Facebook is a menace. COVID-19 is a menace. Conservatism is a cesspool. Together, those three ingredients have created a toxic stew of malevolent death and devastation. We can talk about all those things in the abstract, look at the numbers and statistics, and catch the occasional whiff of seditionist right-wing rhetoric. But I hadn’t really fully understood just how horrifying that combination of right-wing extremism, Facebook, and a killer virus was until I became a regular at the Herman Cain Awards subreddit. This series will document some of those stories, so we are aware of what the other side is doing to our country. We first heard about the tragic saga of Rachel McKibbens’ family last week. As you might remember, her brother talked her father into refusing vaccination, and then when he got sick, resisting hospitalization. Her father died at home, gasping for air. Shortly thereafter, her brother got COVID, ended up in the hospital, then checked himself out and died at home.  That was a brutal story, one of the toughest we’ve seen. But, it turns out, things were even worse than anyone thought, as McKibbens got a hold of her brother’s phone and got an inside look into his misguided deliberations—and the cousin who killed her family.  As I did last time, I’m presenting this one with no commentary. EVERYTHING BELOW WAS WRITTEN BY RACHEL MCKIBBENS, NOT ME, and comes from this Twitter thread transcribed for easier reading: Read more