Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Some adult, somewhere in the administration, had to have reckoned that Trump holding news conferences where various people spoke, and not infrequently disagreed, was gas on a fire.

There should have been once weekly official statements. And the loons should have been ignored. Totally ignored. Getting into arguments with the anti-vaxxers and early anti-maskers was a colossal unforced error. That gave them a platform.

Brevity signals authority. We had anything but it.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

There has to be a willingness to adjust, however, and giving the experts total control often precludes this. They lock in a view that’s based on their expertise, and then they’re trapped with it. They can’t pivot or adjust substantially because of a mix of bias and fear of loss of face/authority. At that point, science and policy are polluted with PR and politics. (All of this is written about much more colorfully in that Martin Gurri book I recommended, btw.)

Our govt, our leaders, almost all of our institutions suffer from this tendency to lock in to methods, policies, aims, etc. we talk too much about them, oversell them, and become wedded to seeing them succeed. Our institutions outside tech suffer from an astonishing lack of nimbleness.

If we’d talked less, argued with conspiracy theorists less, and just pushed forward policies, we’d have had room room to change course as we learned more. It would have vaccinated us a bit against tribalism.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I'm sorry, but who wasn't doing that?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

You say that the Trump Administration screwed up the pandemic response with a vicious whirlpool of dumbness. OK. No argument here. If we could elect a new Republican Party not attracted by or beholden to Trump, maybe that would help.

Meanwhile, you are not talking about the state and local adoption of specific rules about things like restaurant closures and mask wearing, rules and decisions which might (or might not) follow CDC guidance but being made at a lower level. Here in California, that means Gavin Newsome at the state level, and the Santa Clara County Health Department for me (mostly).

You object to what they've done because you are tired of wearing a mask and you want things to go back to normal. Is that fair?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

But her emails.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

A day or two ago, you were defending the restaurant owner who went on TV and complained that the problem was the hospitals weren't stocking up on nurses and beds and ventilators.

EVERYTHING is polluted with politics and PR, but I trust the county's health officer to get the balance right in a pandemic more than I trust the guy who want to keep his sushi place open.

Where is Jim Baker when you need him?
 

By the by, you do an incredibly fantastic job of expressing the mainstream media's attitude towards Republican craziness -- it's the eternal hope for a responsible Republican who will manage the crazies, and the constant denial that the crazies are the party now.

Oh by the way
 

The best thing I ever did was to get a separate cell phone for work, with office number and e-mail by itself. When that shit gets turned off the day is over.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Haha! Cuter! I’m talking about pre-vaccines. When the loons were saying things like—well like I said, saying things like there would only 2-3,000 deaths in the U.S. total and it would be like a mild flu. There was no choice but to engage these loons because they already had a huge platform, and in fact were often just repeating “information” they heard on a major U.S. news network. This bizarre and widespread denial, even if it was motivated just because the loon loved talking about hysterical liberals with their hair on fire (over and over and over), could not be ignored because it was hindering the rest of us from preparing for the pandemic the actual epidemiologists warned was coming.

Re: Where is Jim Baker when you need him?
 

That's not going to happen. The tango analogy holds. As long as we have progressives demanding things that a majority of the country does not want, we will have crazies on the right reacting in opposition. Which came first? I don't know, and that's immaterial. (I'm of the opinion both extremes have been there all along, like viruses, waiting for the nation's immune system to weaken enough to allow them to emerge.)

But that doesn't mean the country won't normalize. The center is bigger than the poles -- many multiples of the extreme right and extreme left combined. YMMV, but there's a definite sentiment among the GOP in these parts that the age of Trump needs to be put in the rear view mirror. Far in the rear view mirror.

The problem is, Trump and the crazies occupy the media and social media spaces. So they give the false impression they're a powerful majority. It's a mirror of the extreme progressives on the left. Again, YMMV, but most Democrats I know (meaning most people I know) are not progressives. They want a centrist, neoliberal Democratic Party. That's why the moderate Rs and moderate Ds got together and voted for Joe!

Twitter isn't reality. AOC is not queen of the Democratic Party. The social justice nuts are not powerful. They're basement dwelling losers with laptops. The Trump fanatics are not the GOP. They're an angry slice of dead enders with no policy prescriptions. They just want to own the libs.

I say let them own somebody. But not the libs. Leave the libs alone. The libs are moderates. The libs believe in free speech, tolerance, and sanity.

I advocate doing as Leary once suggested: Tuning in, turning on, and dropping out...

...Of social media. And regular media.

Ignore these warring factions. Let Trump nation "pwn" the Progressives. Let them fight to their hearts content on Twitter all day, every day. Let them scream at each other about who can use which bathroom, CRT, and whatever other wedge issue they wish to use as a battlefield. And while they do so, let the sane, sober people in both parties - the adults in the room - run things.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

No. I have no objection to wearing masks. I'm not kidding when I say I actually like them.

And no -- I don't want things to return to normal. Covid has been a home run in terms of time management, productivity, and economic gain. I've always positioned myself strangely, to capitalize on a sea change. I thought 2008 would be it. It wasn't. But Covid has delivered... and then some.

I'll happily wear a mask, all day, every day.

My objection is general. I don't like the stupid, the performative, or the divisive. If I enter a building and they only require me to wear a mask on the first floor, that's just stupid. Make me wear them on all floors or don't make me wear one. But don't be stupid. Stupid policies normalize stupidity among the credulous compelled to follow them. We can't afford more stupid in this country.

These policies also allow for performative behaviors that we need to eradicate from society. I never wore a mask outside - ever - because, well, unless you're on a crowded street (and there were few of those at the height of covid), that was just stupid. And yet I'd be tsk tsk'ed by some for not being vigilant. Sorry. If you're biking or jogging with a mask on, you're either not terribly literate regarding airborne pathogens, paranoid, or performing. If you're wearing a mask in your car while alone, you need to see a fucking therapist.

The desire to demonstrate that one "followed the science" became a way to telecast one's party, self-perceived status, etc. Vigilance displays. "I'm more careful than you! I'm the bestest person. Gold star for me."

This makes people both annoying and stupid. As annoying and stupid as your cousin in Nebraska who's still refusing the vaccine because four people in Denmark got myocarditis from it (he's "Doing his research with the Google").

This takes me to the last problem I have with dumb policies. They divide. The knuckle draggers decided to give the "libtards" the finger by refusing both vaccines and masks. This of course made an already awful situation worse. But one has to ask, why would people divide so severely that a sector of society would put its health at risk to demonstrate bona fides within a fringe political tribe? I don't know the answer. Low IQ is certainly part of it. Lack of scientific literacy is part of it. Maybe some of it is misinformation. But I think that explanation is overblown.

So I come back to my initial thesis. The cause of idiotic behavior at the political poles is in great part the actions of the opposing poles. The performative on one side fuel the performative on the other.

It's true hatred. And it can only be short circuited by smart, knowledgeable people in the middle ignoring such behavior. No attention for the performative. Not even mockery. You want to tell me why you don't need a mask or vaccine? Fuck off. You want to behave like a paranoid loon, all but wearing a hazmat suit, to show me how virtuous you are? Fuck off.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I did not defend his specific statement. I took issue with your reflexively calling him selfish w/o considering he was facing a horrible crisis. I think his criticism of the hospitals was incredibly insensitive and dumb.

I agree with your second point. The sushi guy was wrong. But he was wrong in a moment when he was facing loss of everything (assuming it was pre-PPP). I won't just call him a selfish person. I may give him the benefit of being scared and not thinking straight.

You lived through those early weeks. That was some scary shit. It's not every day one drains all the credit lines to survive through what looked like a financial doomsday. That's a very creepy thing to find oneself doing. Surreal.

Re: Where is Jim Baker when you need him?
 

Well, that's one way to look at history I guess. Not one that will stand up well to time, though.

Yes, there will always be conflict between those who want positive change and those who fear change. The two are not morally equivalent. Nor is standing in the middle pretending they are.

The center moves. The goal of activists is to move it. This is how change happens.

You should get out more.

You know that didn't happen in any significant numbers, right?

Wish you were around to say that about MLK.

Re: Where is Jim Baker when you need him?
 

You are just, totally, fundamentally wrong. The conservatives are reacting to the mainstream, not to the center. They will pretend that progressives have taken over the center, but that is propaganda.

And pretending that there are "sober people" in the GOP who "run things" is batshit crazy at this point, after a post in which you -- you!!! -- were complaining that the White House let the President f*ck up public health messaging. Stop fooling yourself.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Hard to square this with the things you were saying a few days ago, but whatever.