07-01-2020, 05:38 PM
(07-01-2020, 08:13 AM)David Horn Wrote:(06-30-2020, 07:26 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: The AP has a lot of Republicans breaking with Trump's politicizing of masks. With much of the South showing viral increases, they are supporting people depoliticizing masks and wearing them to save lives.
About time? A first step in moving towards the scientific approach of pushing things that increase isolation? With several former happy talk governors closing down again, is the recent surge in the south having it's effect?
This is now in the cognitive dissonance phase, where facts tend to reinforce, not overcome, strongly held faulty views. I was in the grocery store yesterday, and fully 50% of the patrons were maskless. One guy, about my age, was wearing a TRUMP 2020 hat and a No Masks! tee shirt. I avoided him like the plague. There have actually been confrontations between the sane and the insane, and it's getting more not less common.
It's hard to know how this finally settles out. Lifelong Republicans in the sane community are the ones most pressed to respond, and they are now getting the same treatment those of us on the left have gotten for decades. They're stunned.
A big part of the Republican Unraveling mindset has been low taxes by small government by ignoring potential problems. This was possible as the problems have been so slow. If global warning or failing bridges was a problem, you could let them grow as they would not bite one in the rear for a while. The idea of solving a problem while it was less than critical was missing from their perspective.
I saw rather early that COVUS 19 was very different in its incubation rate. If you tried to ignore the problem instead of attacking it, it would kill. It was deadly in the short term. The sane people, as you call them, are beginning to acknowledge this, though it is not in their primary way of looking at the world. They have a culture of calling hoax or fake news whenever confronted with a problem, but that doesn’t work in this case. The currently less sane people will be forced with ever greater clarity to acknowledge this.
Once you admit that ignoring one problem doesn’t work, the principle may extend to other problems. That we will have to see.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.