ancianita
ancianita's JournalTrevor Noah on Perspective
Noah on conditioned ignorance, learning by reading, and the value of expanding our perspective boundaries by travel. Three years old yet more relevant from today's perspective.83 Million Will Likely Never See This Video Because They Can't
A few days ago, an ICU doctor, Dr. Remy, posted this to show the harshest COVID reality.I'd like to raise two other harsh realities -- ignorance, and no Internet.
People struggling to be functional don't have time to think about death, even though death is as real as reality gets. Pre-COVID, Austerity economic policy had Americans working two, three jobs just to pay rent; during COVID, 26 million people are now out of work.
My inclination has been to call non-maskers simple minded grasshoppers who call others fearful. Then I thought about how many of them would ever really see this message.
Those who scoff at mask wearers have likely never learned that fear is not a socially learned emotion.They likely never learned that fear is one of four genetically inherited emotions that ensure survival.
Why? 75% of Americans never took science past high school. Probably biology or psychology 101 would have given them more understanding of both the microbial world, and how humans learn.
Those they scoff at as living in fear, are adults living in rational caution. They don't know that.
Someone must have conditioned them to not want, value, or afford learning beyond high school.
But then, knowledge isn't free except on the Internet. But the Internet isn't free.
25% of America have no Internet -- that's 82,500,000 million people.
Either because they want it, but broadband companies won't go to all the places the post office goes; or because they can't afford the Internet.
https://www.statista.com/chart/21454/broadband-connection-in-america/
So this doctor's message will never reach them.
I've mocked this WH occupant and his enablers, and will probably keep on mocking the well off and well educated, but I'm learning that ignorance and no Internet might be the harsher realities everybody else have live with.
I'm going to reconsider why people end up in the hospital with COVID.
Because COVID truly has revealed cruelties inherent in our structures.
Cuomo Attacks Supreme Court, but Virus Ruling Is Warning to Governors
Source: NY Times
In a 5-4 decision, the court struck down an order by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo that had restricted the size of religious gatherings in certain areas of New York where infection rates were climbing. The governor had imposed 10- and 25-person capacity limits on churches and other houses of worship in those areas.
If unconstrained religious observance and public safety were sometimes at odds, as the governor and other public officials maintained, the court ruled that religious freedom should win out.
Mr. Cuomo accused the court of partisanship, suggesting the ruling reflected the influence of the three conservative justices who have been nominated by President Trump in the past four years.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. noted in a dissenting opinion that none of the governor’s most strict restrictions were currently in force. While the governor’s capacity limits on houses of worship might have violated the First Amendment, Justice Roberts wrote that it was not necessary for the court “to rule on that serious and difficult question at this time.”
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/26/nyregion/supreme-court-churches-religious-gatherings.html?auth=login-email&fbclid=IwAR29-thfBvDW-7l2NpwbrmP-dALVifYa1WHSYnSSTCyXlJYch_lqRVPLLII&login=email&smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur
Given the covid positivity/infection spikes across the 46 states, I'd rather err on the side of Governor Cuomo's science and numbers in the interests of "life, liberty, ... etc" over the 1st Amendment's so-called protections of believers' rights to deny science.
Thankful for medical frontline and essential workers, living and dead, who continue to help us live.
May we help them back so they know our thankfulness.Governor Cuomo Briefing November 24 2020
Day 269Start 7:00
Life brings perspective. The question is are we being smart now.
Everyone's talking about Thanksgiving because we have to be on high alert.
Even if we just go with the current increase because of Fall and covid fatigue, we will see a post-Thanksgiving spike.
The 37-day holiday season's social activity, even at the low end -- 20% positivity rate -- NY State goes up at least 10%-15% increase in positivity -- means hospital front line stress and more death.
Both political teams agree for the first time (post-election!) that we all need increased vigilance. The holidays are the hardest to be separate.
But hard is about being smart.
Being smart is about being thankful for all those who died to get us to through covid and to Thanksgiving Day.
Their sacrifices, so that we didn't have to, were the bravest in the face of danger.
Which makes this holiday more profound, meaningful and powerful than in the past because it's about the extended family who did the right thing to save our lives this entire year.
America's Thanksgiving is about our brothers and sisters. Rising above all differences. All connected.
"Breaking the law is not a political difference."
This very long New York Times article can inform our discussions about post-pardon trumpism. (small t trumpism) It's important and worth the read.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/magazine/trump-investigations-criminal-prosecutions.html
Even as I write this, Trump’s subversion of democratic norms continues. He still has not conceded, and Barr has overruled the head of the Justice Department’s Election Crimes department to approve investigations into “vote tabulation irregularities.” These legal maneuvers may be less about Trump trying to overturn the results of the election than they are about him trying to gain leverage to limit his liability when he leaves office. Even though Biden pledged during the campaign not to pardon him, Trump could still try to trade his concession for the promise of leniency. He could also try to pardon himself, though this has never been done before and may not hold up in court. (Another, probably more far-fetched scenario has Trump resigning so President Pence can pardon him.)
The nation may desire healing. But there is also the matter of justice, and there is no guarantee that what feels right now will look right through the longer lens of history. Ford was widely assailed for pardoning Nixon. But one of his most outspoken critics at the time, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, later honored Ford with a Profile in Courage award, explaining that he’d been moved to rethink his views after witnessing the sprawling and protracted investigation into President Clinton by the independent counsel Ken Starr. It may be time to rethink Ford’s decision once more; it’s hard not to wonder if a Trump presidency would have been possible if Nixon had been criminally prosecuted rather than pardoned.
In that sense, the problem that Trump poses for Biden may also present an opportunity, a chance to repair more than just the damage of the last four years. To begin with, this may require recognizing that when a president brazenly flouts the law, electoral defeat might not be enough of a punishment. “There’s a mind-set that we need to reset,” Stephen Vladeck, a constitutional law professor at the University of Texas, told me. “Breaking the law is not a political difference.” It might also require recognizing that to really move on from Trump, “healing” may have to mean something fundamentally different from what it has in the past — and that without accountability, it may in fact be impossible.
Build Back Better Has To Mean Permanence, Not Just Restoration
If the DOJ and 117th Congress don't pursue Trump,Trump will have been proven right when he said,
"I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay?"
He hasn't lost them, has he. In their America, Trump and the worst of Big Corp don't get jailed.
73 million voted for Trump's highest "American" values, loyalty and Rule of Men -- for a "campus" where the CEO punishes political 'enemies,' tears up international treaties, the law of the land.
Only once did he say he'd been "just joking." But the Republican leadership and voter referendum on his past doings prove they are not joking -- they want a leader who is above the law. So that they all may be with him.
22% of America voted for Trump, which is neither a marginal nor sizable minority, and have been enough to move the nation's governance to the twisted populism and fascism we only need experience once to learn the ugliness of.
24% of America (Democrats) have aggressively pressed to prove that no one can use the powers of office to be above it. They won, and now represent 78% of America that Trumpists don't.
It's fine to say that the NY AG or SDNY's case building and indictments are at least SOMETHING, and about one criminal.
BUT.
If the new AG fails to prosecute or support prosecuting 45's high crimes and misdemeanors, 80,000,000+ Americans who consider the new AG THEIR AG will not be okay with that. At all.
Because the real, larger issue of Rule of Law remains -- to build it back better as a bulwark of enforcement. 78% of the electorate are not joking, either.
The 78% know that belief in Rule of Men is not yet past.
73,000,000 Trumpists still see Rule of Law as Trump does -- weaponizable, dispensible so that men like he are the only platform they need -- while they draw Big Corp money into backing another fascist in 2024. The 78% know enough history to know that "let's move on" burying of American leaders' crimes got us here. Criminals learn, too. To only "go high," means that even building back better will be undone again.
Repair isn't just about restoration of unity or government.
Building back better is about leaving the destroyers no way to mobilize and return.
Building back better needs the General William Tecumsah Sherman version of 'hard war' unity --
making them know they have irrevocably lost, and they have no way back to destroy Rule of Law.
80,000,000 Americans expect THAT America -- the one that STAYS back better.
Because America of, by, and for The People, is not just an idea anymore.
Governor Cuomo Briefing November 22 2020
START 16:35The NY 3% infection rate standard is key to covid control.
Closures come from moving beyond that.
How is that measured? 3% is the average daily measure rate of infection (possibly based on test positivity numbers) across 7 days, which then stays continuous for 10 days after.
3% is the lowest tolerable infection rate that allows normal economic activity.
NY's covid control model should be studied by governors and their public health officials across the country.
How high will infection rates go?
Dec 1 - 10 will show the results of Thanksgiving activity.
Jan 2 - 15 will show the impact of all 37 days.
Then we'll know
if more restrictions are put on the economy,
if hospitals are stressed,
if medical front line workers deteriorate, and
if more people die.
Leaders: show your numbers to your community every single day to change how your community acts, because the vaccine will not arrive for six months, and the nation cannot handle the infection/death rate during that time.
BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME
Watching this tonight made me feel the way Ta-Nehisi Coates did in print years ago.Feeling black lives matters.
"They made us into a race. We made ourselves into a People."
Ta-Nehisi Coates on The Water Dancer, parenting, and his view of America.
One Defector-Proof Hangout for Trumpists Will Likely Be Parler
The Mercer Family might have abandoned Trump and Bannon, but they will maintain whatever fears, hates, conspiracies and twisted populism they paid for in Trump days, and smear Democrats as long as they get a return on their investments.
One being the two year-old Parler platform, where Trumpers, part but not all of the 22% of America (based on total Trump votes divided by total US population), are settling into a new hot box of mutual validation.
According to ABC News, the Parler app saw over 3.5 million active users last week and has nearly 8 million users total.
Hashtags that often trend on the platform include #freemarket, #voterfraud, and #Tucker (as in Carlson); the same ones that can often be found on President Trump's Twitter feed.
Posts — known on the platform as "Parleys" — from far-right pundits like Sean Hannity easily and frequently get over one million views. If a right-wing figure's tweet is flagged by Twitter, you can likely find it on Parler.
Parler was founded in 2018 by two computer programmers named John Matze and Jared Thomson, and is financially backed by Rebekah Mercer, whose father is Robert Mercer. Robert Mercer is the co-founder of Cambridge Analytica and a hedge fund manager. He's also a major funder of Breitbart. According to the Wall Street Journal, sources said Parler was "a Mercer family investment."
Recently, Rebekah Mercer emphasized that Parler is a platform for "free speech."
"John and I started Parler to provide a neutral platform for free speech, as our founders intended, and also to create a social media environment that would protect data privacy," Mercer said in a Parler post. "The ever-increasing tyranny and hubris of our tech overlords demands that someone lead the fight against data mining, and for the protection of free speech online. That someone is Parler, a beacon to all who value their liberty, free speech and personal privacy."
Parler has become a far-right echo chamber, giving people who are living in Trump's alternate reality a place to organize. And that's dangerous, as Ciarán O'Connor, an analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told VICE News.
"The risk in a mass migration to smaller, fringe platforms is that they do not enforce the same guidelines as older, more established platforms, meaning there is potential for not only echo chambers to form, but for extremist groups to make use of these spaces to organize offline activity or to promote more extreme material and beliefs than they might on larger platforms," O'Connor said.
More: https://theconversation.com/parler-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-free-speech-twitter-alternative-142268
The Mercers expand where the Koch Bros. haven't gone and it's still not cool.
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