06-17-2020, 04:01 AM
(06-16-2020, 11:44 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: The boost in virus numbers expected with the start of the protests are starting to come in. Up to this point the Happy Talk faction has tried to open up while the curves are still going up. The curves have not exploded up until now, but from here on in, well, boom. I don't know how long before the Happy Talkers confront reality, but the next few weeks are going to be crucial.
I have yet to feel confident to dine in a sit-down restaurant or take shared transit anywhere. I still find it appalling that people fail to wear masks in public.
Quote:Meanwhile, Trump is madly going around scheduling campaign rallies with minimum isolation and precautions. He seems to be going all in for ignoring the problem. The virus is too dumb to write him a thank you card. We will see just how strong either stupidity or really strong world views are. Generally I argue for really strong world views, but this time I can't work myself up for the argument.
This happens with a callous person with great power yet an infantile morality. Contrast a flawed person who tells the truth at its hardest when such is appropriate:
It may be rough... but dying of COVID-19 sounds nasty. Most of us have been spared seeing it, which is much in contrast to the highly-public scenes of the Black Death or the more intimate reality of the Great Influenza of a century ago. I have yet to see the details, but it is grisly enough, I suppose, that it isn't shown in the media.
Patton in no way trivialized the unpleasantness of warfare. But if you had to choose between someone like Patton as 'your' general to those German generals who got rewarded for turning soldiers into cannon fodder, which would you pick? Either way it is the Germans who die. If your general is Patton (who had his flaws, and the great movie shows this)... at least you are not the Germans who at the luckiest are going to end up in American POW camps.
Quote:Is ignoring a pandemic an impeachable offense? I guess only if the Senate Republicans wake up.
The pattern suggests that the electorate will impeach him on November 3! The Senate majority did not do its duty, and it will get to pay the price
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.