30 IX 2021: How much can you swallow?

I read with wonder, if not surprise, of the struggle within the Democratic contingent in Congress: the far left wants this feature, the near left wants that, moderates want neither, etc.

It seems there is a tendency in our Congress to minimize effort by cramming together things that ought to be separate. Take the vast bills that the Democrats have put forward. Each faction has included in these bills favored initiatives that may or may not have much to do with the general focus of the bill. Others react negatively to some of these initiatives and may or may not or might or might not support the bill on that account. It makes me think of a group of picky eaters trying to agree on a pizza order.

In any case, diverse matters are lumped together in an enormous single bill that must be swallowed whole. Isn’t there a mechanism, there ought to be, that will allow these huge packages to be broken up so that their components could be debated and voted on in a case by case process? This would, of course, take a lot more work and would compel legislators to make decisions on specific issues.

Of course, if a legislator is a Republican there would be no need for personal decisions. The Republicans are another gross, forced amalgam that cripples the Congress. Individuals are not allowed each to use their own judgement, but must conform to the “party line.” And Republicans comply with a regularity and uniformity that is really quite surprising in what pretends to be a democratic government. Are they all so thoughtless or incapable of independent judgement, or are they coerced to go along because they want to get along? I think of a verse from an old anti-Stalin parody:

Party comrade, Party comrade,

What a sorry fate is thine!

Comrade Stalin does not love you

‘Cause you left the Party Line.

How our legislative process would be improved if focus could be directed to individual proposals and if Republicans could behave like free human beings and not like Communist drudges.

27 IX 2021: What punishments for liars?

Who, except for people like Trump, ever said that it’s o.k. to tell lies? But America has reached to the point where telling lies is expected and tolerated behavior.

But lies and misinformation are such a disservice to society and polity that people who tell lies and spread misinformation must be restrained. At least the “social media” has taken the positive step of shutting down or limiting the accounts of some egregious liars. But much more must be done to discourage, indeed, prevent public lies. 

Frankly, I do not know what to suggest. I do think that those who are spreading misinformation about the vaccines for COVID19 are guilty of manslaughter or attempted manslaughter. Politicians who ignore COVID19 or even oppose attempts to contain it are guilty of depraved indifference, at least.

Moving into national politics … The people who continue to assert that Trump was the real winner, that the election was rigged, etc., etc., would, in earlier times have been placed in an institution. Now their every comment is publicized. Politicians who keep telling lies to mask the Jan 6 Rebellion become, eventually, as guilty as the rebels.

At the least, the mainline media can do something like the social media corporations have done and try to limit the spreading of lies. We are guaranteed freedom of speech, but we are not guaranteed an audience. Why, why does every alarmist statement of the conspiracy theorists, every seditious statement of leading politicians and small town militia have to be reported? This is where the media must exercise some self-restraint. Much of their audience has no self-restraint, and their drug-of-choice is scandal, bloodshed, and outrageous behavior. The media must exercise discretion, stop being a platform for vicious people, stop feeding this popular addiction.

14 IX 2021: Another imaginative attack by Donald Trump

I read that Little Donny Trump has taken to calling Gen. Mark Milley a traitor. Again Trump falls back on his usual maneuver of charging others with the misdeeds of which he is most guilty. It’s the same old pattern. 

Trump has called lots of people traitor and while doing so has made it clear that he does not know what “treason” means. He thinks “treason” means not doing what Trump wants. 

Gen. Milley is, of course, a military man and has no psychiatric training as far as I know, but one needn’t be a psychiatrist to conclude correctly that Trump was in a serious mental decline after the election. Of course, screaming fits, suborning rebellion, full time delusions of election fraud, and daydreams of his imminent “reinstatement” in the month of August are signs of a mental decline, but I would not connect them necessarily with loss of the election, because Trump has been this way all his life. 

11 IX 2021: What 9/11, Trump, and COVID19 tell us about ourselves:

We might have learned from 9/11, for it showed us how naive, passive, and weak we had become. Politicians had for years been alternately frightening us with threats of foreign attack and assuring us that we were absolutely safe, and we believed them on both counts. In our panicked reaction to 9/11 we were ready to surrender our rights, to make believe that George W. Bush was competent, to wink at atrocities committed by a lawless government in our name, and to be abused by the extravagant but useless airport routines of the Transport Security Administration.

We might have learned from the election of Donald Trump and the complete moral bankruptcy of the Republican Party. But here, after eight plus years we are tolerating the same crimes and anti-democratic behaviors. The Trump Experience has shown us how ignorant, gullible, mindlessly angry, void of principles, racist, misogynist, and just plain foolish we are.

The hostile reaction to the COVID19 vaccines is a legacy from the Trump years. The self-destructive rejection of the vaccine, instigated by Trump, embraced by the Trump base, and exploited by a throng of self-promoting politicians tells us that during the Trump years many Americans have regressed from a lingering adolescence to unembarrassed childishness.

9 IX 2021: A weekend getaway for Marjory and Madison?

I just read on the Politico site:

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) expect to skip the “Justice for J6” rally on Sept. 18, according to the GOP duo’s spokespeople.

Some are implying that M&M are frightened by the likelihood of violence at this next attack on the Capitol. But, you know, these two don’t scare easy. So I’m wondering if they will be hastening to a love-nest in, of course, an undisclosed location.

7 IX 2021: Wild West and Dixie Land defeated by COVID19

Latest reports reveal that: Wyoming, Idaho, Alabama, Mississippi, and West Virginia have vaccinated less than 40% of their populations against COVID19, and that Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, Florida, and Arkansas are left with less than 10% capacity in their Intensive Care Units, the vast majority of the sufferers in ICUs coming from the ranks of the unvaccinated. 

Wyoming’s population is about 570,000, and Idaho’s is 1.87 million. If they have less that 40% vaccinated, they are maybe not trying very hard. However they do face stiff challenges. Wyoming and Idaho are among the western states that are badly infected by the Wild-West, mountain-man, cowboy, 7th-Cavalry fantasy lives of professedly rugged individualists who get their money from land belonging to the Federal Government. No city-slickers are going to tell them what to do!

But the other constellation of states is also of interest. Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, Florida, and Arkansas are all former Confederate states, and many Northerners who’ve migrated South to these sunbelt states become Good Old Rebels in no time at all. These states are weak on civil rights, weak in education, strongly anti-labor, crowded with evangelicals, largely anti-science, enthusiastically creationist, and the homes of many zealots in the Trump base. Do their shared history and these shared traits have anything to do with their contemptible record in the fight against COVID19?

6 IX 2021: Just gossip?

It is endlessly evident these days that you cannot believe everything you hear. That is why I am inclined to disregard rumors I have heard of high-jinks in the Republican Hot House. We’ve all seen the trendy couple Matt Gaetz and Marjory Taylor Green junketing around the country to the delight of MAGA mobs. Does this glamorous pair share any more than platonic love and enthusiasm for notoriety? While we are wondering about that, Madison Cawthorn has started thrusting himself more and more into the public eye, showing Marjorie Taylor Green that he can be as thoughtless as she. Now I hear that Mr. Cawthorn is jockeying to take over Matt Gaetz’s place alongside the Flamboyant Congresswoman. Should I believe this? Well, hand me the Ivermectin.

24 VIII 2021: Depraved indifference to human life

I want prosecutions for depraved indifference to human life brought against renegade governors and talk show spielers who are for their own ends contributing to the escalation of the COVID-19 virus and, therefore, causing the loss of human life.

There must be limits to freedom of speech even though our courts have been sluggish about asserting these limits. The COVID situation shows how very dangerous unbridled malicious speech can be. The depraved indifference of renegade governors is shown not only by their misleading statements and insurrectionist posturing but is acted out in their refusal to be guided by the public health community.

23 VIII 2021: Can’t Cure Stupid

I see that the FDA has given full approval to Pfizer’s COVID19 vaccine. Some think that this approval will prompt an increase in the number of vaccinations. Well, maybe, but the increase is bound to be slight. Most of the unmasked who refuse the vaccine are invincibly ignorant or morbidly stubborn. They are of the antisocial “nobody’s gonna tell me what to do” variety, or they are MAGA addicts holding the party line against masks and vaccines in order to establish their Trump credentials. I think we may soon reach the point where catching COVID19 and spreading it around will become “patriotic” and serve as the membership card of the MAGA movement.