Only one link. Something, or rather someone, came up yesterday and ate up my online time. But I did see yesterday's big news story and especially the security expert's Big Bad Idea about candidates avoiding "dangerous" open-air exercise and big outdoor rallies...Candidates are politicians. Politicians whom our system allows to succeed are loud, grinning extroverts whose job requires them to make speeches that a majority of the audience will hear as slick if not as outright lies; some of those speeches may be outright lies. Therefore all candidates in national elections are and will probably always be easy to hate. But making campaigning and service in public office even more like "being a state prisoner" than they've always been is no solution--do we want all the candidates to die from COVID due to lack of sunshine?
I think we have to look at the tone of campaign rhetoric. Yes, it's always had that "vote for me because my opponent is a jerk" tone. But we need to be more careful about that. In order to call out the dangers of bad policies we need to be careful about hating people. Few speeches or written articles are written with sociopaths as their intended audience. Most are addressed to friends. We need always to bear in mind that what we say or write in public is likely to be heard and read by some victim of Prozac Dementia whose inner demons are just looking for a target for the homicide as he plans his homicide-suicide.
One among many reasons why this web site does not support Harris is her Mean Girl attitude, her assumption that she can snub people who had wanted to support her and then still claim that people (other than the ones whose existence in cyberspace she wants to deny, until she can wipe it out) "see her as a friend and a neighbor." Well, maybe in a city neighborhood full of people whose unspoken agreement is "This is not home; we only stay till our jobs let us get away," so nobody speaks to anybody, she might be seen as that sort of neighbor. Of which who needs another one? But while this web site bashed Obamacare, this web site also expressed respect and good will for Obama. While this web site bashed the current administration's policies, it also called for respect for the seniority and compassion for the physical frailty of President Biden. While I personally remember Trump as the blight on a part of Alexandria I loved, back in the 1980s, and have never claimed to like him, I certainly wouldn't go so far as to blame the victim for the evildoers who hate and are trying to murder him. And while I have thought how convenient it would be if the whole Party of Censorship were stricken with Tower of Babel syndrome and all started babbling and braying like Kamala when she's not had a month to practice repeating someone else's speech, only more so, and frothing and falling down and grabbing at each other and maybe soaking their pants, so that they all had to go home and stay home...I DO NOT think that shooting at any of them is going to help anything.
To those who want to murder their political enemies, I ask: Do you really think their ideas deserve the boost of having been endorsed by a martyr?
We need to keep political rhetoric levelheaded and focussed on ideas. The ideas may deserve to be hated. The people who spout the ideas need to be educated, if necessary by putting them out of work, but not made into martyrs.
That Trump miraculously survived two attempted murders is only making it more obvious to some of the electorate that God wants him back in the White House. And the Party of Censorship needs to know that payback time will come. Ds whose rhetoric can be seen as incitements to violence can easily be seen as eeeevildoers who belong in the same places Crooks and Routh and Hinckley belong.
I have always liked Robert Reich. I've never met him in real life. I know him only through a long-ago book called Locked in the Cabinet but I remember reporting to George Peters that that book was the best of the Clinton staff books, in the sense of being the most readable, seeming to have been written at least as much by the nominal writer as by the hack who made the others sound so much alike, and also in the sense of telling a lot of truth about the Federal Reserve Bank. (I was acquainted with several other Clinton employees, because I was one of the massage therapists to whom the official White House one referred people; I'd like to write about them as politely as George Stephanopoulos wrote about us the top hundred massage therapists, in All Too Human, so I'll stop here.) Because I liked Reich's book, and because I like to read both sides, I signed up to follow him on Substack. Where several of his posts were insightful, interesting, nostalgic, and/or funny. He posted a cartoon inviting readers to speculate about a conversation between two head lice on Trump's head. Well, anyone can pick up head lice and some of the suggested conversations were funny. I smiled.
But his post this morning, about how Trump's bashing the immigrants made him a blameworthy victim, crossed a line. And I don't think Reich or many of his readers even realized how evil it sounded, how easily political rhetoric can be exploited by the Evil Principle. Reich is a talented writer and undoubtedly as likable, in real life, as his colleagues were. As his readers undoubtedly are. If they were your neighbors they'd be quiet, clean, probably spending most weekends on the road. They'd dress casually but tastefully, as they'd maintain their homes. They'd keep to themselves most of the time and be easy to talk with when there was something to talk about. If they made appointments they'd show up on time. If they hired someone they'd pay the full amount, promptly, in cash; very likely they'd tip. If they agreed to baby-sit your children you wouldn't even have to worry about stupid TV shows or junkfood. And yet there they all were, one political enthusiast feeding another, none of them pausing to think what they were saying, rejoicing that people hated their opponent enough to attempt murder.
I like Scott Adams, too. I follow him...on Rumble, these days, and that's going above and beyond the normal boundaries of being a loyal fan. We're all getting older, we've all looked at too many computer screens for too long, but "vlogging" is just sooo self-indulgent and sooo boring unless you blog about some special technique of your trade or about visiting some unusually beautiful place. But I turn on SA's videos in the background while doing things like putting away laundry. And his comments on the debate on ABC included that Kamala looked "dark." Well, of course her complexion is dark, she's triracial, under the One Drop Rule she'd be legally Black and she identifies as Black. Problem? And she can fairly be described as pretty; many Mean Girls are. "Something evil," SA went on to say. I can see what he was describing as this mysterious "something evil" in her stage presence. It's the grin. I don't know whether she actually has more teeth than most people do or just stretches her mouth wide enough that the molars show. Bright white teeth, the kind that make middle-aged people ask "Where and how much?" My comments on the debate mentioned that that human-possum hybrid effect looks horrific, too. But is it an "evil" grin or, as a Republican with whom I watched the debate called it, a possum's dung-eating grin? I called it a smirk bordering on a sneer. It's bad, bad, bad body language but it's too typical of women who've been ordered for years to smiiii-yul, and they try, they really try to look as if they were pleased or amused when they're actually nervous or bored or annoyed. It's a look women need to call out when we see it on Harris. We need to notice how bad it looks. We need to ask ourselves whether we're doing it and, if so, why we started and how we can stop. If you think about what your face is doing, tell it to relax! And keep those lips touching each other when you're not speaking! But is it appropriate, in a world full of homicide-suicidal pill poppers, to suggest that Harris or her stage presence is evil? Is that like giving an Insane Admirer the target his Prozac Dementia wants?
Stop it, Ds. Stop it, Rs. We need to bash more vigorously and more thoroughly at the bad ideas, but nor at the people. We need to remember that the candidates are frontmen and, if they are murdered, their party bosses can find other frontmen. In any case it's better form, even if you know a candidate personally as a neighborhood blighter like Trump or a Mean Girl like Harris, while bashing the ideas to express good will toward the people, if you can. I suspect that for most people who have any personal experience of either Trump or Harris that may be very difficult. Lots of jealous spouses don't like Kennedys, too. Nevertheless. We all need to try to avoid bashing the people.
Because I like Reich, because I'd like to see conservatives conserving the Constitution rather than jumping on the censorship bandwagon, I commented on his Substack: "If I'd written this post, I'd pull it down." If anything is tackier than blaming the guns when a murder is attempted, or committed, it's blaming the victim. I posted that because I could all too easily imagine vindictive Trumpistas wanting to punish Reich for what I read as an ill-advised and tacky post, which they could easily blame for being part of the climate that generated those murder attempts. I remember another comment on the blog of a D e-friend that led to hatespews. When we I's warn D e-friends that they're going too far or not making sense, we expect to be called Rs, and when we warn R e-friends of the same thing, we expect to be called Ds. That's wrong, in the sense of counter-factual, but it's not unreasonable. I expect some of Reich's readers, and possibly Reich if he reads his comments pages, to react with an indignant squeal of "You reactionary Republican!" That's all right. If they go further into their little litany of hate, well, some of the flights of fantasy have been cute, actually. I will always cherish the one about Pris-Zilla the Deplorable who "has nice fingernails, lives in the ocean, and wants to destroy Japan." But really, Ds, that whole "You don't totally support our whole party line, therefore you're a racist, a sexist, elitist, probably homophobic though also probably a lesbian, probably antisemitic, probably educatedat Oxford though also probably illiterate, surely a rich capitalist who hates young people, though also unlovable, unemployable, not necessarily certified yet but certifiably insane, and what else can I think of that is bad?" routine is tired and tiresome and it really says more against you than it does against me, or whomever else you think it's bashing. Give it a flippin' rest already. Give your selves a flippin' rest. Just consider calmly, if you can, whether you really want to be known as victim-blamers, and take the victim-blaming posts down.
Or just be known as victim-blamers. I'm not your mother. I do not, personally, care. But I do care about our American society enough to think that we need a lively debate among clearly distinguished ideas, but we don't need hate toward people.
Politics (Election 2024)
Dowdy pants or orange spray-on tans, premature aging or fried voice, endless back-and-forth about abortion, and similar stupid stuff aside...we need a President who can stand up to this kind of thing. We need a President who can tell the UN, "You don't get funding or the use of a building if you waste your time even babbling about this kind of thing. Tear it up and show some work on your original job of keeping peace among the savage tribes of Europe if you want, as an organization, to survive."
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