CSotD: Where Ignorance is Bliss …
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Rick McKee provides a context for the quote, “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘Tis folly to be wise,” by Thomas Gray, who wrote a few better poems but not many better quotes.
It’s gobsmacking for one portion of the population to hear the utter nonsense, toxic lies and frightening promises of the past week, and then see another portion of the population embrace them as true, wise and worthy.
I once had a police detective caution me about a witness he was about to interview, “If he tells you it’s raining, you should look out the window.” That phrase dovetails nicely with a later expression about journalism, which is that if one source tells you it’s raining and another source tells you it’s sunny, your job is not to quote them both but to look out the window.
At the moment, however, the most relevant metaphor was coined by Dan “Tom Tomorrow” Perkins in a 2017 interview:
[It’s] like waking up and saying ‘I’d like a glass of water’ and then having someone spray you in the face with a firehose. One of the biggest challenges of the Trump presidency has been coming up with something satirical that’s crazier than the things that are actually going on.
The firehose metaphor caught on, and, in a recent Contrarian article, David Litt explains “How to Drink from a Firehose,” in terms of dealing with the flood of bogus policy proposals, unworkable executive orders and absurd counterfactual nonsense streaming out of the Oval Office.
As if in chorus with Litt, MSNBC host Chris Hayes has a new book out in which, among other things, he notes the dominance of attention over analysis, how the latest bright, shiny object captures us until the next bright, shiny object comes along, before we’ve had a chance to really examine the previous one.
Clay Bennett (CTFP) provides at least part of the answer: Focus. Demand an answer to the first statement rather than letting yourself be distracted by the next, and the one after that, and the one after that.
Trump’s opponents should not let his fans forget his promise to reduce grocery prices, centered on the price of eggs. It was a kitchen-table issue, one that voters could recognize and relate to. As Litt says in that Contrarian piece, it’s hard for people to relate to billion dollar spending on infrastructure, because, for one thing, they can’t grasp the concept of a billion dollars or a trillion dollars or the difference between them.
But eggs are right there on the grocery shelf and not in Joe Six-Pak’s refrigerator, because Joe can’t afford eight or nine dollars for a dozen eggs.
The central problem, however, Benjamin Slyngstad explains, is that we aren’t talking either economics or bird flu but loyalty to the team.
Did Josh Allen make that fourth-down plunge Sunday? It’s not about the line of gain or where the refs spotted the ball. It’s about whether you’re a Chiefs fan, in which case he was short, or a Bills fan, in which case he made it.
Our national divisions aren’t about logic and political theory but about team loyalty, although the refs didn’t just announce that one team says he made it while the other team says he didn’t. They halted for a replay, watched it, and then made a call.
It would help to see that happen beyond the sports section, but the result? Bills fans now insist that the refs were prejudiced in favor of the Chiefs.
A final sports metaphor: While the cameras are trained on (thus encouraging) the bare-chested nimrods and costumed screamers in the stands, 90% of the fans at the game look like regular people because they are regular people.
We’d do well to focus on the regular people.
Daniel Boris uses the price of eggs to mock Trump’s flood of absurd, unworkable executive orders.
And Pat Byrnes uses the kitchen-table issue to remind women of the bedroom issues, in a strategy of conflating two things that regular people can relate to.
Juxtaposition of the Day
The cost of groceries goes beyond the signature issue of eggs.
It’s not clear what Ramirez is trying to say in his cartoon. It snowed in Florida where they grow oranges, but, whether he’s talking about weather or about climate, it’s hardly the only reason we’re likely to see orange juice prices rise.
Anderson is more direct in his messaging, and Politico explains the expected price rises if we lose foreign-born workers, adding this “You gotta be kidding me” paragraph:
In an interview with The New York Times last year, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller claimed that the jobs held by deported workers would be filled by U.S. citizens, “who will now be offered higher wages with better benefits to fill these jobs.” Vice President JD Vance has made similar arguments.
These predictions boggle any experienced, practical mind, but, once again, MAGA fans will see what they want to see and Liberal fans will see what they want to see. Consult Slyngstad’s cartoon above if you want to predict the response when lettuce and tomato prices also rise.
It’s even harder to get through to the superfans when the evidence isn’t staring them in the face at the grocery store. Gary Varvel (Creators) echoes rightwing accusations that the California wildfires are the fault of progressive policies, without explaining how.
But Dear Leader blames the liberals for preventing the rivers of Northern California, the Pacific Northwest and Canada from flowing south (downhill) to Los Angeles.
He had to dispatch the military to open things up, or, to put it another way, a pumping station was down for repairs for three days but has been reopened and neither Trump nor the military had anything to do with it.
Is he a deliberate liar or just delusional? What difference would it make?
It could make a difference on another promise: Trump is vowing to replicate the Iron Dome of Israel (21,937 sq km) over the entire US (9,833,517 sq km).
I assume Elon’s committee will explain how to pay for this, but Garry Trudeau already predicted the outcome back in 1985:
However, that was President Reagan’s plan. Its fatal flaw?
President Reagan didn’t have an uncle who taught at MIT. So there!
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