CSotD: Getting It/Not Getting It
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How on earth, someone asked me yesterday, can the polls could be so close?
My response was to ask who answers polls anymore, and everyone there admitted that they don’t respond to polls on their cell phones, leaving the answers in the hands of god knows who.
Which makes Joel Pett’s imaginary pollster a hero, because she’s asking questions that might make polls meaningful.
I have long wished that polls would include context, like “Among voters who can’t find Ukraine on a map …”
As for opinion-making cartoonists, I continue to be frustrated with GoComics removing comments from their political cartoons, which allows foolishness and dishonesty to go unchallenged.
This lack of conversation poisons the dialogue as we approach a crucial election.
Dubious opinions have been enhanced and spread by the scandal Dave Whamond refers to in this cartoon, and which was discussed here yesterday: The Department of Justice has revealed a large bribe paid by Russian operatives to an American media company to encourage it to create pro-Trump, pro-Russian propaganda.
The people who were being paid $400,000 a month to produce this material have denied knowing where the money came from, which seems likely, though we’ll find out if the company itself knew. (Update: NPR is reporting that they did.)
And it may also be that they were producing material in which they believed, and podcaster Tim Pool is doing a very unconvincing job of suddenly discovering that he hates Russia and loves Ukraine after all.
Which his followers are taking as sarcasm, as they should.
But then Vladimir Putin joined in the humor, “endorsing” Kamala Harris and adding to the joke by going against Dear Leader’s major talking point: “She laughs so expressively and infectiously that it means that she is doing well.”
I gather Gary Varvel (Creators) didn’t get the joke. Sarcasm and humor are wasted on some people, and if this apparent reversal is taken seriously in MAGAt circles, there will be a lot of people being treated for whiplash.
However, as much fun as can be poked at the extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds, our inability to grasp reality has serious political implications as well as the ability to lead us into tragedy.
F’rinstance:
No, it’s not. “Unimaginable”? It’s not even surprising anymore.
It’s so imaginable, so unsurprising, that Mrs. Betty Bowers was able to cobble together the identical responses Ted Cruz has extruded every time somebody with a gun commits yet another mass murder:
UPDATE: This was apparently an attempt at satire that failed. It isn’t true and shouldn’t have been presented as such. I regret having been fooled.
(However, this quote is genuine)
Which bland, predictable response was echoed by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp:
Today is not the day for politics or policy, today is the day for an investigation, to mourn these precious Georgians that we have lost, to thank the first responders that went into the line of fire, the school staff, superintendent, the principal and others that are just trying to hold this community together—that’s what we need to be focusing on right now.
John Darkow suggests that parents are running out of patience with thoughts and prayers and opportunities to mourn.
Michael Ramirez (Creators) has Uncle Sam asking “Why?” but the answer is beginning to sound like “Well, why not?”
Columbine was 25 years ago. A 16-year-old killed in that shooting would be 41 today, but isn’t, and if thoughts and prayers had any effect at all, we wouldn’t still be sitting there with our faces in our hands asking “Why?”
People ask “Where was God?” and I don’t know, but for all the thoughts and prayers he’s been besieged with over the past 41 years, I know where he hasn’t been: In the halls of Congress.
As Nick Anderson (Tribune) points out, we’ve got plenty of Congress people who have been very concerned that children not learn about sex and gender or worry their pretty little heads over racism, sexism, slavery and imperialism, but don’t seem bothered over them getting blown away by gunfire.
Robert Ariail asks if schools can ban certain books and prohibit cell phones in classrooms, why they can’t keep out the guns?
It would be a much better question is schools really could keep kids from reading books their elders don’t like and if Robert Ariail would pay me $5 for every cell phone that turns up in a classroom where they are not permitted.
There’s a rule against bringing in a cell phone and there’s also a rule against killing your classmates. Which leads us to this
Juxtaposition of the Cell Phone Issue
There are more than 20,000 high schools in the United States, and while one school shooting is one too many, we aren’t having 20,000 school shootings a year. There were more than 19,999 high schools in which students didn’t need cell phones Wednesday.
And one in which they also didn’t.
It sounds hard-hearted, I’ll grant you, but what good are cell phones even where there is an active shooter?
In nearly every case, the event was over so quickly that calling someone on a cell phone wouldn’t make a difference.
The obvious exception is Uvalde, but a more dynamic response there would have been to burst into the classroom and shoot the gunman. Only the reprehensible lack of action made it possible to have conversations with the victims.
And beyond Uvalde, the phone calls we hear about are from kids who were scared but not shot. They’d be terrified and traumatized with or without phones.
Paul Fell drew this cartoon before the Georgia shootings, but he was right then and nothing that happened Wednesday has changed it: The best thing you can do for your kids is raise them to be self-sufficient. As the old phrase goes, you need to give them roots and wings.
Obviously, you hope they never get into a situation in which they face death, but the correct question is not whether they should have a cell phone in case someone starts slaughtering their classmates, but how can we lower the odds of it happening?
Ben Jennings comments on the futility of rules against murder, but we will always have mentally ill people, young and old.
The question is whether we will continue to let them get their hands on guns.
Deb Milbrath lays out the situation that contributed to the event, denouncing those who declare it sad but don’t address that situation.
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