well, THIS seems obvious. obviously an epidemic of monumental proportion.
so unbelievably twisted, so devastatingly sad, and so incredibly dangerous.
*****
read DAVID’s thoughts this SATURDAY MORNING
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the monday-morning-armchair-quarterbacking is over the top. there is no one excuse for these election results. to be real, there cannot be enough reasons for the despicable – what the majority of voters voted for.
in the aftermath – afforded from even little to no doom-scrolling that highlights the absolute tsunami of finger-pointing, blaming, history-touting, policy-pummeling, we now see that the maga-voters voting for all the maga-sh*t did not quite understand what the maga-candidate’s maga-agenda really meant.
many of them had tuned into fox news where they learned – and clearly believed – things like people were eating other people’s dogs and cats and you could send your child to school and they would arrive home the opposite sex.
despite all the information to the contrary, they didn’t understand tariffs nor did they understand what “authoritarian” meant. they didn’t realize mass deportation meant their relatives.
and, worst of all, they poo-pooed any talk of the abject cruelties of project 2025, jumping on the he-doesn’t-really-mean-that-he-wouldn’t-really-do-that bandwagon.
weren’t they surprised when – post-election – all the maga-cronies paused very few milliseconds and posted what would amount to a naa-naa-nah-naa-naa, stating that it was the actual agenda all along.
adding fuel to the what-the-hell fire, “…catherine rampell and youyou zhou (washington post) showed before the election that voters overwhelmingly preferred harris’s policies to trump’s if they didn’t know which candidate proposed them.” (heather cox richardson – american historian, professor of history – boston college, previously MIT, university of massachusetts amherst )
if you don’t fact-check, if you don’t ask questions, if you don’t care about any potential work in the aisle or if the country’s democracy could be decimated, if you don’t worry your little head about character or details of a candidate’s experience or qualifications or with whom they choose to surround themselves, you have chosen to be a voter voting on whatever your rage is, you have voted to follow the lemmings off the cliff.
amanda marcotte (senior politics writer – salon) opined, “a lot of voters are profoundly ignorant. more so than in the past.” ya think??
so, yeah. now what?
i’m going to clean out my closet, take a hike, hydrate and try to breathe.
*****
i passed by these words: “try being informed instead of just opinionated.” i laughed and then frowned, thinking it was a great mantra for these times. it doesn’t even need any additional blah-blah. it simply can stand on its own, shining a spotlight on, well, most of us at some point or another.
i was recently reading some writings of noam chomsky, a linguist and philosopher and so much more. he is “widely recognized as having helped to spark the cognitive revolution in the human sciences”. his work is interesting and profoundly thought-provoking. and, he is one of those scholars who have quotes galore attributed to him, smidges of wisdom, tomes prompting controversy, questions that parry ignorance.
“the general population doesn’t know what’s happening and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know” is one of these quotes. bracing.
any scroll through news media apps in these times is pretty scary. intense drought, raging wildfires, ferocious storms erupting, melting glaciers and rising oceans, a global pandemic morphing and morphing again but not going away, the rise of authoritarianism in the global world, the attack on democracy and fundamental truths, the support of lies and personal agenda by people in trusted positions, the new climate change report issued by the united nations…the doomsday list seems endless.
we stumbled into a short documentary the other evening about doomsday bunkers. people in south dakota and texas purchasing $35k bunkers and tricking them out into homes in which they live, preparing, prepared. it was kind of daunting to see – these underground homes with pantry rooms full of canned goods, homes with no windows, homes that are more-or-less safe – or at least removed – from all that goes on above ground. i expected to see wily extremists but that wasn’t the case in the short we viewed. these were people who wanted to be ready to go on if all else failed – leaving “all else” to your imagination, easily fed by the horrors we read and watch in the news. i personally cannot imagine living this way. though the bunkers are in a community, the premise is removing yourself from the rest of the world and i wonder what is left of value then. a little more googling and other bunkers emerge – bunkers for the super rich, bunkers that are more extreme. what is really going on here? the things we don’t know.
i used to teach in the state of florida, though i have not lived there now for over thirty years. in the mixed miracle of social media, some of my previous students are friends of mine on facebook and i am delighted to see them in their lives as adults. i am horrified to watch the governor of that state remove protections for the children attending school there, not to mention teachers and administrators and other valued employees of school systems. barring mask mandates, downplaying vaccinations, issuing warnings to remove funding, threatening the withholding of salaries – all power ploys for his own sick agenda, which clearly is not to protect or encourage protecting the residents of his state, his constituents. i don’t understand this. and yet, his actions are mostly undeterred and it is only now that there are some superintendents pushing back, placing lives over one man’s warped authority. i wonder why every parent in the state isn’t lined up, pushing back. had my children been little while we lived there, i would have been appalled by the cavalier attitude about their health and well-being. they – and every single other child in that state – are not expendable. what is really going on here? the things we don’t know.
we’ve all heard the expression “ignorance is bliss.” is it really? is not-knowing the best way to go about living? is getting all hooked-lined-and-sinkered into opinion-land responsible? is watching the circus networks opine and distill truth and hatch conspiracy communal? is it ok to not know what’s really happening and not know that you don’t know? is it prudent – without asking questions – to fetch every bone thrown igniting rhetoric, encouraging vitriol, spewing hate, forwarding inequality, ignoring climate peril, wreaking chaos? even dogdog can discern firestarter sticks from real branches.
let’s not waste that cognitive revolution.
*****
read DAVID’S thoughts this FLAWED WEDNESDAY
i played “this land is your land, this land is my land” on the ukulele the other day. were woody guthrie to be alive, he may have added another verse to this song, this one depicting the russian roulette game that people in this country are playing with the coronavirus.
it’s astounding.
these are NOT normal times, no matter how much you might want to ignore that little fact. and since these are NOT normal times, you should be mindfully considering at-great-length anything you want to do that IS normal.
“from california to the new york island. from the redwood forest to the gulf stream waters, this land was made for you and me.” when was the last time that it occurred to you that what you do affects others? was it today? was it last week? was it ever? what amount of sacrifice are you willing to take in order to protect others and yourself and put this country on a healing trend so that things MIGHT be able to be normal again SOME day?
are you out at the bars? are you at a restaurant, maskless, ordering from your masked server without a care in the world except whether you would rather the sparkling water or the tap? are you having dinner parties, group gatherings, barbecues in your backyard? are you on vacation? are you talking out of one side of your mouth and acting out of the other? are you duplicitous; do you want people to believe you are being careful and mindful, but on the other hand, it is your life after all…… are you putting anyone in harm’s way? are you renting cabins in small remote towns that have hospital/medical systems that would be stricken by a surge in numbers, something that you might bring there, even inadvertently? are you at the beach? the club? the public pool? are you making plans to go to disney as soon as it opens? are you wearing a mask when you are outside your home? are you social distancing? do you really care? or are you like so many people – irked by any degree of self-sacrifice, believing you are an entity unto yourself? are you buying into conspiracy theories and falsehoods? do you think this global pandemic is overblown? do you feel inconvenienced? do you think we should just throw caution to the wind and take-our-chances? are you upholding ignorance? are you mimicking the repulsive behavior of a president who doesn’t care about anything but his re-election and will spout off lies to your face, your actual face?
“when the sun came shining and i was strolling, and the wheat fields waving, and the dust clouds rolling, as the fog was lifting, a voice was chanting: this land was made for you and me.”
for you and me. there’s a responsibility there.
today my daughter told me that someone called her an asshole when she asked them to as-per-the-law-where-she-is put on a mask to enter the shop. and SHE’S the asshole??? this person could not put a small piece of cloth over their nose and mouth to protect others and my daughter is the asshole???
because of this person and their apathetic incomprehension and their unconscionable extraordinarily selfish behavior – repeated ad nauseam across the land that’s made for you and me – i cannot see my beloved daughter. “it’s a pandemic,” she wrote. “all the respectful tourists stayed at home.” she is at risk. the numbers are rising where she is and the people who should stay in their states-with-exponential-growth and wait-to-travel are populating her area in droves. without a care in the world. without giving a flying flip. and with no shame. and so it’s not safe there. how dare they.
“this land was made for you and me.” act like you belong in a community, like you belong in a country, like what happens to people across the land affects you too, like you care even an ounce for others. it’s actually pretty simple: don’t be an asshole.
i’m tired. as in – exhausted.
read DAVID’s thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY
reverse threading 