CSotD: The Search for Meaning

Oh, thank you thank you thank you, Deb Milbrath, for commenting on this ridiculous GOP talking point, which is based on misreading a story in a sleazy British tabloid, in which the writer conflates an almost entirely unrelated study with the Green New Deal with Biden’s acceptance of some GND concepts.

I was hoping for the chance to ridicule it.

Biden hasn’t actually said what parts of the GND he plans to put into play, but here’s the point:

It’s all a load of crap.

Which, of course, hasn’t stopped Republicans from trumpeting it, and it’s impossible to know whether they’re deliberately lying or absurdly gullible, though I am willing to bet we’ll soon see loyal, obedient cartoons about Biden outlawing hamburgers.

The whole thing may enter the pantheon of Political Fairy Tales, along with “Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet,” “Dan Quayle can’t spell ‘potato’,” and “John Kerry lied about his war record.”

Not to mention “Bob Dole is too old to be president,” a variant of which was trotted out for Biden, who is only four years older than the stumbling magumbafarble he was running against.

BTW, Bob Dole is 97 and still chugging along.

 

On the other hand, “George W. Bush was busted for coke” rumors never caught on, and it may be that the GOP will say enough stupid things to upend their own lie.

F’rinstance, as Milbrath notes, Fox News host and former Trump advisor Larry Kudlow announcing that Biden’s planned reforms will force us to drink “plant-based beer.”

 

And L’il Donny claimed that, by golly, he ate four pounds of red meat just yesterday, which is possible, I suppose, but hardly flattering.

Given the gullibility of the remaining members of the GOP, it may be that there is no lie so ridiculous that they won’t embrace it. After all, half of them believe the Capitol riots were staged by left-wingers, while 60 percent still think the election was stolen.

So who knows how many will believe that Biden’s cunning plan will spell an end to sausage beer?

 

On a semi-related note, Joy of Tech sent me scrambling to the Googles this morning, because I’m old enough that “Baader Meinhof” has one specific meaning, which is of a dangerously violent fringe group that took much of the joy out of watching the uprisings among European students in the late Sixties.

But, yeah, now it means the way you start noticing something after you’ve heard of it.

I’d be more comfortable if they called it the “Pregnant Lady Phenomenon,” because, as soon as you’re pregnant, you see them everywhere, and I like pregnant ladies a lot more than I like murderous terrorists.

But they don’t, probably because the phenomenon was named by someone who’d never heard of the Baader-Meinhof Gang and even then didn’t process its distressing evil.

 

It put me in such a foul mood that I couldn’t get a chuckle out of this Sheldon, because a wild fire, of course, is one that’s out of control, as opposed to the one in your fireplace or your fire pit or a controlled burn of brush on your property.

Which latter term brings up another definition I refuse to accept, which is “Indian time.” It’s used, even among American Indians, to mean “mañana,” in that same self-defeating sense of never getting anything done.

However, I’d earlier heard it in another way, which is that, among Indians, a conversation not only takes as long as it takes, but drags you into a place where time doesn’t register.

One day while returning from some assignment, I spotted smoke and, like any good reporter, followed it. Turned out to be nothing much: A controlled burn had gotten out of hand and torched a fair amount of grass and brush, but they’d put it out and so it didn’t qualify as a “wild fire” for very long.

But the landowner loaded me into his pickup and we drove to the top of a hill so I could see how much had burned, and then he told me about how, when he was an impoverished little Mohawk kid, he used to come to this farmhouse to visit and the folks there would make hot chocolate for him, and now he owned a roofing company and so after they died, he’d bought the house and was fixing it up.

I was totally into the story, told in a deliberate, detailed, fascinating manner, until I realized I really had to go to the bathroom and then realized we’d been sitting there in his truck for well over an hour.

Which has wider significance in that, in the 17th Century, Dutch traders learned to deal with Indian time in trading with the Iroquois, and I’m not sure how many other Europeans ever had the patience to simply let things unfold.

I’ve been sucked into similar conversations a few other times and not one of them was ever a waste of time.

Efficiency is way overrated.

 

A point Clyde keeps trying to make to Barney in Barney & Clyde (WPWG), and which continually goes over Barney’s head.

Of course, if Barney ever saw things Clyde’s way, the strip would end, but, more important — going back to fairy tales that people believe — is that millions of people cling to the illusion in Solid Gold Cadillac that, if an honest stock clerk like Judy Holliday were to string together the proxies of small investors, she could take over the company and Good would triumph.

In the real world, few companies let more than 49% of stock out of their hands, and what is out there is mostly owned by hedge funds, not small investors.

Though if one of those funds gets hold of about 30%, they can apply enough pressure that they will be permitted to kill the goose and retrieve all the gold they are sure must be inside it.

All of which would be terribly depressing, except that we are a Christian nation dedicated to Christian principles.

 

As outlined in this Man Overboard strip.

I headlined today’s entry “The Search for Meaning.”

You want to find it, you’d better look in some unlikely places: