Between us, Jane and I can lift, plumb, kneel, shove, and whatnot—-and we replaced the kitchen water heater. Which is pretty good for a new hip and coming off chemo.
We’re being thankful this year for being here in one piece and making progress. Which in 2020, is a win, no qualifiers, eh?
Biden’s speech yesterday:
President-elect Biden speaks one day after Capitol siege
Now this is what a real President sounds like.
I see a lot of agreement here about right and wrong with reasoned judgement. After all, we all have been RW&A to consider novel (Ahem) situations and hypotheses for many years. 😉
But I wonder, just asking, mind, it if might not be too soon, emotions are still running high, and it might be better to “let the dust settle” a bit, see how Americans respond to the new Administration with surely much less chaos and drama, and see where we are in several months. My money, literally (IRA investments), is on a much improved situation.
I realize I’m asking this because I am an Aspie, and just don’t have my emotions connect to impersonal things. Sometimes I use the analogy that neuro-typical people are like long spined sea-urchins with hooks on the ends of their spines that connect to every other urchin that comes around, while I have itty-bitty short spines that don’t hook onto others unless we’re real close. My reactions tend to be logical and ethical, but not so much emotional.
Paul, I think your idea of a cool off period is a really good one.
Mind you, I’m NOT suggesting everybody “crawl back into their hole”!
My buddy & I racked off 33Gal of 2020 Pinot Noir yesterday, but it’s far from ready to drink. It needs to age and develop before we can bottle. So likewise with recent developments.
John Scalzi, author of Old Man’s War, Redshirts, etc. has a great blog post up about recent events:
But What If We Didn’t
And below it, great comments by readers as well.
I would like to finish out the subject with a serious question I am not qualified to answer.
Back in 2016 election analysts trying to ratonalize it said a good portion of Trump voters didn’t consider themselves part of his base, but were unhappy with how Congress had been going for some years, e.g. remembering when you first heard the name Merritt Garland, so their vote was a case of “let’s give this outsider a try”. So their commitment was weak.
My question is about how their commitment will have changed, if at all, over the last four years, and even year(s) to come. Is it, or to what extent is it, in human nature to increase their commitment to their initial decision as a reaction to having to admit they made a mistake in the first place?
Thank you.
Yes, I think you’re right.
People in the US have genuine economic and social grievances, and inequality has been rising for a long time. The wealthiest country in the world has the worst health care system of any developed country, the worst social support network, and the worst employment and environmental laws.
Neoliberalism from Bill Clinton onwards wasn’t working. Hilary was the most ‘establishment’ neoliberal imaginable, and some voters simply wanted to shake up the system any way they could, so they supported Trump.
That was delusional, because Trump is the worst example of the kind of person who was exploiting them all along. Trump has never in his life cared about any other human being besides himself. He wasn’t going to suddenly start caring about people who voted for him. He’s a glorified conman and snake oil salesman. He was never going to use the presidency for anything other than pumping up his personal ego, wealth, and power.
The GOP fully understood that, but they thought they could nevertheless take advantage of Trump and manage him for their own ends. But Trump is ‘chaotic evil’ and when you have a tiger by the tail, it’s hard to let go.
It’s human nature that once we commit ourselves to a position, we tend to keep defending it and justifying it to ourselves. People hate admitting they were wrong. Trump supporters were acting on emotion and fantasy, and as someone wisely said, you can’t reason people out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.
The voters who tried to shake up the system (by electing the worst representative of that system), gradually found themselves sucked in deeper and deeper, and doubling down on their commitment, until they were believing in pedophiles in pizza parlours, QAnon conspiracy theories, and eventually actively trying to undermine democracy.
many of the people who voted for Trmp don’t have economic anxiety (hey have incomes over $100K per year) – they don’t want “those people” to benefit from anything, anywhere, including voting booths.
I posted a couple of days ago that the rioters didn’t look serious. They were wandering around taking selfies and seemed to be playing stupid games.
I was wrong. It was far more serious. This disturbing video from MSNBC shows just how bad it was:
New Video Shows Capitol Riot Was Way Worse Than We Thought
Those selfies are evidence that gets them identified and arrested. (They’re worried about tracking via internal chip? They walk around with phones that tell where they are and at least some of what they’re doing. All the time.)
GreenWyvern — your analysis in the 9:14 post is outstanding.