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Comments
I remember reading somewhere that "All we have to do to solve political polarization is for everybody to get out of their bubbles and talk to each other! And they need to do this every! single! day!" and, like, that sounds so cute and idealistic on paper, but nobody understands how insane it actually is.
I mean, the alternative is "people live in their bubbles and don't fully work out their positions" but I think we can all agree politics is somehow both all-encompassing and yet mostly irrelevant to daily human life. Funnily enough, if it becomes all-encompassing enough to become relevant to daily human life, that means things are really bad.
You answered yourself here!
I think that's because people overlook that a few other things have to happen before that can happen:
1. You need some circumstances that bring these people together and make them comfortable with each other. (This could be a common hobby, or just a chance meeting under special circumstances.)
2. You need some circumstances that give them first-hand information about and experience interacting with whatever types/groups of people they are used to thinking about in a distant, abstract way.
With these two things, you need to get people into the mindset of thinking that the world is a lot more complicated than any one set of political views or interpretations of reality can reflect.
Once you have these then you can get people with different visions of what the world should be like to start communicating these ideas to each other peaceably.
(Alternatively, they could simply not discuss their political disagreements and go on with life anyway.)
Mainly I think stuff could be fixed if we went back to the old days where cool kids didn't care about politics at all. That way we could still have policy wonks and everybody with a real life could go back to looking down on them.
[different set of numbers follows]
Also, I wonder to what extent "the injection of politics into everything" has simply to do with fandoms (1) growing to sufficient size so as for the social groupings alone to be insufficient for a feeling of camaraderie / so as for subdivisions within groups to become relevant, and (2) having members that have grown old enough that real-life issues, including but not limited to politics, are now relevant to them.
Whelp, I guess Las Vegas area wildlife rescue groups will have their hands full with this nonsense for a while.
Their maturity would be strangely limited if they decided the best way to work out these things was to shout into the void of TV (even if it has worked so far).
I mean, similarly, a person who grows up and realizes there are real life issues, and then decides to work them out in the least mature way possible (ie said pidgeon hatting) doesn't need encouraging. However, there's probably some subset of twitter that's celebrating this development.
Anyways I keep forgetting to do this joke:
Democratic Primary Candidates on... A Random Lady!:
199X Bloomberg: Horse-faced lesbian.
2020 Biden: Dog faced pony soldier.
want to be himlike him more than I should.From here:
[...]
I did not expect him to be so very cut-throat 90s business guy... especially in regards to with all that weird sexual harassment stuff that comes with that territory, obviously.
There's a minute amount of gay conservatives who, similarly to the gay MRAs, have used his run to basically denigrate gay heteronormativity. To me, heteronormativity remains the ideal. That is to say, act responsibly before marriage, work diligently towards getting married, get married, bonus level is possibly adopting kids, or (though I disagree with this) having kids via a surrogate.
They've basically gone all the way around to the whole queering of gay thing, in a weird way. It's like they accept that they are gay, and somehow think this gives them license to be sexually irresponsible for the rest of their lives since they believe that Marriage is only between a man and a woman. To explain, the queer movement either wants to pathologise marriage till it becomes irrelevant*1, or just rail against how heteronormativity is part of the patriarchy and so it's systematically evil*2.
I mean, personally I think these unmarried American/British guys in their late 30s and so on are trying to justify to themselves running away from the biggest commitment you can make in life to another person. Unfortunately, the conservative movement and obviously MRAs (and MGTOWs) will gladly accept these sorts of denigrations of Former Mayor Pete either because they want to seem accepting and just don't get it, or because conservatives take the whole "marriage is between a man and a woman" thing (a view I totally understand people having but disagree with) and don't read beyond that.
I've also seen a bunch of these guys denigrating Chasten Buttigieg for taking Pete's last name, even though I'm pretty sure (bare with me here) Pete Buttigieg has wanted to be POTUS since he was like, 9, and every decision he made was based on that including selecting through candidates for husband to ensure they would take his last name.
Anyways, taking somebody's last name means you love them and want to be seen as part of a unit with them. It's a great and selfless act (though probably not very selfless if your
maidenpatriarchal(?) last name was Glezman).Also, bonus fact: For anybody wondering who would name their son Chasten, aside from like if they were the gay younger brother in a YA novel, it's the sort of parents who would name their other son Rhyan.
1*I want to explain this properly, but it's too much for a morning like this.
2*I've italicized this statement in order for me to reproduce the language correctly, but I should explain that think it's an absolutely insane way to think.
tl;dr, I never thought gay conservatives would spur me into wanting to get married this bad (though like, I've had the matching suits/embarrassingly J-pop wedding music planned out since I was like 17).
Here's a good paper on how heteronormative gays are literally committing violence against those who don't wish to be married. And, also, upon themselves (????).
I think I said elsewhere about this whole (claim unproven) thing, and I think it applies nicely to that last sentence. Everybody in a society should protect the vulnerable, gay people don't actually have special Queer Barriers to erect against specific crimes.
If you really want to have common sense battered with a ram, here's a full on paper on... uh... "doing family"?
[...]
Apparently, all we need to do is carry out and investigation and we'll find out more than half of everybody on the planet is actually gay? (this one leans heavily on the Focault discourse-over-reality model).
Oh, this line of thinking did also come after Pete Buttigieg but I don't care what these sorts of people think (anymore) enough to write about it.
Outside of what's above here... I have very specific views on abortion (which I won't articulate now because that'd surely derail anything else I have to say) but when it comes to the welfare state... I really don't know.
I mean, my base reaction is to be like "No! The welfare state is bad!" but I know that's stupid and unrealistic. In all honesty, I know what a welfare state is, but I have no idea how it should be administered or what limits should be imposed on it.
Also, I've become more and more aware of how I basically joined in the Democratic Party and Labour Party views when those who controlled them were massive neoliberalists, and now when I read about the very recent pasts of those parties and how the align with the political left in their unique ways, especially things like the Labour Party's intense veneration of worker's movements, I wonder exactly how my entire adolescent political viewpoint was formed by like... Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.
TL;DR gah i'm tired of arguing with people who insist that they're correct because their political positions are the product of their principles
(doubly so if they quote Jefferson or anyone else from the Federalist Papers)
I think here you mean in US terms. UK Labour people seem fine with espousing the ideas and defending them. I think, in the US, it's the same set of ideas, but it has been implemented via lateral means under a lot of different departments.
Isn't this the exact same thing as saying you're a Democrat or Republican and then grandstanding every position said party comes out with no matter how nonsensical your arguments have to get to do so?
...it could be, but isn't quite? Mostly because the party labels aren't inextricably tied to ideologies, so it's rather common for the party to have an official position on something but for individual members or (or even national vs. state vs. local party organizations) to disagree on it.
A person can be a party loyalist, though in that sense it's usually more about supporting the candidates running on that party label, rather than about being a stickler for issue positions.
Meanwhile, the two major parties have gradually shifted over time, in various ways, the types and breadths of opinions they generally encompass.
I mostly know him for being a CNN contributor. This oddly soft spoken guy with really bad ideas (well, not as bad as "escort+meth" ideas). The last time I saw him, he'd become Pope of the Churh of Tom Steyer like 12 hours before Tom Steyer announced he was quitting his presidential run. I kind of can't believe he was actually secretly crazy enough to be Governor of Florida.
Isn't that like a successful campaign opening in Florida? I can totally imagine people voting for him now. The big gala, the dude showing up grinning ear-to-ear with his nose still white, scantily-clad hostesses cruising with mirrored platters and razor blades...
Here's the story linked to from Wikipedia: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/03/13/andrew-gillum-miami-democrat-linked-meth-overdose-florida-hotel/5042631002/
Edit: oh wait this does have a copy of the police report. So yeah. Enjoy.
I mean, if I were telling the story I'd certainly be leading with the escort part.
I'm pretty sure claims of what he'd taken came from what he himself said to the police, since according to some amazing Floridian laws he wasn't arrested or at least taken somewhere to make sure he wasn't dying.
Filed under "things that would never be real e-mail addresses except for in Florida".
Here's the gossip rag version of the story.
Fair warning; there's some censored NSFW stuff from the escort's... escort pages.
Okay let's go!
Relatedly, I can't help but seeing some really bad post-morterms on the situations/responses in Italy and Spain in a couple of months, because the US is basically gold standard response at this point. And like, Iran (if they're not lying) is managing to somehow deal with this via their (presumably) terrible health system.
However, as you said, doesn't mean we can't have a platinum standard or something.
* discarded epidemic preparedness as a policy focus in multiple ways -- with the departure of experienced staff tasked with devising pandemic response measures and subsequent negligence of filling those roles, as well as cutting US CDC research/technical staff in China (who, by virtue of being US staffers with near-first-hand information, could have gotten the US prepared for this a lot sooner, by being directly privy to fast-moving research information and also observing what works or doesn't work with regards to both medical treatments and policy responses)
* dabbled for a while in confusing and simultaneously contradictory policies regarding travel and trade from Europe -- with regards to what countries would be barred, what travelers would be barred, and whether trade would be barred
* has had a president promulgate questionable "cures" and various other misinformation concerning the disease
* has seen some amount of political football with irrelevant policy concerns at the national and levels with the bill/funding meant for economic relief and other relevant measures
* and most importantly at this point, has not focused at all on testing EVERYBODY and/or locking everything down while we wait to get all the test kits to test everybody
* and from my observations there's been a shortage of protective gear going around, particularly for medical professionals, first responders, and other people helping to deal with this disease
Also, more locally, it took a while for Florida's governor to lock down everything (much longer than it's taken individual municipalities), and he was trying to enforce travel restrictions at state borders while there was already ample reason to suspect in-state transmission of the coronavirus. (Like, seriously, he didn't actually bar people from coming here for spring break. So we were stuck with, say, the mayor of Miami Beach telling people to not go to the beach.)
I would expect that a country as large and (still) reasonably well-off as the United States to get their shit together after a while, and it's certainly starting to happen, but I would NOT characterize this country's handling of this pandemic as a "gold standard". Participation award, maybe?
You're right that there's no way to prepare specifically for COVID-19, but there are definitely processes that could have been accelerated, and goofs (and downright misinformation) that could have been avoided.
My best guess is that they do not guarantee protection but may have some benefit in lowering the probability of infection, so it's probably a bad idea to wear them and then gather into large groups. It's also a bad idea to hoard them (and these masks ran out at drugstores quite a while ago, so people were obviously already stocking up on these), because there are people that need them more. However, if you have some on hand, they might not hurt to use -- though you should definitely follow stay-at-home orders, and basically not go places unless you absolutely have to. (You know things are bad when even the Pope cancels mass, and while he's in Italy, Catholic churches in the US have done this too for basically the same reason.)
So, one more possible(?) goof on the part of the US might be this issue.
I don't know how realistic this sort of thing remains as an option. It'd probably require diplomatic pressure that is best expended on other things.
Oh yeah that was weird and inconsistent.
I think at this point everybody is guilty of misinformation, just because of how quickly the situation moved. I don't want to sit around playing semantics games.
Though I will say it seems cloroquine and it's derivatives are being used not only in America but elsewhere. The main issue is that Donald Trump pulled the salvo on it as soon as he was told it was a thing before it was rigorously vetted (it still hasn't been), as he tends to do.
This was inevitable. I don't mind it as much as others do. Politicians gonna politic.
America has tested the most people, and in terms of testing, there's clearly a hierarchy of importance (symptoms, travel history, connection with previous cases) that doesn't really leave room for "just do tests for everyone".
Plus, I don't actually believe in the lockdown, though that doesn't mean I believe things shouldn't be locked down either (I'm not much of an expert, after all). There are economic decisions to be made, with stimulus packages for locking people out of their jobs seemingly an afterthought to the lockdown.
So yeah, there's the social aspect, as well as the economic aspect. This whole thing has really reintroduced me to the concept of the cash-flow statement, and how vital it is to any business or going-concern entity. I suggest you look that up and try and imagine any and all projections for revenue suddenly disappearing whilst all the loans, rent, and other liabilities you've taken out still exist.
Everybody is depending on everybody else to pay them, basically, but nobody can without looking into reserves, which may or may not exist. This is a conversation everybody should have had weeks before locking anybody down, not after.
I mean, that's probably due to all the outsourcing of everything Americans have been doing since NAFTA became a thing and China was drafted into the WTO.
If America gets a participation award, then everybody else gets nothing (except maybe South Korea, who also get a participation award). I mean, aside from Taiwan I'm not seeing anybody doing as well as America is both in terms of testing volume and recovery rate. To be fair, according to this thing everybody is using, Spain's recovery rate is also fairly amazing, and Germany's is ridiculously good.
Given how widespread the disease is and has been for weeks now, with cases seemingly popping up out of nowhere and asymptomatic transmission expected, earloop masks seem like something that might be useful for general use. I mean, I've suspected that there are a huge number of asymptomatic or otherwise undiagnosed cases, and while I don't have numbers to back this up, the pattern (of cases popping up out of seeming nowhere) is consistent with such a supposition.
US CDC technical staff were pulled from China within the past couple years prior to this crisis.
Random Joe Schmoe saying that chloroquine is a cure isn't the same as the POTUS saying it.
Furthermore, chloroquine has been use to treat malaria, a disease with very different cause and symptoms, not COVID-19. If the POTUS had erred by relying on what was presumed to be sound scientific advice that turned out to be wrong, I can understand that. But chloroquine has never been recommended by technical experts as a cure for this. He pulled that one out of his butt (or, more likely, out of the various questionable sources he enjoys reading and hawking).
FYI my family has been hit first-hand with the economic impacts of this epidemic, and I'm quite aware what cash flow is.
Everybody knows 45 has issues with keeping his mouth shut. I'm not defending that, but I'm explaining how it's an irresponsibility we've come to expect.
I am assuming that the technical experts that surround Donald Trump have been discussing chloroquine, entirely because it'd be weird for them not to be considering this has been an ongoing thing since long before he mentioned it.
It's possible that whilst the medical professionals discussed it, he picked up on it. I mean, this statement is like assuming Donald Trump doesn't have people around him saying things in passing or in debriefs all day long, like all he does is watch Fox News and read Daily Wire.
There are certainly times where that's basically the only plausible reason for him to be talking about something, but this isn't that.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/insane-many-scientists-lament-trump-s-embrace-risky-malaria-drugs-coronavirus
There was one small French study that showed a possible effect, amidst various potential methodological problems.
It's bad enough that there are regular folks, and even journalists, running around with misrepresentations of scientific studies of things like weight-loss treatments and anti-aging supplements, even in good times.
Even if Trump were merely some random person who latched onto what may be false hopes in order to try to protect his children, it'd still be irresponsible. But not only is he not a private citizen, but the attention paid to him now dwarfs even that paid to news anchors and other media personalities who have a problematic record of such misrepresentations.
As POTUS, he says these things, and now there's a worldwide run on these two medications. And some numbskull tries the wrong version of it and kills himself (and nearly kills his wife). And so on. There are so many economic and medical ramifications to his words. (and let's not even get into the scamming potential of this)
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/chloroquine-hydrochloroquine-trump-covid-19-lupus-rheumatology
And let's not forget how much confidence he claims he has in himself and he desires to portray in his own judgement.
So even if he didn't get this from a questionable source, he made a series of questionable decisions with it, which, even if I give him the benefit of the doubt, amounts to latching onto at best a very unverified source of hope, then telling everyone like it's gospel. And, at best, it's because he really wants this to be over as quickly as possible, not because he's actually trying to be accurate and proper in an effort to save lives and contain the spread.
I... I thought we were arguing...????
To be fair this: and this
Is nobody's fault. That's just humans naturing.