Sarah Huckabee Sanders explained to Fox News the other day that more people would get vaccinated against covid if the Democrats would kneel before her cult leader.
In Sarah's world, everything is about fealty to the megalomaniacal insurrectionist called Donald Trump whose personal outpost she intends to command in Arkansas through the formality of its governorship.
You already knew, if you read this space even from time to time, that I believe the more than 60 percent of my friends and neighbors who aren't vaccinated against covid lack the good sense to come in out of a virus downpour.
But you might not have known that Sanders sees those folks pretty much the same way. Finally, we agree on something.
Here is what she said to Fox: "I think if President Biden and Vice President Harris and others on the left are serious about helping save lives through the vaccine, they should admit they were wrong when they cast doubt on Operation Warp Speed at the very beginning, and give President Trump and his administration the credit they are due for helping get this vaccine created safely, quickly and effectively, and into the hands of Americans. I think that would make a huge difference."
She stood strong for the proud Arkansas rights to get sick, make others sick, perhaps die, perhaps contribute to the deaths of others and essentially sacrifice children.
But here is the more-remarkable matter: Please consider closely the quoted statement from Sanders above. Notice that she says plainly that the vaccine now being spurned inordinately by Trumpers, and by Arkansas, is safe and effective. Notice that she says straight-out that it would save lives.
Yet she does not exercise the leadership, or the simple human decency, of advocating that people get this vaccination she extols. Rather, she stipulates that Democrats first must give Trump credit for it.
Yes, she had her name on a little guest column in this paper over the weekend saying she had made the personal decision to take the vaccine. But she stressed that she wouldn't presume to tell anyone else what to do.
She was saying she personally had the good sense to seek shelter from a flood but otherwise sided with those who would rather drown unless the rescue craft had Trump's logo on it.
She essentially was saying the point of it all was to spite Kamala Harris.
What you often hear from the right-wing anti- vaxxers is the huffy whine that Harris said as the Democratic vice presidential candidate last year that she didn't trust the covid vaccine because it was coming during Trump's presidency.
Even if that were true, which it isn't, I invite you to ponder Sanders' statement at risk of dizziness from the head-spin. It is that anti-vaxxers resent Harris for distrusting the great man's vaccine. So, to punish her for that, they'll refuse to get the great man's vaccine she distrusted.
That'll own the liberals, by golly.
This right-wing disdain for Harris' statement is based--you guessed it--on a thorough disregard for that endangered concept called context.
Asked twice last year, months before a vaccine was out, whether she would trust a vaccine if--if--Trump were to announce one before the general election, Harris hesitated. But she did not balk on the basis of a medically approved vaccine. She balked on the prospect of a Trump-touted vaccine before the election.
"Well, I think that's going to be an issue for all of us," Harris said. "I will say that I would not trust Donald Trump and it would have to be a credible source of information that talks about the efficacy and reliability of whatever he's talking about. I will not take his word for it."
She was saying Trump lies routinely in self-interest.
She was saying Trump had told the public the virus was nothing to worry about after having told Bob Woodward it was scary.
She was saying the soon-confirmed truth that Trump was apt to say or do anything to try to stay in office.
She was saying that, if we were going to trust Trump's singular word on virus medication, we'd all have taken a laser injection of bleach already.
For all of that simple logic, Harris seems to have hurt Sarah's feelings by blaspheming the Lord Trump Almighty.
Nonetheless, in the event Sanders is somehow correct that people will get the vaccine if we all praise her cult leader, I'd like to take this opportunity to say that Donald Trump is a great man who personally spent months in international laboratories last year singularly designing and perfecting this safe, efficient and lifesaving vaccine.
There. I've done my part. Yours is now only to face Mar-a-Lago, salute with one arm and present the other for your own good.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.