CSotD: Weekend Wrap-up

The answer is a lot easier than Walt Handelsman expected it to be.

As noted here yesterday, the stock market is largely driven by a combination of rumors and panic, as Kal Kallaugher noted in the wake of the October 1987 crash:

The good news is that Wall Street followed its worst day in two years with its best day in two years and the bad news is we’ll do it all over again in two years, because we always have.

Elsewhere in the world of feckless billionaires, howzabout we have a

Juxtaposition of Elon Musk

Ben Jennings

Matt Golding

Nick Newman

Musk is taking a lot of heat for the way in which Xitter has allowed hatemongering and racist bile to spread, resulting in riots in England, which he then made worse by tweeting “Civil war is inevitable.”

I can’t tell whether Newman is making fun of Musk or of those attacking him, but I’ll balance that by pointing out that Golding is in Australia, far enough from Britain that his observation doesn’t seem very self-serving.

There are always people who admire power and never wonder, as Glinda asked Dorothy, “Are you a good witch or are you a bad witch?”

But it’s hard to tell how that shakes out on Xitter, because, first of all, his critics get blocked or have their postings dropped to invisibility on the platform, and, second, because anything Musk or his comical sidekick, Linda, post gets a flood of applause and you can’t tell how many are real groupies and how many are bots unless you care enough to look into it and I certainly don’t.

Besides, he’s such a blockhead that he’s easy pickings for cartoonists like Clay Jones.

Still, he has a combination of arrogance and money that gives him a substantial amount of power, particularly here, where our defense of Free Speech gives him considerably more latitude than he gets overseas.

Though it’s not all Musk. I agree with Jeffrey Koterba that we really face a crisis when young people are being commercially exploited and socially corrupted by the garbage they see online, but so are the grown-ups, and between Russian troll factories and random lunatics, there’s plenty to be suspicious about online and plenty of people who don’t question it.

I was lucky to time my life such that I was raising kids when Nintendo and Sega were about as hi-tech as their lives got. With television the dominant medium in those days, it was easy enough to establish the Archie Bunker Rule, which was that nobody who would not be welcome through our front door was welcome through the TV, either.

I knew, of course, that they could pop on over to a friend’s house and watch all that demented stuff, but at least they’d be watching it knowing that their father didn’t approve.

Which brings us to a curious

Juxtaposition of the Day #2

The Boondocks — AMS (2000)

Candorville — KFS (2024)

So wait a minute: Does this mean that Riley grew up to be Lemont? Okay, no, but it is a curious reflection on how these issues persist over generations.

I think, however, that Lemont would be more concerned than Grandpa Freeman over this hard reality: You can shelter your kids as much as possible from all that toxic garbage, but when they walk out the door, they enter a world of kids who aren’t sheltered from any of it.

You’d better hope you’ve drilled your own values deep into their souls, because you can’t follow them around everywhere and forever. At least sane parents can’t.

And, of course, one of the most important values is to question. It can get pretty interesting.

Going back to Koterba’s cartoon, it’s a two-way street and you also have to worry about what easily-led kids with no set values become when they’re grown. I saw a comment on social media from a woman saying that Tim Walz helps make up for her father, who watches Fox and listens to hate-radio and is apparently lost to her.

If you haven’t seen The Brainwashing of My Dad, you should. It’s no fun at all, but the story is important, and not that unusual.

Ivan Ehlers gets a laugh for this set-up-and-spike, but it’s gallows humor, because for all the changes in polling and all the rising excitement over the new, improved Democratic ticket, it’s still awfully tight and we don’t yet know who will cheering and who will be weeping on November 6.

Kevin Necessary provides a one-panel wrap-up of Dear Leader’s 90-minute press conference.

It is being scoffed at on my social media because I’ve curated my feed to eliminate the kind of people who would have been inspired by last night’s extravaganza.

But those folks have no doubt curated their feeds as well, and are seeing only what agrees with their point of view.

It doesn’t help when major media plays bothsidesism, believing fairness requires this sort of coverage:

I’m not a big fan of Jeff Jarvis, but he’s nailed this one. The story quotes two young women who are fixated on Gaza/Israel to the point where I guess they won’t mind losing control of their own bodies or seeing migrants in concentration camps.

Two. That’s the sum of “some.”

As one online commenter noted, it’s like finding and interviewing people who don’t like ice cream. Possible, not credible.

The reporter then backs up her piece by citing the number of people who chose “uncommitted” in the Democratic Primary. When Biden was the proposed nominee.

Some people say that’s what passes for journalism these days.

Some people sitting at my desk this morning got a laugh out of Matt Wuerker (Politico)‘s cartoon.

Laughing at bullies is better than arguing with them. But we still have to fight back, for instance, against the swiftboating being aimed at Walz. The leader of those lying attacks on John Kerry is now a strategist for the Trump campaign.

He’s found a few malcontents to echo Vance’s accusation that Walz quit the National Guard after 24 years over fear of combat.

It worked 20 years ago, but that boat won’t float today.

Vote Vets isn’t buying it, and neither did FactCheck.

As for being a “man of the people,” I think Walz qualifies.