CSotD: There’s no such word as ‘gullible’

Signe Wilkinson scores with what I’m calling a “Naked Emperor Moment,” wherein someone says what others have had on their minds but didn’t dare bring up.

The perfect is the enemy of the good and, while I’m glad to see the DNCC has not pre-approved a candidate in advance this time, the nit-picking does suggest that anyone running for their nomination is going to be nibbled to death by ducks, stoned to death with popcorn and, however else you like to describe the process, cast aside.

Which would be fine in a world in which the appalling personal misbehavior, obvious incompetence, laziness and compulsive lying of the incumbent threatened Trump’s reelection. But, as Wilkinson’s cartoon suggests, it doesn’t.

Meanwhile, I still do not believe that a handful of pissed-off Sanders supporters swung the election against Clinton.

Aside from the question of how many they were, aside from how vocal they were, aside from whether “Bernie Bros” are an invention of Russian troll factories, you can’t logically complain about the Electoral College and also charge that disgruntled Sanders supporters handed the election to Trump, unless you mean the ones in those two or three key states.

Yet the Democrats and their supporters are obsessing over the potential of a Sanders candidacy, despite a field of interesting contenders, every one of whom no doubt committed some microaggression at some point which somebody will point out and social media will magnify and the media will run with.

I wouldn’t mind if everyone dogpiled on Sanders and Biden, if those old guys could then carry all the Democratic sins off into the desert like a pair of scapegoats and leave the field open for the young folks.

But we know it won’t be that simple or clean.

Instead, the Democrats are a party whose supporters feel superior to the “stupid people” who sit home watching Fox News, but — for all that they considers themselves hip and smart and aware — are already sharing Russian troll factory memes on Facebook and tearing each other apart over fairy tales and partisan fripperies.

If you think all stupid people wear red ball caps, you’re one of the ones who doesn’t.

And I could say “Smarten Up” but it would be like telling the dog to fold the laundry.

Rather, I would suggest that anyone who wants to win the next election find ways around the fact that most people are not going to be of much help.

 

For instance, it doesn’t help that so many people seem to be swallowing the idea that Barr’s four pages are canonical.

Stuart Carlson is right to accuse the Republicans of purposely ignoring the piles of evidence and accepting a summary by someone who declared his opposition to the report before he was hired to assess it.

But at least Republicans have a motive to pretend that all is well.

It’s hard to explain others who have also embraced Barr’s explanation of the report.

I’d still like to know how many kids would have put Tide Pods in their mouths if the media hadn’t made such a big deal out of the purported fad, and how many people really cared if Kirsten Gillibrand began to use a fork at a luncheon and, for that matter, if American troops were being supplied by PT boats past the Cambodian border in ’68 or whether Al Gore ever claimed to have invented the Internet.

But I’m willing to start with pointing out that we don’t know what’s in the Mueller Report and you’re a damned fool to pretend you do.

 

Meanwhile, this Matt Davies cartoon brings to mind that, while we were all obsessing over those other matters, the European Union voted to ban single-use plastics over the next two years and I didn’t see anything about it on social media.

There’s been a lot of giggling over straws and, as Davies notes, bitching over plastic bags, but not a lot of effort to bring the matter forward as a serious topic.

As with other things, the media did report the EU ban, but it didn’t get passed along. If a tree falls in a crowded city but nobody listens, does it make a noise?

There is pushback: I’ve seen talk about the environmental impact of manufacturing reusable canvas grocery bags, which reminds me of when we were told washing cloth diapers was worse than using disposables.

And I’m sure the plastics people would be happy to let people continue to think paper is made from Amazonian hardwood, rather than from fast-growing tree farms, recycled material and vegetable fiber.

But a couple of cities in the US cracking down on plastic bags doesn’t measure up to the entire European Union clamping down on single-use bags and straws and stir-sticks and plastic tableware and a raft of items that have become part of daily life.

I note, by the way, that the EU is not banning cigarette filters or wet wipes, but, rather, adding labels to ask people to dispose of them properly, and I’m hoping, if we ever catch up to them, that poop bags also get some kind of reasonable accommodation.

After all, back in the days of paper sacks, glass returnable milk bottles and cloth diapers, we didn’t scoop dog poop into anything but the gutter.

We could go back to those days, but both baby and dog poop are going to require some leniency.

 

Meanwhile, as if to put national gullibility to a final test, Florida Gov Rick Scott has been named to head the GOP Health Care Initiative.

Andy Marlette is not the only Floridian wondering how that happened, since their governor was at the head of a major health care fraud.

Though, hey, they elected him governor anyway.

Besides, as that above Politifact link indicates, Scott is no longer the record-holder. His mark has been surpassed.

So it’s not true that he oversaw the largest Medicare/Medicaid fraud in history.

But hold his beer.

And sing along: