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Celerity
Celerity's Journal
Celerity's Journal
November 24, 2020
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/right-wing-social-media-finalizes-its-divorce-reality/617177/
When Fox News called Arizona for Democrat Joe Biden shortly after the polls closed there on Election Night, right-wing social media erupted in fury. Fox is the most conservative of the nation’s major news outlets, and its aggressive Arizona call—which most other national outlets did not follow for days—left true believers on the right feeling betrayed. On the social-media app Parler, which has been gaining popularity among supporters of President Donald Trump, posts alleging electoral irregularities mixed with assorted hashtags decrying Fox itself: #BOYCOTTFOXNEWS, #DUMPFOXNEWS, #FAKEFOXNEWS, #FOXNEWSISDEAD, and #FOXNEWSSUCKS. Throughout Election Day, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube had been cracking down on a flurry of allegations about voter fraud in Arizona; the platforms quickly applied warning labels to new posts containing false or disputed information and reduced the distribution of groups spreading them. In response, pro-Trump influencers exhorted their followers to congregate on Parler, which tells users to “speak freely and express yourself openly, without fear of being ‘deplatformed’ for your views.”
In the hours following the Arizona call, a paranoid conspiracy theory spread rapidly on Parler and in other right-wing online forums: Voters in conservative counties had been given felt-tip pens that supposedly made vote-counting machines reject the ballots that they marked for Trump. The following night, Trump supporters protesting what came to be called #SharpieGate gathered outside the Maricopa County ballot-counting facility in Phoenix. In a development previously unthinkable to liberals who have long dismissed Fox as state media for the Trump administration, the Arizona protesters began chanting, “Fox News sucks!”
Trump’s clear loss in the presidential election has precipitated a deep rift in the right-wing information ecosystem, as media outlets, tech platforms, and individual commentators have been forced to choose between upholding reality and indulging those who insist that the president actually won. On November 7, Fox News was among the major networks that called the election for Biden, its news stories now refer to him as “president-elect,” and even the pro-Trump Fox commentator Tucker Carlson has challenged absurd claims being made by the president’s lawyers. The major social-media platforms—which for years boosted sensational propaganda and Trump-friendly conspiracy theories such as QAnon—have been remarkably active and admirably transparent in preventing the spread of misinformation about the 2020 election. As the president continues to rail against his loss on Twitter, the mainstream social platforms have continued to label wild claims and false allegations and reduce their spread; Facebook has taken down some of the more extreme communities that have sprung up among its users.
Yet reducing the supply of misinformation doesn’t eliminate the demand. Powerful online influencers and the right-wing demi-media—intensely partisan outlets, such as One America News and Newsmax, that amplify ideas that bubble up from internet message boards—have steadfastly reassured Trump’s supporters that he will be reelected, and that the conspiracies against him will be exposed. No doubt seeing an opportunity to pull viewers from a more established rival, One America News Network ran a segment attacking Fox’s Arizona call and declaring the network a “Democrat Party hack.” The president himself, while tweeting about how the election was being stolen, amplified accounts that touted OANN and Newsmax as places to find accurate reporting on the truth about his election victory. And on Parler, the conspiracy-mongering has grown only more frenzied as Trump makes state-by-state fraud allegations: In addition to concerns about Sharpies, the social network abounds with rumors of CIA supercomputers with secret programs to change votes, allegations of massive numbers of dead people voting, claims of backdated ballots, and assorted other speculations that users attempt to coalesce into a grand unified theory of election theft.
snip
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1328338630679597056
Right-Wing Social Media Finalizes Its Divorce From Reality
Fox News acknowledged Trump’s loss. Facebook and Twitter cracked down on election lies. But true believers can get their misinformation elsewhere.https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/right-wing-social-media-finalizes-its-divorce-reality/617177/
When Fox News called Arizona for Democrat Joe Biden shortly after the polls closed there on Election Night, right-wing social media erupted in fury. Fox is the most conservative of the nation’s major news outlets, and its aggressive Arizona call—which most other national outlets did not follow for days—left true believers on the right feeling betrayed. On the social-media app Parler, which has been gaining popularity among supporters of President Donald Trump, posts alleging electoral irregularities mixed with assorted hashtags decrying Fox itself: #BOYCOTTFOXNEWS, #DUMPFOXNEWS, #FAKEFOXNEWS, #FOXNEWSISDEAD, and #FOXNEWSSUCKS. Throughout Election Day, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube had been cracking down on a flurry of allegations about voter fraud in Arizona; the platforms quickly applied warning labels to new posts containing false or disputed information and reduced the distribution of groups spreading them. In response, pro-Trump influencers exhorted their followers to congregate on Parler, which tells users to “speak freely and express yourself openly, without fear of being ‘deplatformed’ for your views.”
In the hours following the Arizona call, a paranoid conspiracy theory spread rapidly on Parler and in other right-wing online forums: Voters in conservative counties had been given felt-tip pens that supposedly made vote-counting machines reject the ballots that they marked for Trump. The following night, Trump supporters protesting what came to be called #SharpieGate gathered outside the Maricopa County ballot-counting facility in Phoenix. In a development previously unthinkable to liberals who have long dismissed Fox as state media for the Trump administration, the Arizona protesters began chanting, “Fox News sucks!”
Trump’s clear loss in the presidential election has precipitated a deep rift in the right-wing information ecosystem, as media outlets, tech platforms, and individual commentators have been forced to choose between upholding reality and indulging those who insist that the president actually won. On November 7, Fox News was among the major networks that called the election for Biden, its news stories now refer to him as “president-elect,” and even the pro-Trump Fox commentator Tucker Carlson has challenged absurd claims being made by the president’s lawyers. The major social-media platforms—which for years boosted sensational propaganda and Trump-friendly conspiracy theories such as QAnon—have been remarkably active and admirably transparent in preventing the spread of misinformation about the 2020 election. As the president continues to rail against his loss on Twitter, the mainstream social platforms have continued to label wild claims and false allegations and reduce their spread; Facebook has taken down some of the more extreme communities that have sprung up among its users.
Yet reducing the supply of misinformation doesn’t eliminate the demand. Powerful online influencers and the right-wing demi-media—intensely partisan outlets, such as One America News and Newsmax, that amplify ideas that bubble up from internet message boards—have steadfastly reassured Trump’s supporters that he will be reelected, and that the conspiracies against him will be exposed. No doubt seeing an opportunity to pull viewers from a more established rival, One America News Network ran a segment attacking Fox’s Arizona call and declaring the network a “Democrat Party hack.” The president himself, while tweeting about how the election was being stolen, amplified accounts that touted OANN and Newsmax as places to find accurate reporting on the truth about his election victory. And on Parler, the conspiracy-mongering has grown only more frenzied as Trump makes state-by-state fraud allegations: In addition to concerns about Sharpies, the social network abounds with rumors of CIA supercomputers with secret programs to change votes, allegations of massive numbers of dead people voting, claims of backdated ballots, and assorted other speculations that users attempt to coalesce into a grand unified theory of election theft.
snip
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1328338630679597056
November 24, 2020
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/11/hillbilly-elegy/617189/
“Everyone in this world is one of three kinds,” declares Mamaw (played by Glenn Close), the wise grand-matriarch of Ron Howard’s new film, Hillbilly Elegy. “A good Terminator, a bad Terminator, and neutral.” I hate to correct Mamaw, who is trying to encourage her impressionable grandson, J. D. Vance (Gabriel Basso), to follow a righteous path by invoking Arnold Schwarzenegger’s beloved action franchise. But there is no such thing as a “neutral” Terminator; those cyborg heroes exist to either protect or destroy. I cannot imagine what a neutral Terminator would do, save sit in a chair and remain forever shiny and inactive.
Mamaw is entitled to her bad movie opinions, of course. But this monologue is the kind of speechifying that rings hollow throughout Hillbilly Elegy, an adaptation of Vance’s best-selling 2016 memoir that debuts on Netflix tomorrow. When it first arrived on bookshelves, Vance’s story was celebrated as a glimpse into an oft-ignored pocket of America: the white working class of Appalachia and the Rust Belt who swung to Donald Trump in the 2016 election. Hailed as an “anger translator” and cited by Oprah Winfrey and Hillary Clinton, Vance wrote about growing up poor, living with a heroin-addicted mother, and clawing his way into Yale Law School. The book arrived at a seemingly serendipitous moment, offering a bleak but candid view of communities gutted by drug abuse and poverty.
Hillbilly Elegy the memoir has since been dissected, challenged, and eviscerated. It largely focuses on the virtues of hard work and perseverance, launching vague broadsides against the American welfare state; the author often appears uninterested in interrogating deeper systemic issues. In adapting the book, Howard and the screenwriter Vanessa Taylor have gone even further, stripping the text of anything that might feel remotely controversial or pointed. Netflix’s Hillbilly Elegy is an Oscar-friendly narrative of personal triumph in the face of great hardship, a movie designed to end with an uplifting epigraph; it is also one of the worst movies of the year. Stuffed with A-list stars and tearful monologues, it is a neutral Terminator of a film—polished yet utterly inert.
Howard, a filmmaker whose work I often enjoy, has a practiced hand with true-story movies (he directed Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man, and Rush, among many others). But those stories usually have an incredible hook at their centre, whether it’s the space chaos of Apollo 13 or the bitter suffering that the Formula 1 driver Niki Lauda experienced while pursuing victory in Rush (the latter might be Howard’s most underrated accomplishment of the past two decades). But in writing Hillbilly Elegy, Vance was pitching his tale not as extraordinary, but as merely one of thousands—his journey is inspiring, but it’s part of a larger social fabric, made compelling by the author’s pronouncements of how an entire generation of Americans had been left behind.
snip
Hillbilly Elegy Is One of the Worst Movies of the Year
The new Netflix film is a think-piece trap—shiny on the outside, hollow on the inside.https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/11/hillbilly-elegy/617189/
“Everyone in this world is one of three kinds,” declares Mamaw (played by Glenn Close), the wise grand-matriarch of Ron Howard’s new film, Hillbilly Elegy. “A good Terminator, a bad Terminator, and neutral.” I hate to correct Mamaw, who is trying to encourage her impressionable grandson, J. D. Vance (Gabriel Basso), to follow a righteous path by invoking Arnold Schwarzenegger’s beloved action franchise. But there is no such thing as a “neutral” Terminator; those cyborg heroes exist to either protect or destroy. I cannot imagine what a neutral Terminator would do, save sit in a chair and remain forever shiny and inactive.
Mamaw is entitled to her bad movie opinions, of course. But this monologue is the kind of speechifying that rings hollow throughout Hillbilly Elegy, an adaptation of Vance’s best-selling 2016 memoir that debuts on Netflix tomorrow. When it first arrived on bookshelves, Vance’s story was celebrated as a glimpse into an oft-ignored pocket of America: the white working class of Appalachia and the Rust Belt who swung to Donald Trump in the 2016 election. Hailed as an “anger translator” and cited by Oprah Winfrey and Hillary Clinton, Vance wrote about growing up poor, living with a heroin-addicted mother, and clawing his way into Yale Law School. The book arrived at a seemingly serendipitous moment, offering a bleak but candid view of communities gutted by drug abuse and poverty.
Hillbilly Elegy the memoir has since been dissected, challenged, and eviscerated. It largely focuses on the virtues of hard work and perseverance, launching vague broadsides against the American welfare state; the author often appears uninterested in interrogating deeper systemic issues. In adapting the book, Howard and the screenwriter Vanessa Taylor have gone even further, stripping the text of anything that might feel remotely controversial or pointed. Netflix’s Hillbilly Elegy is an Oscar-friendly narrative of personal triumph in the face of great hardship, a movie designed to end with an uplifting epigraph; it is also one of the worst movies of the year. Stuffed with A-list stars and tearful monologues, it is a neutral Terminator of a film—polished yet utterly inert.
Howard, a filmmaker whose work I often enjoy, has a practiced hand with true-story movies (he directed Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man, and Rush, among many others). But those stories usually have an incredible hook at their centre, whether it’s the space chaos of Apollo 13 or the bitter suffering that the Formula 1 driver Niki Lauda experienced while pursuing victory in Rush (the latter might be Howard’s most underrated accomplishment of the past two decades). But in writing Hillbilly Elegy, Vance was pitching his tale not as extraordinary, but as merely one of thousands—his journey is inspiring, but it’s part of a larger social fabric, made compelling by the author’s pronouncements of how an entire generation of Americans had been left behind.
snip
November 21, 2020
Lord Bethell and Dido Harding, Parliament Square, 17 September 2020: ‘As the junior health minister Lord Bethell recently told the House of Lords, the government relied on “informal arrangements” to fulfil urgent needs for PPE.’ Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images
Under the cover of an emergency, the government awarded £18bn in coronavirus-related contracts during the first six months of the pandemic, most with no competitive tendering processes. Meanwhile contracts totalling £1.5bn have gone to companies with connections to the Conservative party. Call it a “chumocracy” or straightforward incompetence: it’s clear there’s been a woeful lack of transparency when it comes to how taxpayers’ money is spent.
The more information we have about these contracts, the more complicated it becomes to piece them all together. As the junior health minister Lord Bethell recently told the House of Lords, the government relied on “informal arrangements” to fulfil urgent needs for PPE. One such informal arrangement was a phone call in April between Lord Bethell and Meller Designs, a company owned by a prominent Conservative party donor who has given more than £63,000 to the party. The company, which usually sells home and fashion accessories to retailers such as Marks & Spencer, was later awarded PPE contracts worth £163m.
This is by no means the only Covid contract with a whiff of cronyism about it. But it can be difficult to grasp the significance of these contracts unless you step back to see the bigger picture. As a political scientist with a background in maths, my first instinct was to start building a dataset. After all, even the most complex networks can be distilled to a list of nodes and the connections between them. A few lines of code are all that’s needed to bring that dataset to life, like a hi-tech version of the evidence board in Line of Duty. The result is an interactive graph that, tongue-in-cheek, I’ve named My Little Crony.
With this visualisation, we can explore a whole web of connections at once. Take, for example, Lord Feldman, a wealthy donor and former chair of the Conservative party who was elevated to the House of Lords by his old Oxford chum, David Cameron. Feldman began serving as an unpaid adviser to the Department of Health in March, and in that capacity attended meetings with a firm called Oxford Nanopore, which has been awarded government contracts for Covid testing. Shortly after Feldman left his role in government, his PR firm, Tulchan Communications, had taken on Oxford Nanopore as a paying client.
snip
Benji303 & Lee S. - Fuck The Tories (Sterling Moss & Mark EG Fuck The 303 Remix)
The Tories' 'chumocracy' over Covid contracts is destroying public trust
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/21/tories-covid-contracts-public-trust-governmentLord Bethell and Dido Harding, Parliament Square, 17 September 2020: ‘As the junior health minister Lord Bethell recently told the House of Lords, the government relied on “informal arrangements” to fulfil urgent needs for PPE.’ Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images
Under the cover of an emergency, the government awarded £18bn in coronavirus-related contracts during the first six months of the pandemic, most with no competitive tendering processes. Meanwhile contracts totalling £1.5bn have gone to companies with connections to the Conservative party. Call it a “chumocracy” or straightforward incompetence: it’s clear there’s been a woeful lack of transparency when it comes to how taxpayers’ money is spent.
The more information we have about these contracts, the more complicated it becomes to piece them all together. As the junior health minister Lord Bethell recently told the House of Lords, the government relied on “informal arrangements” to fulfil urgent needs for PPE. One such informal arrangement was a phone call in April between Lord Bethell and Meller Designs, a company owned by a prominent Conservative party donor who has given more than £63,000 to the party. The company, which usually sells home and fashion accessories to retailers such as Marks & Spencer, was later awarded PPE contracts worth £163m.
This is by no means the only Covid contract with a whiff of cronyism about it. But it can be difficult to grasp the significance of these contracts unless you step back to see the bigger picture. As a political scientist with a background in maths, my first instinct was to start building a dataset. After all, even the most complex networks can be distilled to a list of nodes and the connections between them. A few lines of code are all that’s needed to bring that dataset to life, like a hi-tech version of the evidence board in Line of Duty. The result is an interactive graph that, tongue-in-cheek, I’ve named My Little Crony.
With this visualisation, we can explore a whole web of connections at once. Take, for example, Lord Feldman, a wealthy donor and former chair of the Conservative party who was elevated to the House of Lords by his old Oxford chum, David Cameron. Feldman began serving as an unpaid adviser to the Department of Health in March, and in that capacity attended meetings with a firm called Oxford Nanopore, which has been awarded government contracts for Covid testing. Shortly after Feldman left his role in government, his PR firm, Tulchan Communications, had taken on Oxford Nanopore as a paying client.
snip
Benji303 & Lee S. - Fuck The Tories (Sterling Moss & Mark EG Fuck The 303 Remix)
November 21, 2020
Hanford Republican David Valadao’s lead in the U.S. House District 21 race shrunk Friday, but a political analyst has called the race.
Valadao, the challenger for the district, leads Rep. TJ Cox, D-Fresno, by 1,618 votes after the latest update from Kern County. Cox trimmed 178 votes from Valadao’s lead on Friday.
With the number of votes left to count from Fresno, Kern, Kings, and Tulare counties dwindling, the lead was enough for Dave Wasserman, U.S. House editor for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report and NBC News contributor.
https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1329944113312133120
Republican David Valadao defeats TJ Cox for California seat in Congress, analyst says
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/politics-government/election/local-election/article247335059.htmlHanford Republican David Valadao’s lead in the U.S. House District 21 race shrunk Friday, but a political analyst has called the race.
Valadao, the challenger for the district, leads Rep. TJ Cox, D-Fresno, by 1,618 votes after the latest update from Kern County. Cox trimmed 178 votes from Valadao’s lead on Friday.
With the number of votes left to count from Fresno, Kern, Kings, and Tulare counties dwindling, the lead was enough for Dave Wasserman, U.S. House editor for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report and NBC News contributor.
https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1329944113312133120
November 21, 2020
Mike Garcia claims victory in tight 25th Congress race - and Christy Smith isn't happy about it
This is the old Katie Hill seat.
Democrat challenger Christy Smith trailed the incumbent by 446 votes as of Friday afternoon.
https://www.dailynews.com/2020/11/20/garcias-lead-is-up-a-tick-as-vote-count-in-tight-25th-congress-race-nears-finish-line/
Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Saugus, has declared victory in the roller-coaster race against Christy Smith in the race for the 25th Congressional District — a declaration that brought a strong rebuke from Smith that it was “dangerous to the democratic process” with votes still being counted. “After a long, tough fight, I am proud to earn the privilege of serving CA-25 for another two years,” said Garcia late Friday in a statement. “With only a few remaining ballots to be counted, victory is clear.” Garcia widened his lead as the race for the northern Los Angeles seat wound down to its final days, according to updated results posted Friday, Nov. 20, by the California Secretary of State’s Office.
https://twitter.com/MikeGarcia2020/status/1329968336730427392
Smith, a Democrat, trailed the incumbent by 446 votes as of Friday afternoon. Garcia extended his lead as the counting of ballots continues by the Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder’s office. His margin was 422 votes and Tuesday and 159 votes last Friday. Garcia was listed with 50.1% of the vote with Smith holding 49.9%. In the back-and-forth race, Smith has also led by as many 1,287 votes. But Smith had not conceded as of 6:30 p.m. Friday. Her Twitter feed offered a hint of her mindset with a 6:12 p.m. tweet that said only: “Patience is a virtue.”
https://twitter.com/ChristyforCA25/status/1329970943297417216
Not long after, it was clear Smith had no intention of going along with Garcia’s conclusion. “Mike Garcia’s declaration of victory is dangerous to our democratic process,” she said in a statement. “With a mere 400-vote margin and thousands of ballots outstanding, election officials are diligently working to process ballots and accurately count all outstanding votes to ensure our communities are heard, and this race remains too close to call.”
Garcia had thanked Smith, and tipped his hat to her for a “excellent and aggressive campaign,” which he said she ran with grace. He also thanked his supporters and pledged to work hard for all in the district. Vote by mail ballots were scheduled to be accepted through Friday, as long as they were postmarked Election Day. The next election update in the race will come on Tuesday. Additional updates are scheduled for next Friday, Nov. 27, and Monday, Nov. 30, if the vote count is not complete. The county will certify the election by Nov. 30. Results statewide should be certified by the California Secretary of State by Dec. 3.
snip
If we lose this and the even closer IA-2 (the Dem Rita Hart trails the Rethug Miller-Meeks by only 47 votes) we will end up with a 222 to 213 majority, 19 down from where we were after the 2018 Midterms, and only 5 defections away from losing votes (if the Rethugs all hang together)
The other 6 races left are not close enough to change, I have no idea why the 5 uncalled races in NY have not been called (we will lose all 5), some of the leads are very large, plus we will almost certainly lose CA-21 (TJ Cox is down too far), which will be another R flip, barring something extraordinary. We go hammered in the southern half of California, 4 flips and some others that were way too close.
November 21, 2020
These two girls working at McDonalds helped a handicapped man who was struggling with his meal.
https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1329573123914653699
November 20, 2020
The coronavirus pandemic is getting so bad, so quickly, across the United States that an influential academic modeling group has hiked its forecast of deaths considerably. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine now predicts 471,000 people will die from Covid-19 by March 1. That’s up from its forecast of 438,941 just a week ago.
The group said their forecast "assumes that 40 states would reimpose social distancing mandates as the daily death rate exceeds 8 per million." If states do not do this, the "death toll could reach 658,000 by March 1,” they added. “Hospital systems in most states will be under severe stress during December and January even in our reference scenario. Increasing mask use to 95% can save 65,000 lives by March 1," the institute said.
This increased death forecast is even taking into account that the US has improved the infection-fatality ratio with better treatments. “Our analysis suggests that after controlling for age, sex, comorbidities, and disease severity at admission, the hospital-fatality rate has declined by about 30% since March/April,” it said. Obesity is a major factor in the fatality rate, it said.
snip
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america?view=total-deaths&tab=trend
COVID-19 Projections
GHDX
VIZ HUB
Regions shown are the World Bank regional aggregates.
More than 470,000 Americans will die from coronavirus by March, experts forecast
https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-11-20-20-intl/h_fe98f7bc3f2641be0527473b25141852The coronavirus pandemic is getting so bad, so quickly, across the United States that an influential academic modeling group has hiked its forecast of deaths considerably. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine now predicts 471,000 people will die from Covid-19 by March 1. That’s up from its forecast of 438,941 just a week ago.
The group said their forecast "assumes that 40 states would reimpose social distancing mandates as the daily death rate exceeds 8 per million." If states do not do this, the "death toll could reach 658,000 by March 1,” they added. “Hospital systems in most states will be under severe stress during December and January even in our reference scenario. Increasing mask use to 95% can save 65,000 lives by March 1," the institute said.
This increased death forecast is even taking into account that the US has improved the infection-fatality ratio with better treatments. “Our analysis suggests that after controlling for age, sex, comorbidities, and disease severity at admission, the hospital-fatality rate has declined by about 30% since March/April,” it said. Obesity is a major factor in the fatality rate, it said.
snip
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america?view=total-deaths&tab=trend
COVID-19 Projections
GHDX
VIZ HUB
Regions shown are the World Bank regional aggregates.
November 20, 2020
https://thebanter.substack.com/p/purpling-red-america
If we’re lucky, each of us has a few people in our lives who would go to the mat for us in the worst of times. That could mean anything from offering a small forgivable loan or a roof over our heads to donating a kidney. If you have ten such people in your life you are wealthy beyond imagination. Donald Trump, though perhaps nearly broke by strictly financial standards, has millions of such people, probably none of whom he has ever met or will ever meet. My generic impression of one such prototype is a composite MAGA dude from Middle America who can barely make his utility payments but who over the last few years has taken time off from work repeatedly to attend Trump rallies. The last rally he attends, in Circleville, Ohio, gives him a severe case of COVID, traceable either to Trump himself or one of his aides. It’s now late October, 2020. The MAGA dude is hospitalized and way too ill to vote in person on November 3. On November 2, a friend sneaks into the hospital, where the MAGA dude is on his deathbed. The friend has brought with him an absentee ballot and offers to place it in a drop box later that day. The MAGA dude lifts his arm, moves the IV bag out of the way, and votes for the last time in his life. Is there one person in the entire world who doubts that vote is cast for Trump?
Few of us can conceive of having even one such fanatical follower, let alone millions. We will never understand the convoluted psychology of someone utterly devoted to the very person who threatens to take his life. In much the same way, we will never significantly shrink the tumor that is the hardcore base of Trump supporters. It’s not even worth trying. The tumor isn’t simply resistant to political chemotherapy. It thrives on it. There is no need to despair, because millions of soft core Trump supporters may be peeled away in the coming years. Of course, it’s not going to be easy. But if we don’t have a viable strategy to accomplish this overarching task, 2016 will again metastasize, this time with a vengeance. Preventing a relapse must be the practical long term focus of center-left politics in the United States now and for the foreseeable future. Ideas are being floated constantly: statehood for Puerto Rico, Guam, and D.C.; reversing egregious gerrymandering; doing away with the Electoral College altogether. None of these measures is beyond the pale, and none would be shunned by the GOP were they in a parallel situation. But none directly addresses the possibility of reorienting relatively sane Trump supporters and the states they live in.
The collective progressive movement must put most of its eggs in the purpling basket if it is to be any more than a marginally worthy combatant of the right, with whom we transfer power back and forth routinely every four, eight, or twelve years with no true moral victory and, worse, no real victory for the Americans we claim to serve. This objective will, in fact, be my own intellectual focus over the next year or so, sandwiched by my usual deliriums of disgust and depression. In this space on this day I will get the ball rolling with a single, hopefully valid, general observation. Babies born into red states and, in particular, rural areas grow to be young men and women who seek opportunity. When they don’t find it where they live, they are likely to relocate. Much of the time the relocation is to a more urbanized area, often a major metropolis. If that young man or woman happens to be somewhat culturally liberal—as many are regardless of their upbringing—the odds are still greater that relocation will be to a bluish metropolis. This shift is self-reinforcing. As talented young people are drained from an area, it becomes still less desirable to the next wave of youth coming of age. The logical conclusion economically is thousands of angry blighted red counties ripe for a demagogue. The logical conclusion politically is a state with a grand total of 893 lost souls represented by two U.S. senators.
The question within the question is how to make these rural areas magnets for young people rather than repellents. Solutions exist but are complicated by a single profound and disturbing political reality: Solutions threaten the existence of the modern GOP. At the same time, the issue is not an abstraction, and there is hope. In 1990 my young bride and I were lured away from New York City to Northampton County, Pennsylvania. The circumstances were complicated but had at least something to do with the extension of Interstate 78 and the access it provided to the same city we left. Those circumstances also had at least something to do with burgeoning development west of the Delaware River. Sue and I weren’t the only young people “voting with our feet” at that time. All this came rushing back to me on Saturday, November 7 as Pennsylvania put Joe Biden over the top in the 2020 presidential election. Small blue margins in purplish eastern counties like Northampton made the difference. Bragging rights and a drunken lost weekend aside, it is not an exaggeration to say good economic policy decades earlier helped set the table for the demise of Donald J. Trump. We are now in a position to set the table for the next generation. Staving off an aspiring dictator in 2044 is not sufficient. The U.S. needs to become a bastion of inclusive capitalism for the benefit of all.
snip
Purpling Red America
The collective progressive movement must put most of its eggs in the purpling basket.https://thebanter.substack.com/p/purpling-red-america
If we’re lucky, each of us has a few people in our lives who would go to the mat for us in the worst of times. That could mean anything from offering a small forgivable loan or a roof over our heads to donating a kidney. If you have ten such people in your life you are wealthy beyond imagination. Donald Trump, though perhaps nearly broke by strictly financial standards, has millions of such people, probably none of whom he has ever met or will ever meet. My generic impression of one such prototype is a composite MAGA dude from Middle America who can barely make his utility payments but who over the last few years has taken time off from work repeatedly to attend Trump rallies. The last rally he attends, in Circleville, Ohio, gives him a severe case of COVID, traceable either to Trump himself or one of his aides. It’s now late October, 2020. The MAGA dude is hospitalized and way too ill to vote in person on November 3. On November 2, a friend sneaks into the hospital, where the MAGA dude is on his deathbed. The friend has brought with him an absentee ballot and offers to place it in a drop box later that day. The MAGA dude lifts his arm, moves the IV bag out of the way, and votes for the last time in his life. Is there one person in the entire world who doubts that vote is cast for Trump?
Few of us can conceive of having even one such fanatical follower, let alone millions. We will never understand the convoluted psychology of someone utterly devoted to the very person who threatens to take his life. In much the same way, we will never significantly shrink the tumor that is the hardcore base of Trump supporters. It’s not even worth trying. The tumor isn’t simply resistant to political chemotherapy. It thrives on it. There is no need to despair, because millions of soft core Trump supporters may be peeled away in the coming years. Of course, it’s not going to be easy. But if we don’t have a viable strategy to accomplish this overarching task, 2016 will again metastasize, this time with a vengeance. Preventing a relapse must be the practical long term focus of center-left politics in the United States now and for the foreseeable future. Ideas are being floated constantly: statehood for Puerto Rico, Guam, and D.C.; reversing egregious gerrymandering; doing away with the Electoral College altogether. None of these measures is beyond the pale, and none would be shunned by the GOP were they in a parallel situation. But none directly addresses the possibility of reorienting relatively sane Trump supporters and the states they live in.
The collective progressive movement must put most of its eggs in the purpling basket if it is to be any more than a marginally worthy combatant of the right, with whom we transfer power back and forth routinely every four, eight, or twelve years with no true moral victory and, worse, no real victory for the Americans we claim to serve. This objective will, in fact, be my own intellectual focus over the next year or so, sandwiched by my usual deliriums of disgust and depression. In this space on this day I will get the ball rolling with a single, hopefully valid, general observation. Babies born into red states and, in particular, rural areas grow to be young men and women who seek opportunity. When they don’t find it where they live, they are likely to relocate. Much of the time the relocation is to a more urbanized area, often a major metropolis. If that young man or woman happens to be somewhat culturally liberal—as many are regardless of their upbringing—the odds are still greater that relocation will be to a bluish metropolis. This shift is self-reinforcing. As talented young people are drained from an area, it becomes still less desirable to the next wave of youth coming of age. The logical conclusion economically is thousands of angry blighted red counties ripe for a demagogue. The logical conclusion politically is a state with a grand total of 893 lost souls represented by two U.S. senators.
The question within the question is how to make these rural areas magnets for young people rather than repellents. Solutions exist but are complicated by a single profound and disturbing political reality: Solutions threaten the existence of the modern GOP. At the same time, the issue is not an abstraction, and there is hope. In 1990 my young bride and I were lured away from New York City to Northampton County, Pennsylvania. The circumstances were complicated but had at least something to do with the extension of Interstate 78 and the access it provided to the same city we left. Those circumstances also had at least something to do with burgeoning development west of the Delaware River. Sue and I weren’t the only young people “voting with our feet” at that time. All this came rushing back to me on Saturday, November 7 as Pennsylvania put Joe Biden over the top in the 2020 presidential election. Small blue margins in purplish eastern counties like Northampton made the difference. Bragging rights and a drunken lost weekend aside, it is not an exaggeration to say good economic policy decades earlier helped set the table for the demise of Donald J. Trump. We are now in a position to set the table for the next generation. Staving off an aspiring dictator in 2044 is not sufficient. The U.S. needs to become a bastion of inclusive capitalism for the benefit of all.
snip
November 19, 2020
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/19/kristi-noem-trump-strategy-denial-covid-ravages-south-dakota
Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota, tells a story about the first time she met Donald Trump. He welcomed her to the Oval Office, and after they shook hands she returned the compliment by inviting him to visit her back in her home state. “We have Mount Rushmore,” she said, hoping he would be tempted by a trip to the famous rock sculpture depicting four of his presidential predecessors. Trump replied: “Do you know, it’s my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?” “I started laughing,” Noem recalls. “He wasn’t laughing, so he was totally serious.” Noem, 48, is savvy enough to know when to humour a potential patron. In July, Trump did make the trip to Mount Rushmore on 4 July for an Independence Day fireworks display. To mark the occasion, she presented him with a four-foot model of the granite monument complete with the addition of a fifth president – Trump.
Having lost to Joe Biden in the election, Donald Trump has as much chance of being carved next to Abraham Lincoln on Mount Rushmore as Donald Duck. But since Trump’s defeat, Noem has still clung to the president and to his policies as though her political life depends on it. The actual lives of many South Dakotans could depend, in turn, upon that decision given the terrifying surge of Covid-19 cases that is battering the state under Noem’s contentious leadership. South Dakota has been listed by Forbes as one of the 10 most dangerous states in the Union, all of them in the Midwest. Coronavirus in South Dakota is running at an intensity only surpassed in the US by its neighbour North Dakota. The state has an alarming positivity rate of almost 60% – nearly six out of 10 people who take a Covid test are infected – second only to another neighbour, Wyoming.
Viewed through the lens of cases and deaths, South Dakota is also at the top of the league table. More than 66,000 South Dakotans have contracted the disease and at least 644 have died, a number likely to rise as hospitals reach breaking point. Amid this devastating contagion, Noem is rigidly sticking to the strategy she has adopted since the pandemic began. It consists of a refusal to accept mask mandates and repeated denial of the science around the efficacy of wearing masks; resistance to imposing any restrictions on bars and restaurants; no limits on gatherings in churches or other places of worship; and no orders to stay at home.
While the statistics are clear – the virus is running wild in South Dakota – Noem has turned a public health emergency into an issue of “freedom” and “liberty”, consistently lying about the trajectory of the disease under her watch. “We’re doing really good in South Dakota. We’re managing Covid-19,” she has said. She has also embraced the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid, even after it was proven to be ineffective and potentially dangerous. If all of this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Since the start of the pandemic, Noem has consciously adopted the posture of a mini-Trump, following the president’s every move in the handling of the health crisis. “From the get-go, her approach was mirroring the Trump administration,” said Lisa Hager, a political scientist at South Dakota State University. “She’s been adamant about people making their own choices and that it’s not the government’s role to step in – and it has played very well for her in her political career.”
snip
she needs to be charged with crimes against humanity
Kristi Noem rigidly follows Trump strategy of denial as Covid ravages South Dakota
Republican governor clings to the president despite his defeat and claims ‘we’re doing really good’ with state’s positivity rate at 60%https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/19/kristi-noem-trump-strategy-denial-covid-ravages-south-dakota
Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota, tells a story about the first time she met Donald Trump. He welcomed her to the Oval Office, and after they shook hands she returned the compliment by inviting him to visit her back in her home state. “We have Mount Rushmore,” she said, hoping he would be tempted by a trip to the famous rock sculpture depicting four of his presidential predecessors. Trump replied: “Do you know, it’s my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?” “I started laughing,” Noem recalls. “He wasn’t laughing, so he was totally serious.” Noem, 48, is savvy enough to know when to humour a potential patron. In July, Trump did make the trip to Mount Rushmore on 4 July for an Independence Day fireworks display. To mark the occasion, she presented him with a four-foot model of the granite monument complete with the addition of a fifth president – Trump.
Having lost to Joe Biden in the election, Donald Trump has as much chance of being carved next to Abraham Lincoln on Mount Rushmore as Donald Duck. But since Trump’s defeat, Noem has still clung to the president and to his policies as though her political life depends on it. The actual lives of many South Dakotans could depend, in turn, upon that decision given the terrifying surge of Covid-19 cases that is battering the state under Noem’s contentious leadership. South Dakota has been listed by Forbes as one of the 10 most dangerous states in the Union, all of them in the Midwest. Coronavirus in South Dakota is running at an intensity only surpassed in the US by its neighbour North Dakota. The state has an alarming positivity rate of almost 60% – nearly six out of 10 people who take a Covid test are infected – second only to another neighbour, Wyoming.
Viewed through the lens of cases and deaths, South Dakota is also at the top of the league table. More than 66,000 South Dakotans have contracted the disease and at least 644 have died, a number likely to rise as hospitals reach breaking point. Amid this devastating contagion, Noem is rigidly sticking to the strategy she has adopted since the pandemic began. It consists of a refusal to accept mask mandates and repeated denial of the science around the efficacy of wearing masks; resistance to imposing any restrictions on bars and restaurants; no limits on gatherings in churches or other places of worship; and no orders to stay at home.
While the statistics are clear – the virus is running wild in South Dakota – Noem has turned a public health emergency into an issue of “freedom” and “liberty”, consistently lying about the trajectory of the disease under her watch. “We’re doing really good in South Dakota. We’re managing Covid-19,” she has said. She has also embraced the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid, even after it was proven to be ineffective and potentially dangerous. If all of this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Since the start of the pandemic, Noem has consciously adopted the posture of a mini-Trump, following the president’s every move in the handling of the health crisis. “From the get-go, her approach was mirroring the Trump administration,” said Lisa Hager, a political scientist at South Dakota State University. “She’s been adamant about people making their own choices and that it’s not the government’s role to step in – and it has played very well for her in her political career.”
snip
she needs to be charged with crimes against humanity
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