On Electing Fascists

I think what the election of Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and all tells us is that pretty much anyone without a conscience and a large media presence can now win elections as a fascist.

Tweet To a Sanders Hater

You don't like Sanders, sure, I get it. But part of politics is making deals with people you don't like. So stop dissing the man and his supporters and deal. You've got a better chance of getting their votes than the white suburbanites the Democrats are still courting. – tweet.

The coming overturning of Roe v Wade may shift some suburban white women, but I am not counting on it. So far, suburban white women have shown an extraordinary willingness to vote for people who hate them.

Tweets on Covid

The US health care system has returned to its pre-covid state, showing its utter incompetence at dealing with public health problems. – tweet

If covid damages your lungs, your heart, your kidneys, what-have-you - these things are not coming back. Some long covid will never be treatable short of transplants. – tweet

China has made a serious effort to control covid. For at least the next half-century, China's population will be healthier than that of any western nation. – tweet

Delusional

Or, Are They Crazy?, part 2

I recently had a long and unpleasant discussion with a “constitutionalist” who had a collection of unshakable-by-facts beliefs. And I realized; this is what they used to call paranoia. So I went off to DSM-5, the handbook of names and descriptions of mental illness, to find out more.

On Twitter, and What Will Be Lost If Elon Musk Takes It Over

Summary of a series of tweets.

If Elon Musk takes over Twitter, and it becomes toxic, well, it's been nice knowing you. Twitter, for all its faults, has helped me find news and people I wouldn't otherwise have known. Some of you I'll follow on to other platforms. Some of you can follow my blog.

The Twitter algorithm, despite its flaws, has helped me find people and news, and no-one seems interested in implementing another version or operating a service that would run it. Mastodon, with no algorithm, is not a useful substitute; it drowns one in toots (and why did the author not know that is an English euphemism for "farts?") and doesn't allow weighting by author, content, or anything else.

So here's hoping Musk's deal falls through! – tweets

The Next Move in the Second Civil War

A while back, in the context of discussing our current situation as a second civil war, I wrote “It is not yet clear to me what the next move of our would-be traitors will be. Perhaps a campaign of domestic terror on the lines of the first Klan?”

It now appears to me that the overturning of Roe, and the consequent passage of numerous misogynistic state laws will be the third move. Liberal states are already preparing responses. State laws are coming into conflict, which are going to have to be litigated in federal courts.  I am not hopeful the Roberts Court will decide the cases in any positive way.

Cowardice and Covid

There is a form of cowardice that refuses to believe that danger exists, even when it is patent. I believe that is what we are seeing in the surrender to covid.

And that explains Abbott and DeSantis and Trump: they let cowards believe they are brave, true, right and upstanding. And the cowards will not abandon their belief, for then they would have to face their cowardice.