter to them," she asked  

Only if they get caught.

"Exactly."

Coranell's people are from the hills of Kentucky and moved north to north-central Ohio when she was about ready for the first grade.  When her father died, and her mother decided to move back, Coranell, then beginning her senior year, balked. 

"I will never go back there," she told the judge at her emancipation hearing.  

One of the teachers at the high school saw a spark in my friend in classes and offered to let her share her house for her senior year. The teacher told her when we graduated that if she could put herself through undergrad, that she would pay for her masters.  Coranell graduated from OSU, went to grad school at an "Ivy" and then moved back home and taught in the city schools.  Eventually, the teacher died of old age and left the house to my friend.  Coranell lives there with her husband, Merle, and their pet dogs.

"I wanted a pet pig," she said once. "But Merle told me that I'd bond with it, then you have to 'take them to the farm', and I can't do that.  And the 'Ladies of the Club' would talk about swine 'On the boulevard?' I am not giving them anything to carp and crap about."

But I digress. About six months ago, Coranell started calling the had core anti-maskers snake handlers.  I asked why.  I mean Coranell is brilliant while I have a dull aura about these things.

"Well, think about.  How do those churches work?  They are run as personality cults, with a charismatic Preacher whose credentials usually come to them in a dream.  And they handle those serpents in front of idiots who believe that the spirit of JEZZUS is protecting whoever gets the asp."

Wait, don't you mean Jesus?

"Jesus has nothing to do with them.  These people are old school, primitive, rock by the waters of JEEZUS worshipers.  To them, their diety is glorious but punitive. Their savior doesn't wash the feet of the downtrodden.  'You know where the creek is, go on and do it yourself,' is their way of life. And the snakes met out the punishments.

"But here's the thing, if the snake doesn't bite the handler, to them, it's JEZZUS that protected that person.  And if the snake attacks and makes them ill it's JEEZUS again bringing the cure.  But if that snake strikes and the person dies from the venom, it's JEEZUS that called the dead person home to their reward.  

"It's the same with 'the COVIDS' - people know that it's deadly, but they handle the chances like the people in the hollers handle those snakes.  If they avoid getting bit, it's JEEZUS protecting them.  If they get it and recover, then it was JEZZUS that healed them.  But if they die, well that is a shame, but at least JEEZUS took them home to glory.  They have an explanation that makes sense to them everything.  Science? Pish. 

"But the morons don't understand is that they are getting the virus from anyone at any time.   I mean you can see a snake, but aerosolized virus particles, or hell no."

And there you have it.  It's ignorance, alright.  But it's also a sick and twisted form of Ingnornace Roulette.  

Doubt me? Look at that batshit insane Congresswoman Bober, she's got that look in her eyes like a snake handler.  Marjorie Taylor Green?  She has that look too. 

They are all wrestling with serpents.  And they would kill us all by spreading COVID if they could.