If you ever see a link, or a video title containing the word 'shocking', you can safely ignore it. It is either (1) an old story, which some hack has decided still has some 'juice' in it, and it's trying to get still more clicks, or (2) some amateur video editor or writer wannabe, trying to edit some excitement into an old story.
In either case, it is an old story. And I've noticed that old stories get the hype treatment much more than new stories.
Arch
A lot of Basketball coaches seem to say things that they cannot support with facts. They didn't become successful coaches by studying the game, by being diplomatic and tactful, by being able to judge the potential of all the teams in the league, and certainly not being able to judge all the teams in another league.
Furthermore, they enjoy drawing attention to themselves by making bold assertions. The more newsworthy the rantings of a coach are, the more team owners are impressed, and so, I think coaches use these sorts of wacky predictions to help their chances of firming their jobs.
Sports writers and commentators are similar. The more startling their declarations, the more attention they attract, and the more they're quoted. And the more amateur sports commentators build on the opinion of the professional sportswriter. But it usually isn't an expert observation, but only a remark made merely to be outrageous! In Sportswriter Camp, they only learn one thing: be as outrageous as you can; never mind if you're wrong!
So sportswriting is all about BS.
Arch.
Gosh. It's not even worth my time to get annoyed about it; only the bookies are interested (and anyone who's interested in bookies).
If it was possible to rank them, it wouldn't be worth their while to have playoffs, would it?
Arch
... For more than a decade. He was thwarted. But after Trump's presidency, where it seemed that it was impossible to do a worse job as President than Trump had done, and when it seemed that whoever would win the presidency needed to convince some Republicans as well, Biden was a good choice.
And Biden did his best to hold the economy together while the country was dealing with the Covid epidemic. Ɓut the retail sector (i.e. businesses that sell things) saw an opportunity to make extra money, and raised prices.
Now, if they were raising prices for food they already had in their warehouses, that's immoral, and illegal. That started off the inflation, which made the government very unpopular. So Biden was blamed for it, and did not get a second term.
Wanting to be president with all your might doesn't guarantee that you'll make a good president. Trump, I think, doubts that he will be able to deliver an administration that will be remembered as being at all successful. The best he can do is to be honest that his administration is going to be a parody of the worst administrations ever heard of, and then say, "I meant to do that!"
Arch
Every election year, I get myself into a frenzy, worrying about how the general voting population will vote. But now I'm thinking, it's time to let them vote in any fanciful way they choose, and observe the consequences. (With calmness.)
Some candidates will promise:
I will reduce inflation!
I will reduce gun violence!
I will eliminate corruption!
I will ban abortion!
I will make abortion freely available!
(Of course, nobody can promise both those last two things.)
Each voter has to decide which promises are plausible, and which are not. Unfortunately, reporters are interviewing Republican voters, and they seem to be voting based on the most blatant lies they hear! It's nice to be innocent, but to be that gullible ought to be a felony! In the face of that sort of trustfulness, anyone who is more pragmatic will be bewildered.
So, will all the politicians voted in be able to deliver on all that they promised?
Arch
I can't remember why I began to think ... oh yes, I do. My wife and I, who're both of us 'non-believers', are both involved in causes that would have been classed as Christian service (my wife a lot more than I). We often find ourselves 'praising the Lord' with fellow workers who are sincere Christians. This happens a lot to my wife, who is heavily involved with service projects that are strongly supported by Christians. Of course, these conversations are heavily burdened with expressions of how much God directly influenced some outcome.
My wife relates these incidents to me, and deplores that religion has to come into it; what it usually means is that some person was simply persuaded to do the right thing. (Many people, even if we expect them to be hardened cynics, still have the ability to do something altruistic.) At times, both of us feel like screaming: no, it isn't God! It is just common decency!! But of course we can't; there is a delicate network of beliefs inside the heads of these people, that makes their—sometimes amazing—work possible. They often see the light of the 'Love of Jesus' shining out of my wife's eyes. But she has given up on that sort of belief for well nigh 15 years! That does not, of course, mean that she has turned her back on what was called Christian Service. It's just service, since the 'Church' has hijacked the word 'Christian'.
Throughout the world, people are abandoning the various mythologies, the different dogmas with which they were saddled as children. The paths on which they arrive at this de-mythologization are varied, and often unique to each person. But often—and this is important—it leaves behind a lot of cognitive damage. We're quite familiar with the phrase 'trust issues' in psychology. But trust issues are also involved here. The secularization of individuals (making them non-religious) causes problems for that individual's functioning in society.
I write all this not as an expert, but simply as an observer. Over the last several years, we have observed the cynicism of numerous, numerous Congressmen and even some Senators, supreme court justices, and all sorts of people who were believed to hold the public trust. When they're revealed to be complete hypocrites, we're essentially secularized from the dogma of civic responsibility. We become atheists of declaring our assets truthfully to banks. Much of how a president was expected to behave—let alone supreme court justices—were seen to be only suggestions, that were ultimately myths.
Much of the practices that seem to have been abandoned by these new, improved conservatives, are just the simple extensions of the process of abandoning religious dogma.
We cannot shove the genie back in the bottle. Quite irrelevantly, it is the conservatives, who realize that something is not as it should be, and try to encourage a new religiosity on the population, via very large gospel churches. Ironically, the ministers of these churches confirm, rather than dispel, the cynicism of a typical person.
The phenomenon that is the engine of the attraction of mega-churches is nothing more than entertainment, and a desire to influence, or be recognized by, an enormous number of people.
Despite the culture of cynicism that we live in, many of us have altruistic instincts which emerge intermittently! In the weeks and years ahead, we're going to see a lot of that.
Arch
Well, everyone who is not a radical Republican is wondering how to bring the temperature of Politics back to levels at which any sort of work can be done.
Radicals are all about disrupting the status quo, to overturn an oppressive status quo, and focus attention on problems, and replace the traditional hierarchy with a different one, more sympathetic to their aims, and one that will work for them.
But while this upheaval is going on, a lot of processes will come to a halt, processes on which a lot of people depend. I have feeling that the MAGA crowd doesn't have the sheer imagination to anticipate the problems. Issuing food stamps, seeing doctors, going to school, getting groceries, etc. Even bringing people up before judges, complaining about bad behavior, and such.
The Republicans don't always care about these sorts of activities (in fact, they might be delighted at being allowed to misbehave a little, and, you know, grab some pussies, like the big boys.) But pretty soon they're going to find that a lot of the things they want to do are going to be impossible, or difficult.
There's a price everyone pays for breakdown of order. All the work that the big shots wanted done efficiently by low-paid workers (about whom supposedly only bleeding hearts like Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris, and Alexandria O. C. cared) might be disinclined to work as hard as they used to, once they realize that the Red Leadership seems to be neglecting them.
Operation 2025 will shut down many services that are more important than the MAGA crowd realizes.
Arch
