CSotD: Armageddon caught up

Joy of Tech has me nailed fairly well.

Their site is currently polling visitors to ask how much their lives have changed and I ticked the box for “It’s different, but not that different.”

I haven’t done a videochat in a couple of years and never even bothered to mount Skype on my last several computers, while the idea of having groceries delivered is beyond my ken. I don’t even have pizzas or Chinese delivered.

That’s for rich folks or bastards who don’t tip enough, and I’m neither.

But I do like the idea that my office is wherever my laptop and cell phone are, and that letting people know when I leave town is merely a courtesy, not announcing an interruption in service.

So, yeah, like George, I take an inordinate amount of pride in how well all this quarantining and social distancing has gone for me so far.

I heard someone on NPR talking about how businesses wanted to get us all back to work, and it occurred to me that it was their own fault for centralizing industry and that we were better off back when the economy was local and flexible, back when people made things in their workshops sold them within a 20 mile radius.

Yes, I’m blaming the Transcontinental Railroad, and especially George Westinghouse and his goddam air brake.

And James Hargreaves and Edward Cartwright, who doomed innocent young girls to working in factories instead of staying home with their spinning wheels and their looms.

And their laptops and cell phones.

So anyway.

To turn that rant serious, Matthew 5:45 says that God “sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust,” but Charles Bowen responded

The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fella;
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust hath the just’s umbrella.

And that bit of doggerel helps argue Rob Rogers‘ point.

Nobody sat down and decided to have the coronavirus impact minorities more, and it’s not like sickle cell anemia that has a genetic aspect affecting one group more than another.

But the argument that “It’s not about race, it’s about poverty” fails to acknowledge that, while poor white folk also deserve our concern, poverty is not equally distributed and, when all this Covid-19 stuff is over, we’re still going to have that on our doorstep.

 

Marty Two-Bulls suggests that Trump’s concern for the economy is mostly concern for re-election, and he’s right, though I don’t think it’s about the gratitude of workers getting back on the assembly line.

The day Florida’s Trumpaholic governor declared WWE an essential industry so that Vince McMahon could resume live wrestling shows, Linda McMahon announced that the pro-Trump SuperPAC she controls would drop $18.5 million in political advertising.

I do wonder if, in a non-Citizens-United world, having a president show sincere, heartfelt compassion for those impacted by the crisis might not have a positive effect on his next campaign as well.

But we’re certainly not testing that theory.

 

As Ed Hall notes, Dear Leader has turned emergency relief payments into campaign literature, which is not illegal but is gob-smackingly tacky.

 

Darrin Bell also comments on Dear Leader’s grotesque egocentricity in asking to have his name put on the checks (and then pretending he didn’t know it was going to happen).

Someone in the comments recently chided me for referring to our president as “Dear Leader,” a name borrowed from North Korea’s bizarre, absolute dictator.

I think Mr. Trump is explaining the parallel quite well.

Hall focuses on the checks themselves, while Bell notes the amount of “free advertising” they represent in total.

 

It’s not a huge distinction, but, by raising the issue of free advertising, Bell also suggests the hours and hours of air time in which Trump is permitted to play his accordion for the masses without having to pay for the privilege.

Granted, some portions of the daily concert are devoted to information about the coronavirus.

But, after a time, that becomes something of a curate’s egg, because the scant twenty minutes that matter are overwhelmed by the ninety minutes of boasting and electioneering.

 

Here’s the question I’d like to see put to the test: What if Joe Biden began hosting nightly presentations of information on the crisis?

He, too, could bring along experts on epidemiology as well as governors and mayors and even captains of industry to talk about their plans and contributions.

And if his own contributions seemed a bit self-congratulatory, well, that wouldn’t be setting any new precedents.

I wonder how MSNBC and CNN and the rest of the gang would respond?

If they agreed to carry it, that would be fair.

If they decided not to, I’d like to hear their reasoning.

 

Because even Michael Ramirez, who is no screaming liberal, knows when we’re all being played.

But let’s keep the focus on Joe Biden.

 

Gary Varvel suggests that Obama held off on endorsing Biden until it was too late, though I know Varvel is not so young that this is the first presidential campaign he’s ever seen.

Yes, the primaries are all but over. Bernie is just looking for a little more muscle on the platform committee, and I hope he gets it, since a strong progressive influence there is going to matter.

In the meantime, however, we seem to have a loud contingent of Swift Boat Democrats For Truth trying to undercut Biden with smears and innuendo that it used to be the other party’s obligation to gather.

It’s hard to parse the mix of trollbots versus cuckoobirds or the group’s actual size, but it does suggest that having Obama, Sanders and Warren step forward with endorsements was a sensible move.

I’ve even heard that Tulsi Gabbard is so stirred by the importance of this upcoming election that she’s contemplating marking herself “present.”

 

In any case, it’s not a matter of seeking perfection. As Aislin suggests, it’s a matter of choosing four years of sanity and reconstruction.

At this point, four years of mellowness sounds pretty good.