Recap: September 16, 2021

 

Thursday began in the usual fashion.

With me walking into the kitchen in the dark, barefoot, and stepping into ... liquid? 

What the hell?

It's pouring rain outside and has been for weeks. Is the roof leaking? Are we sinking? Women and beagles first! Get to the boats, Rose! 

Turn on the light, ah it's a coffee machine malfunction and there's a half a gallon of this morning's brew dripping off the counters onto the floor. So, I got to clean that up before I had coffee. On the other hand, the dogs thought me crawling around on my hands and knees, cursing, and mopping up the mess with paper towels was hilarious.

I put them out in the rain. Not so funny now, is it, assholes. 

They don't care. They like the rain and ran around gleefully peeing on things as is their wont.

So, that's my morning. We're all fine here. How are you? 

Let's start with some feedback on yesterday's post: 

I'm thinking somebody maybe did little too much LDS back in the 60s.

It's always fascinating (get it?! Fascinating. Huh? Huh? Raises one eyebrow) to me what will set people off. I made a fairly innocuous generalization yesterday about how conservatives and liberals have more or less swapped roles over the years...

...and a bunch of people who claim pot makes you mellow got all kinds of soggy and hard to light about it. 

DMs this morning are like the Klingon/Federation Neutral Zone.

Look here, my comments weren't "definitions." 

They were generalizations that were supposed to be exaggerated. That's often how humor works. And humorous hyperbole used to illustrate and convey an idea is a common writing technique.

Yeah, nothing gets by you. Except maybe all the clues. 

Literally nothing I said yesterday was aimed at you personally. Any of you. 

Unless, of course, you want it to be. 

Eventually I got coffee. But things did not improve...

Lot of people mad today.

Fox News this morning madder than hell about California. 

Specifically that anyone should be happy about the vote in California, such as the majority of people who live in California and voted the way they wanted to. Like, you know, democracy and such.

I mean, how dare people be happy about their win? 

MAGAs would never do that. No, Sir!

Or post about it on social media. Endlessly. 

Or hold rallies to cheer their victory. Or dedicate entire news shows to it. Or listen to their politicians crow about it. Over and over. 

Never. 

They are so much better than us. Less emotional. Reserved. 

Stoic even.

Meanwhile...

Here in Florida, Republicans are suing in federal court to halt mask, social distancing, and vaccine mandates. Basically Florida Republicans oppose any measure that would halt or mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in any fashion, and nowhere is this stance more hardline and outspoken than in Tampa -- well, I mean outside of the governor's office in Tallahassee. 

Today, however, the head of the Hillsborough Country Republican Executive Committee informed the FEC that they would likely be late in filing their paperwork -- which as a Political Action Committee they are required to do on a monthly basis. 

They will be late in filing the paperwork because the committee member responsible for doing so is unavailable. 

The committee member is unavailable because he's dead. 

He died from acute irony.

And in true job security fashion as taught in all the finest American business schools, the dead guy was the only guy who knew how to do the thing and he didn't give anyone else access to the software or train anyone as his backup. It just don't get any more Republican than that.  And that guy, the linchpin, the critical guy in the process, that guy wouldn't wear a mask or get vaccinated or stay away from public places because, goddammit, you're not tellin' me what to do! 

But then, these guys are perfectly willing to sacrifice their own kids (and yours too), so I guess it's not any great stretch to find them leaving their entire organization in the lurch with their stubborn selfish stupidity. 

I see these guys and they idolize this ridiculous fake version of history and this weirdly twisted version of freedom, like Mel Gibson, an American playing a Scotsman, dressed in a kilt that the Scots wouldn't wear for another five centuries, face painted in woad that the highlanders hadn't worn in a thousand years, fighting a famous battle on a bridge with no bridge, having sex with a woman he probably never actually met, seeking revenge against tyranny what killed his father who was actually still alive and totally not dead, shouting Freeeeeeeeeedom! And somehow missing the fact that Braveheart's insurrection was an abject failure (warning, possible metaphor) and the guy ended up being convicted of treason (ominous foreshadowing music here) and for murdering civilians "sparing neither age nor sex, monk nor nun" and then was dragged naked through the streets of London behind horses, hanged, cut down before he could fully strangle, castrated and disemboweled alive, beheaded, and finally cut into pieces and had his head dipped in tar and placed on a pike over London Bridge. (I didn't say it was a great metaphor, but maybe we could play that part for those currently in jail awaiting trial for the January 6th insurrection just, you know, for fun).

Of course, it's not just America. 

Hai Shaulian, a prominent Israeli anti-vaxxer died Monday. From COVID. 

His final Facebook message Saturday explained to his readers how he couldn't breathe and that his condition was "extremely critical." 

He said he was sure he'd recover "with God's help." 

He was right on first two accounts, wrong about the last one. 

Shaulian repeatedly called on his followers not to get vaccinated and said of his antivax stance, "It has nothing to do with the coronavirus. It has nothing to do with vaccines. It has to do with coercion" and "There is no epidemic. The vaccine is unnecessary and dangerous."

Turns out, it had everything to do with the virus and vaccines are pretty damn necessary.

Being smothered to death in your own snot is a hell of way to find out your god thinks you're an idiot, isn't it? 

I don't know. Maybe it's just me. 

As I've previously noted: maybe it makes me a bad person but I've just run out of any sympathy for these people. Everyday I read about yet another "prominent antivaxxer who died of COVID" and I smile. I shrug and say to myself, "welp." Look, it's bad enough they're killing themselves, but their boneheaded malicious libertarianism is putting us all at risk. 

This pandemic would be over if it wasn't for these goddamn selfish assholes.

It's not the vaccines that are dangerous, it's the guy who refuses to get vaccinated. 

This isn't freedom, it's deliberate stupidity.

Meanwhile...

Over at Fox News, the people who think they're qualified to count all the ballots and audit all the elections demonstrate their facility with basic math

Joe Biden kicking some ass here, I mean did Trump ever put in 101% on his best day? 

But I digress. 

Meanwhile...

And we circle back 'round to California.

I suppose this needs a bit of introduction. 

A few days ago, the governor of South Carolina tweeted this: 

A nightmare! 

Naturally, I said something about this on my various social media feeds. Because that's what I do.

Really? A nightmare? Like: Oh my god, America is a nightmarish dark radioactive wasteland of deprivation and devastation were capitalists are hunted in the streets like starving animals by radical gay socialist mobs waving torches made from burning copies of the Constitution and George Washington's powdered wig. A nightmare! It's a madhouse! 

I might have been somewhat sarcastic. 

And invoking Charlton Heston was probably uncalled for. 

There was more. More sarcastic remarks about saving poor endangered capitalism and such like that. You get the gist. 

Various readers weighed in and eventually the conversation worked its way around to California, as any discussion of the state of America that begins with "A nightmare!" inevitably must. 

"Ca has the highest welfare takers highest poverty rate highest taxes highest homeless population. Failed state propped up by high tech"

Of course, the account that posted that particular observation is very likely a troll, software and not even an actual meaty human being. But the sentiment, that's a common meme, a common idea, pushed by Republicans (some of which are actually from California) and Russian bots alike -- and thus eventually by my MAGA hat wearing neighbors in a display of the only form of trickle down economics that actually works. 

California is a hellhole of homelessness and taxation, a dark radioactive wasteland of deprivation and ... well, yeah. You know. You've heard this. Right?

But let's take a closer look, shall we? 

If you actually care to pull the actual numbers, it turns out that California's welfare recipient statistics are basically the same as Texas, Florida, and New York. 

Liberal states, conservatives states, all have about the same numbers of welfare recipients, those using SNAP benefits, homelessness as a percentage of their large populations, etc. 

That is: states with larger populations tend to have a larger number of people. 

Yeah, I know, but try to keep up. 

And more people equals more homelessness, more people who need assistance, more crime, and more of, well, pretty much everything. This isn't a conspiracy. It isn't any pithy observation. It's just statistics. 

If you want to talk real numbers that actually matter, like the ratio of people on welfare and SNAP to people who don't need government assistance then take a look at the poor conservative South where the per capita rate of government assistance is much higher than California on its worst day. And while you're at it, look into what states pay into the system. Because the amount states like California contribute is vastly higher than, oh, say Alabama. Something I note California's critics rarely, if ever, mention.

Saying California has more homeless people is like saying California has more electoral votes. 

No shit, Einstein, you don't say? 

California has the largest population of any state. Larger than the next most populous state, Texas, by 10 million. California also has the most benign climate (in every sense of the word: weather wise, politically, and economically) of any state. And that combination attracts the highest number of migrants (both domestic and foreign, including both legal and undocumented foreign immigrants) of any state. As such, California's large homeless population isn't so much a condemnation of its policies (which are essentially the same as any other state) as it is the predictable end result of several intersecting curves. 

Homelessness, poverty, the need for assistance is a national problem that affects every state. 

It's easy to point to California's homeless population as some political statement, because you see California on the news everyday. 

No one broadcasts pictures of homeless camps in Iowa. Or Alabama. Or here in the Florida Panhandle, but they're there and they are the same exact problem here as in California, but you won't hear my asshole congressman Matt Gaetz complaining about them and demanding Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi do something. 

Taxes pay for civilization. 

More taxes, more civilization (yes, yes, up to a point). 

California's large diverse population (most especially including its immigrant population) and its vast modern infrastructure and climate are what attract those high tech industries. 

High tech industries with high paying jobs in cutting edge fields attract more high tech industry, more immigrants, more population, more infrastructure, more innovation, and more supporting satellite jobs like food, housing, transportation, energy, communications, education, entertainment, emergency services, government, etc. 

AND also the associated problems of any large population -- such as taxation and homelessness to name just two. 

California is the exact opposite of failed. 

It's a major economy that literally drives technology trends, innovation, culture, entertainment, education, and so on, worldwide. 

Not to mention California feeds about half our country and several others. 

The very problems outlined here, "Ca has the highest welfare takers highest poverty rate highest taxes highest homeless population. Failed state propped up by high tech" are literally proof of this. 

Again, you don't see this same guy shouting "Alabama has the highest percentages of farm subsidy takers highest rural poverty rates highest teen pregnancy rates highest COVID infection rate. Failed state propped up by NASA jobs in Huntsville..." 

But you could. 

You could say that, and it would be just as dumb as shouting about California. 

High tech doesn't "prop up" California any more than agriculture does. Those industries, and many more, are part and parcel of the state. They are what help to define it. Just as cotton and peanuts do here in this part of the South or fishing, mining, and oil do in Alaska or cattle does in Texas.

The problems this meme points to are the problems of any large population.  Because those are the problems created by success. 

You don't hear about poverty and homelessness in Iowa, trolls and pundits don't point to it as some sort of gotcha, because the population -- and thus the resulting culture -- isn't large enough to drive national and global trends. And so no one gives a fuck about Iowa. But the state's problems are the same as anywhere else in America. Drugs. Homelessness. Poverty. Taxation. Infrastructure. Etc. 

Civilization is complicated and messy and fraught with unexpected outcomes. 

Go ahead and point to a "successful" state without the problems of taxation and homelessness and poverty around the edges of that success. 

Go on. Where is it? 

You certainly can't here the US. Not in Texas. Not in Florida. Not in New York. Not in Iowa. Not in Alabama. Not in any state. 

You can in other nations, however. 

But the solutions to those problems in those peaceful nations are the very systems conservatives today here in America decry as "socialism" and "tyranny." 

"Ca has the highest welfare takers highest poverty rate highest taxes highest homeless population. Failed state propped up by high tech"

You can squint your eyes and maybe agree that everything this post says is correct. From a certain point of view. 

But it's not the pithy gotcha the people pushing it think it is. 

Instead it's a demonstration of a blustering ignorance and a shallow incurious mentality incapable of comprehending even the most basic complexities of modern civilization.

Bluster isn't intellect. 

Soundbites aren't wisdom. 

Ignorance isn't a virtue and rage isn't patriotism no matter how self-righteous. 

You want to do something about poverty? Homelessness? Taxation? Do you really?

You want a better nation? Do you? 

Be a better citizen. 

Here's a picture of a hummingbird making a highspeed approach with his eyes closed. 

See you tomorrow.