Why was the COVID-19 vaccine politicized?

[Alben Barkley]

Before this, I used to think that the right these days was essentially a cult driven from the top down by Trump.

But now I realize it's the opposite; it's a cult that will project whatever it wants to believe onto Trump from the bottom up, no matter what he actually says or believes.

I say this because even though Trump clearly and repeatedly endorsed the vaccine from the very start, even trying to take credit for it existing, his most rabid followers would sooner believe he is doing all that to try to reverse psychology the "TDS" libs out of taking it than they would believe that he sincerely believes it is a good thing. Never mind that if that were in fact the case, then Trump would be helping the libs by encouraging them not to take a dangerous vaccine; logic is not the strong suit of these people, after all, and I have seen them make this insane argument numerous times now.

At the end of the day, Trump is merely an avatar for a certain segment of our population (about 40% or so) that feels deeply alienated and scared by what they perceive as rapid changes to our society that are targeting them. Some of these people are bona fide schizophrenics who badly need mental help; others are people radicalized after spending too much time in online echo chambers where schizos and scammers provide them with all their "information;" others are simply people who feel angry about an economy they feel has left them behind and are looking for somewhere to direct their anger. Trump doesn't even have any solid beliefs of his own, doesn't even know what "true" or "false" means, so he's actually the PERFECT avatar for these people. Everything they say he will just repeat if he knows it will win him applause, and on the few occasions he does differ from them, they will just call it all part of a conspiracy or "the plan."

Point being that the fundamental divide between the far right and every other part of this country predated Trump and will outlive him; this whole vaccine insanity is just par for the course given that. What's really special about Trump is he put all the collective power of people who were previously laughing stocks (think Dale Gribble on King of the Hill) written off by society as wackjobs and he exploited their dangerous, previously untapped potential in the form of one person who actually had access to immense wealth and media resources, and used that to harness the fanaticism and mental problems of these people for political gain. See he is a sociopath who does not care about these people or the harm he inflicts on others as long as he "wins." The whole thing is very sick and twisted, and there is no neat narrative between good guys and bad guys, winners and losers. It's just modern America in the age of weaponized social media, and it's difficult to even wrap your head around unless you spend too much time exposing yourself to what these crazies actually think, which by itself is enough to drive just about anyone insane.