Living beings are dead to them in some way

Michigan weather! Suddenly it is hot. I was sweating while working in the garage. High today (at least where I’m at) was 83F after barely getting into the 70s in May up to yesterday. It will be a bit warmer tomorrow and cool down into the 70s by the end of the week. I used my furnace Friday night and may need my AC tomorrow.

I now need to change my schedule for working in the garage. I had been waiting until afternoon so the temps would warm up. I should now switch to morning to work before it gets hot. Though progress is steady I made a list today of all that still needs to be done. As for why this is taking so long – I’m not treating it like a full time job.

I tried a new restaurant for takeout today. I hadn’t been able to visit it with my church friends because it is a breakfast-lunch place and is still packed when we can get there at 11:30. The one time we tried they said it would be a 45 minute wait for a table.

Today there would be no waiting, so I gave it a try. When I started the order process before noon the website said the order would be ready at 12:30. On completion of the order it said the order would be ready by 12:45. I wasn’t so hungry to care about that. However, it meant I could wait a half hour before getting into my car.

Just after 12:20 they called to say the order was ready. I headed out. When I got to the restaurant a server asked for my name, then went inside and got my order. She also brought a clipboard and pen so I could sign the credit card receipt. I thought why do I need to sign? I hadn’t needed to do that with other restaurants. And how many people have touched that clipboard and pen since it was last sanitized?

On the way home I bought the Sunday paper and drove past the ATM (out of cash). By the time I opened the food (a bacon, sausage, ham, cheese scramble) it had been over 40 minutes since they called to say it was ready. I scooped half of it onto a plate and stuck it in the microwave. It was delicious. And I’ll eat the other half tomorrow.



The headline for today’s edition of the New York Times (though it began circulating on Twitter yesterday evening):

U.S. Deaths Near 100,000, an Incalculable Loss.

Remember the dead.



A quote of the day:

With my white friends, I’m always half Mexican. They never say I’m half Irish. Never say I’m half white. Like I’m tainted halfway from the standard. It’s like when I was a kid and I thought vanilla ice cream meant no flavor, like it was the base of all of the flavors. But vanilla is a bean. Like chocolate is a bean. Like cinnamon is a root. All roots and beans. All flavors. There is no base. No ice cream without a flavor.
~~Bill Konigsberg, The Music of What Happens (2019)

When discussing current events how close should I get to the original article? Many times I don’t. Here’s an example. Chris Hayes interviewed Rebecca Solnit for the podcast Why Is This Happening? The audio is 52 minutes and there is a transcript.

Spocko, a contributor to the blog Digby’s Hullabaloo, suggested we read the whole thing, then quoted and commented on it (the kind of thing I usually do). Then Spocko added commentary from Why are liberals more afraid of the coronavirus than conservatives? by Ezra Klein on Vox and from the article Why Do Trump’s Supporters Stand by Him, No Matter What? by Bob Altermeyer on the site The Authoritarians from a couple years ago.

Do I want to read all that? Should I?

Taking another step back xaxnar of the Daily Kos community discussed what Spocko wrote. The picture at the top of xaxnar’s is the same NYT front page mentioned above with the nasty guy swinging a golf club superimposed on it.

I have read Spocko and xaxnar. So I’ll go with that. They both quote the other sources. I listed all of the above so you can keep track when I identify who said what.

Solnit started with the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. She did research into it leading into the 100th anniversary. She found the most destructive force wasn’t the earthquake, but the authorities. For example, when the fire started Genera Funston, a war criminal in the war in the Philippines, assumed ordinary people would behave badly. People with authority assume the only thing keeping ordinary people behaving properly is their own institutional authority, so when that’s not there they envision violence. So the mayor issued shoot-to-kill orders for potential looting, also known as petty theft.

Hayes and Solnit turned to discussing the current push to reopen America. Solnit said:

I feel like, in a way, I never quite recognized before, these are people for whom dead things like money are alive and beloved in a tenderhearted way, and living beings are dead to them in some way.

I mean, who was it who said the other day that we should send America’s kids back to school and that whatever it was like a 3% casualty was an acceptable rate and it’s like, “Dude, you just said you’re willing to let a few million children die.

Excerpts from quotes of the Altermeyer article:

Compared to most people, studies have shown that authoritarian followers get their beliefs and opinions from the authorities in their lives, and hardly at all by making up their own minds. They memorize rather than reason…

Dogmatism comes rather naturally to people who have copied other people’s beliefs rather than figure things out for themselves. When you don’t know why your beliefs are true, you can’t defend them very well when other people or events confront them….

...That is dogmatism, and experiments show that authoritarian followers have two or three times the normal amount of it because they believe many things strongly, but don’t know why. When the evidence and arguments against their beliefs becomes irrefutable, they simply shut down.

...Thus they agree with the statement, “There are no discoveries of facts that could possibly make me change my mind about the things that matter most in life.” That says it all.
...
Followers [of authoritarians] report that they were taught the world is a dangerous place much more strenuously than most people are taught—a fact confirmed by the parents. Some of this is quite predictable, such as fear of attacks by racial minorities. But the fearing parents super-sized their children’s fear of being hit by a car, or kidnapped as well.

Accordingly Donald Trump was well-placed to gain the support of authoritarian followers as he was a large and seemingly fearless, powerful man. All he had to do was say he saw the dangers the followers felt and he would fight to protect them…

...“I am your voice,” he said. He would fight for them with all of his great might. And that was just what threatened people who felt powerless wanted.

I add this is supremacy at work again. Those midway in the hierarchy frequently believe those above them are supposed to be there (those at the top have taught well). And to properly play their part in the hierarchy one doesn’t question those above. They are satisfied with that because of their superiority of those lower in the hierarchy.

From the summary by xaxnar:

Normally, these are the people you’d expect to be totally paranoid about the Covid 19 pandemic — but the man they have chosen to follow and supply them with beliefs is telling them the opposite. You can’t reach them with facts; you can’t convince them with arguments. Their brains shut down rather than accept anything that challenges what they have internalized. They are not mentally equipped to question anything from those they accept as authorities.

Trump tells them what they want to hear — that they’re right — and in return they accept everything that he and those who repeat his messaging tell them unquestioningly. It takes something that feels like a direct betrayal on a personal level they can’t deny for them to even think of questioning the relationship.

Otherwise, they know what they know even if they don’t know why or how, and that’s all they need or want. They don’t do nuance. They rationalize like crazy and get angry if you call them on it.

Summarizing a bit more of what xaxnar wrote: They’ve handed their brains and consciences to the nasty guy. He – and they – can do no wrong.

He won’t wear a mask because it would make him look like a wuss, and that would be fatal to his image as a strong leader. And so it may be fatal to them.

There is also the aspect that, so far, the virus has hit cities and blue states hardest, the places they’ve been taught to hate and now think are getting what they deserve. Since it looks like the virus is doing ethnic cleansing, they are even less likely to support efforts to stop it. But the virus is now spreading in red states. And denial is strong.



A tweet from digby:

I know this is obvious. But it doesn't seem to sink in.

If your concern is the economy, wake up. It won't recover as long as the virus isn't contained and people aren't taking precautions to protect others. Businesses won't survive with just Trump's cult for customers.

And a quote from Todd Holloman that digby tweeted which can be filed as today’s contradiction:

The people who think children wearing bullet-proof backpacks to schools with metal detectors and armed guards, where they are subjected to active-shooter drills is just “the price of freedom” and the people who call having to wear a mask for 10 minutes inside Walmart “tyranny” are the exact same people.