Learning How Foolish Our Neighbors Are

The major spreading events, over the year, have all to do with: Celebrations.  Business celebrations, birthdays, Sweet Sixteen parties, etc.

Some people just have to celebrate.  We always knew some of our friends were spoiled.  They would whine about something that they were being denied, such as having a big party to celebrate some stoopid thing, until whoever was preventing this from happening said, OK, go ahead.  Don't blame me if you get sick.

We obviously don't know about all such instances; we only know about the events that ended up being spreader events, such as the President held.  Covid follows the Pres like a gleeful herd of Minions!  I think it was cheap of the Pres to blame it on Gold Star Families (like he did); he accused them of coming up to him and kissing him.  Some Gold Star families are probably not the brightest; they aren't as clever as the Pres, who said he had a bone spur, or something.

The number of infections in any locality is a measure of the stupidity of that area, except for those who are forced to go into work in unsafe areas, because otherwise their bosses would fire them.  (Think nurses, ambulance drivers, etc.)

Thank goodness I'm retired; I don't know how I would have dealt with being forced to work in this environment.  My heart goes out to everyone who has to brave unsafe conditions in order to put food on the table of their families.  I have very little sympathy for those who go around without masks on their own time.

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Money For Nothing!

The American Dream is different for different people.  For people like Trump, it looks very much like: you stumble on a money pit, and then you sit back while the shekels roll in, and spend all your time bolstering up your public image.

This works---and had worked---for many of us; the easiest way was to get money from the land.  Farming was too painful.  But hiring a lot of poor people to dig coal out of the ground was a good idea.  (Those who worked the mines took all the risk.)  Cutting down trees was another good one, especially if there was a boom in housing construction.  Once they started mass-producing cars, they needed steel.  There were iron mines, which made some people rich.  Then there was oil.  And gas.

Then there was the Stock Market!  Then there was Real Estate!

Then there was the Great Depression.  Then there were the Wars.  (Some people got rich from the wars.)

Then, there was a change.  Young people began to travel outside the US, and began to get strange new ideas about equality.  They seemed to think that not just White Americans, but everyone, even the women, deserved a share of the power and the wealth.

They also seemed to think that it was important to keep the air, the water, and the land clean.  They got into Congress, and then into the Senate.  They studied science, and what sorts of things polluted the environment.  Soon, the Money Specialists, who had focused on how to get the most rent out of poor tenants, and how to get the most suckers into the casinos, looked up, and all they could see was these people--who looked like low-budget communists to them---making rules that got in the way of duping customers.  It wasn't enough to sell people soda; people wanted to know how much sugar there was in the damn soda.

These people were aghast at all the roadblocks that the Democrats were throwing up in the way of easy profits, and wanted to make America safe for unscrupulous businessmen again.

Let's talk about America and The World.  There was a certain time in which American Idealism was a refreshing contrast to the cynicism of the Old World.  Anyone who had a good idea would be sneered at everywhere except in the US.  There was a time when an inventor would be given a fair chance in the USA.  There was a time when someone with a grievance would get a fair hearing in the USA.  Side-by-side with the capitalists with tunnel vision, were friendly folk who were not suspicious of people, as long as they were confident you were not one of those horrible communists.  This was the time that the Alt-Right looks back at with longing; the US would frown on the shenanigans of some countries, and was eager to take leadership in any new project.  We were No. 1.

Soon those awful Democrats turned around to look at what was going on in the US itself, and began passing legislation faster than ever; Social Security, and Medicare, and Equal Rights, and Handicap Accessibility, and Unisex Toilets, and Gay Marriage, and the decriminalization of abortion, and lots of people wanted things back the way they used to be.

But the things that really made America great are probably not the things that the Alt-Right think made America great.  The things that Trump urges those at his rallies to do are not the things that ennobled the USA in the eyes of the world.

Trump knows this perfectly well.  All he wants is for his ardent followers to imagine that the things Trump wants do make America great.  It is a hoax.  A lot of what Trump engineers are little hoaxes, and they're hoaxes on his own people.  This is probably why when some of his assistants get tired of what goes on in the White House, leave the fold, and make such an about-face.

How much do Trump's nominees to the Supreme Court see through Trump's hypocrisy?  How much are they committed to altruistic ideals?

Does American need to be No. 1 in everything to regain the respect of the world, and a position of leadership---to some degree---among the nations of the world?  I think that depends on whether they can trust the US to be impartial, and to keep our word.

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Hate as a Business Model

For those of you who have found it too wearying to work out the ins and outs of US politics, here is a good opportunity to straighten out those kinks in your reasoning.

Bear in mind, though, that whenever anyone tells you that they're trying to help you straighten out your thinking, by all means give them a listen.  But also be very careful that they're not slanting their reporting to the benefit of some particular view, and that's the case here, too.  And it is also the case when I go on one of my rants, or even when I explain something that seems to be in a reasonable 'voice'.

Particularly in politics, the lines of motivations are very tangled.  There is nothing that this speaker says that I have not realized, without any external prompting, a year or two, or even a decade or two ago.  But Matt Taibbi really seems to me to gather up all the threads that sometimes elude us, and explain things in such a way that we can be a little less frustrated about the day-to-day news, wondering whether we're missing something.

I stumbled on this video by Matt Taibbi just last night.  It is very clear and lucid, and is intended for a very general audience.  It is basic information, information that will be invaluable for several kinds of people:

* People who just do not like the wholesale prejudiced atmosphere we have now, where we almost have to avoid people with one sort of opinion, and only talk with those who have our point of view.  We know this is unhealthy, and you'll begin to see that this state of affairs was actually--possibly unintentionally--manufactured by Business Interests.

* People who do not like to have to think for themselves, and need their prejudices figured out for themselves by experts.  (This was intended to be funny, but honestly, it is very tiring to have to unravel the twisted motives of people we see in the news, particularly when these motives change daily!)

* People who used to have friends of all types: white, black, conservative, libertarian, liberal, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Israeli, Palestinian, Arab, Russian, European, British, Irish, Mexican, etc, and deplore how things stand today, where it seems almost a felony to want to talk to these people again.

The basic problem has been that, back in the Sixties (as Matt T. explains,) both Radio and TV news services were at pains to capture the largest possible audience.  This meant presenting the news with as little emotion as possible, not appearing to support any particular side.  Doing this even-voiced reporting ensured that you did not alienate any sector of the audience.

Once the sources of news proliferated, and in particular, once the Internet became a source of 'news', but more accurately, a source of opinion mingled with news, it became more profitable for each news service to select a particular demographic, and focus on getting a solid grip on them.  The most successful of these news services (Fox News) learned that the best strategy was to make their target audience mad about the news, and keep them mad, and only show them news that kept them mad.  That should be enough for you to figure out the rest without Matt Taibbi's help, but for the more feeble among us, Matt goes above and beyond the call of duty, dotting every i and crossing every t.  MSNBC is the same as Fox, except that they focus on keeping Democrats permanently angry.  Today, he explains, every news source has identified its target audience, and relentlessly pursues the objective of permanently keeping their tempers simmering, by selecting the news stories that support that anger and hate.  So, unless you switch your news sources around, you're never going to hear about good things happening around the world, or even around the continent (North America, to be exact) that may take you off the simmer, and miss a juicy advertisement.  As someone once said, the responsibility of every business is to maximize its profits, and not worry about the well-being of its workers, or the good of society.  Good businesses have to be bastards.  (As if I didn't have it in for business already, here is one more nail in the coffin of my good feelings for business.)

The people who don't waste energy on getting angry are: Business Interests.  As long as they can sell their advertising, as far as they're concerned, hate is good.  Small businesses are not party to this cruel strategy; and in any case, it is the news services that really keep the news anchors' toes in line with this strategy for maximizing their advertising profits.  As Matt explains, once the news anchors arrive at a winning formula, the advertisers hate when the news anchors depart from it, because the profits begin to plummet immediately.  A happy audience is not an audience glued to the TV, and biting its nails.

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