Isolation Report, Week #45

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Well, since our last isolation report, a lot has been going on, at least politically.  It’s difficult to know what to say about the events that have transpired here in the U.S. ... on the one hand, it seems completely predictable and expected.  On the other, that doesn’t keep it from being horrific.  Our only real saving grace here is that this attempted insurrection was being run by complete idiots.  Well-armed idiots, granted, but hardly brain giants.  Throughout the whole thing, I kept wondering to myself: what exactly do they think they’re going to accomplish?  Did they imagine that the entirety of the Congress was going to say “gee, people ran us out of the place we normally meet; I guess we can’t do anything now! may as well go home”?  Some Congressperson tweeted that we were lucky that one of the staffers got the official electoral college ballots before the rioters could destroy them ... but so what if they had?  Would that really have stopped the election from progressing?  Our entire government would have just thrown up their hands and said “oh, well, I suppose Trump will just have to be President forever now.” Sure, that makes sense.

So, they caused a lot of chaos, and, sadly, some people died (on both sides).  But I just can’t believe it was ever going to change anything in the long run, or accomplish any of their actual goals.  Assuming they had goals.  Aren’t these the same people who were sitting at home and laughing at the Occupy Wall Street movement for not knowing what they wanted?  But it seems to me that this was the same thing.  Except the Occupy-Wall-Street-ers never killed anyone.  I hope that wasn’t their goal.  That would be sad, and scary, and even more disturbing than it already is.  But somehow I don’t think that was ever the point.  They just listened to Trump, and Giuliani (“trial by comat!”), and the other morons, and they decided to go fuck some shit up, without any real goals or concrete ideas of how it was going to end up.  Certainly if they had planned a little better, they wouldn’t have managed to all end up on camera, faces exposed, and easily identifiable by the authorities.

But it happened, and we have to deal with it, and we’re still all locked down and not really able to go anywhere or do anything.  A friend told me that one of their relatives who works at a local hospital says they’re putting patients in the gift shop at this point.  Admittedly, you’re hearing this third-hand, so feel free to discount it as an unreliable source, but if you live in the U.S. I bet you’re awre of similar conditions where you live.  Things are getting worse, and we still have to wait another week or so before it can even start to get better.

Of course, the House has impeached Trump, again—no surprise there—and many people on television are expressing dismay that the Senate won’t vote to convict before Trump is already out of office.  I’m not stressed on that point.  Sure, he’ll no doubt do plenty more damage on the way out, but I think the important part is that he does get convicted, and that’s more likely to happen with the new Senate than the old one.  Why is it important to convict him after he’s already out of office?  Well, first of all, it’s important to send that message to any future idiots who find themselves in Trump’s position.  But I think it’s just as important that Trump not be allowed to run for office again (as some people in the media have pointed out), and that he not be allowed to reap the benefits normally afforded to ex-Presidents (as apparently no one has thought to mention yet).  A retired President continues to collect a stipend for life, plus the Secret Service protective detail, which we already know that Trump views as a money-making venture.  So I really don’t want my tax money going to support that sort of bullshit for however more years he manages to cling to life.  And, in my experience, only the good die young: true assholes can live for-fucking-ever.

I don’t know.  I guess we’ll have to see how it all shakes out.  Hopefully there won’t be any more violence, and hopefully the new administration will restore some sanity.  But I honestly don’t know.  I’m just waiting to find out like all the rest of you.

Isolation Report, Week #39

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

So, lately all the pandemic talk has been focussed on the vaccine(s).  I have to say, I’m a bit irked at the media’s coverage of the vaccines: we seem to have breezed past any discussion of safety and started arguing about who “gets to” get the vaccine first.  I mean, I’m pretty much always irked at the media’s coverage of vaccines, and in particular their attitude that anyone that dares to have any reservations about any vaccine is therefore a crazy person.  But this particular round of vaccine coverage has a whole ‘nother dimension to it that really saddens me.

You see, when Trump was promising a vaccine “very soon now,” the media was very quick to point out that you can’t really rush a vaccine.  The entire concept of vaccination is to infect you with something that will hopefully “fool” your body into thinking it’s sick without actually getting sick, so that it therefore produces antibodies that will protect against the infection before you ever even get infected.  This is actually a very clever idea, and, when it works, it’s pretty amazing.  Unfortunately, when it doesn’t work, it can be pretty devastating: early implementation of the polio managed to cause 40,000 new cases of polio.  That doesn’t mean there was anything wrong with the idea of vaccinating against polio, although I’m sure that some people interpret it that way.  No, the problem was simply a manufacturing error ... if we can describe a situation involving tens of thousands of infections of a paralytic and in some cases fatal disease as being “simply an error.” So taking time to study the vaccines carefully and make sure they’re being developed with all due rigor is pretty damned important.  Before the election, the media seemed to know that.  They considered it quite reasonable that some people—many people, even—would not want to take a vaccine which had been rushed to market to make Trump look good and was certified as “safe” by a government with a vested interest in doing just that.

But, somehow, now that the election is over and Trump has lost, now we’re back to statements like “some people may not want to take the vaccine, because of crazy conspiracy theories or whatever.” Look: I’m obviously no fan of Trump.  The fact that he even exists—that a person can be considered “rich” without demonstrating any actual monetary value, that a person can commit crime after crime without ever facing any consequences, that a person could demonstrate such a flagrant disregard for the truth and even for human life—the fact that there’s anyone like that on the planet, much less in the White House, that offends me on a fundamental level.  I’m also, contrary to the opinions of some, not opposed to vaccines in general.  There are many vaccines—including that for polio, despite the tragedies associated with its initial rollout—which I believe are medically essential for us humans to continue to endure.  But that doesn’t mean that I believe that anything that has the word “vaccine” printed on the side of it is therefore safe and necessary.

Concerns about these vaccines, which were very much rushed, are not crazy, and they’re not a result of believing in conspiracy theories.  Well, perhaps for some they are.  But the media made lots of good points before Trump was defeated, and those points are still valid.  There were very good reasons for rushing these vaccines—I’m not disputing that—but that doesn’t make them any less rushed.  Each one has had a single study done on them, and, despite the fact that those studies appear, by all reports, to be pretty damned thorough studies, a single study can’t conclusively prove anything.  Moreover, the studies were focussed on efficacy (which, again, is perfectly understandable and appopriate, given the circumstances), not on safety.  There simply hasn’t been enough time to figure out if the vaccine is fully safe.  Now, there could be situations where the threat of a disease was so dire, and the consequences so heinous, that the risk of not fully knowing the safety factor of a vaccine would be outweighed by the risk of contracting the disease.  But I believe that this disease doesn’t meet that standard.

Reasonable people can disagree.  After all, death rates are rising, people will point out, and for the first time in recent memory—possibly for the first time in living memory—we experienced a week where heart disease was not the number one cause of death in the United States: it was COVID.  But, let’s be realistic: our death rate isn’t so high because this disease is so dangerous.  Our death rate is so high because we’ve been remarkably stupid in handling it.  People refuse to wear masks.  People were explicitly told not to travel for the holidays, but they did it anyway.  This week we’ve heard about a rash of politicians telling their constituents to stay home and avoid gatherings while they themselves were doing the opposite, including the remarkable case of the mayor of Austin telling people to avoid travel from his hotel room in Mexico.  It’s silly to imagine that these things aren’t all connected.  And, anyway, the proof is simple: while the whole world may be experiencing a resurgence of the disease, only our country has numbers like this.

And I’m certainly not saying that staying home and wearing masks guarantees that you won’t get the disease.  Recently I received the unpleasant news that one of my coworkers, who by all descriptions was far more paranoid about being exposed to the disease than I or my family have been, contracted it.  It sounds like he and his girlfriend are going to recover, but it’s still a chilling reminder that nothing is 100%.  Of course, the vaccines are not 100% either.  If the initial efficacy numbers hold water, you’ve still got a 5% chance of catching COVID after you’ve been vaccinated with one of the current candidates, and we simply don’t know what the chances of any potential side-effects are yet.  Given that, and given how good our chances are for not catching the disease by simply continuing to observe the same best practices that we’ve all been doing for close to year now, it still makes sense to me to wait a bit and see how these vaccine fare in the real world before committing to anything.  Oh, I will be getting this vaccine eventually.  But I’m not in a hurry.

The thing that disturbs the most about the media coverage, though, is the hypocrisy.  When it was “Trump’s vaccine,” we shouldn’t trust it.  Now that Trump is on the way out, mistrusting a vaccine is a crazy conspiracy theory.  I’m sorry, but there’s no conspiracy theory, nor any sort of crazy, required.  The media made some great points about the dangers of a rushed vaccine, and Trump being defeated doesn’t change any of those points.  There are essentially two options here for what’s going on.  The first is that the media was just saying that we should be suspicious of a vaccine produced under Trump, for political expediency.  But that’s exactly what Trump was accusing them of: remember how he claimed that, once the election was over, we’d never hear about COVID again?  Obviously that was crazy, and also stupid.  But somewhow we immediately stopped hearing about the possibility that the vaccine might not be all rainbows and sunshine.  That means that Trump was essentially right—in the abstract, if not in the details—and that possibility makes me really sad.  Also the concept of Trump being right about anything upsets my grasp on reality.

But the other possible explanation isn’t any more comforting: that, rather than being insincere in their claims then, they’re insincere in their claims now.  That they know perfectly well that there could be consequences and ramifications to just shoving this vaccine into everyone’s veins ... and they just don’t care.  Or, to be more generous, that they believe that the number of people who will be hurt or maybe even killed will be low enough not to matter.  But, here again: that’s been the attitude of the Trump camp.  I don’t want to see that blossoming on the other side of the political divide as well.

One more particularly relevant analogy that I’ll give.  Last month, “Dr.” Scott Atlas, a “medical” advisor to Trump, was ridiculed extensively for talking about “herd immunity.” In one example story, ABC called herd immunity “a concept lambasted by public health experts as ‘dangerous’ and called ‘ridiculous’ by the federal government’s foremost infectious disease official, Dr. Anthony Fauci.” I specifically remember thinking at the time, “man, they better be careful how they disparage herd immunity, because that’s central precept of vaccination policy.” I was really curious to see how they’d handle it when it was time to actually push for herd immunity using the newly created vaccines.

And now the time has come, and, you know what?  They just all pretend like they never said that.  Now herd immunity is all good, and we all need to be concerned about whether we can achieve it, becauase of all those crazy conspiracy theory nutjobs, you know.  They’re essentially saying exactly the opposite of what they said before and not acknowledging that anything is different.  But, here’s the thing: that’s what Trump does. And, I’m sorry, but it doesn’t make it okay when it’s “my side” doing it.  It’s still wrong, and vaguely nauseating.  Have we had to turn into Trump in order to defeat him?

Let’s hope not.  Because that’s not okay.

Isolation Report, Week #37

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

This week (I think—time is still a bit mushy here in quarantine land) Biden said he wouldn’t personally pursue prosecuting Trump’s crimes (to be fair, he did graciously allow that others might do so).  I 100% expected this, of course, but it still pisses me off.  Democrats always do this.  They try to take the high ground, and the Republicans eat their lunch.

There are two very important reasons which this more than a terrible decision: it’s just plain dumb.  The first reason is a strategic one.  The Republicans control over half of many of our government institutions, even though they represent far less than half the population.  In fact, the Republican party is now in third place, behind both Democrats and independents.  Part of that is because the Democrats suck, of course.  But the point is, being less than 30% of the country doesn’t keep them from controlling at least half of everything.  Why?  Well, they’re smarter than the Decmocrats, and they’re far more ruthless.  To have proof of crimes committed by a political opponent and not pursue prosecution for them?  There’s no universe in which Republicans would do this ... hell, they don’t even really need proof to pursue prosecution against opponents.  They sort of do it on principle.  And the problem is this: even if the Democrats decide that they don’t want to be as ruthless as the Repubs (although, counterpoint: how’s that working out for ya, Dems?), they at least have to be as smart.  Letting Trump leave the White House and doing nothing to address the many illegal acts he’s perpetrated is basically rolling over and showing your belly to the Republican party.  Do you imagine that they’re going to feel bad and just leave you alone?  ‘Cause, I’m here to tell you, they’re just going to disembowel you and leave you to rot.

But above and beyond the stupidity, there’s a bigger moral issue here.  Trump is a man who has never faced any consequences in his life.  Susan Collins of Maine (who managed to win her re-election bid despite this amazing bit of doublespeak) said that Trump’s impeachment taught him “a pretty big lesson”: yeah, and that lesson was, do whatever the fuck you want.  There are no consequences.  There were no consequences when you were mean to people, there were no consequences when you cheated people, there were no consequences when you dodged your military service, there were no consequences when you siphoned so much money off your businesses that even your casinos failed, and, now that you’ve taken graft and corruption and nepotism to a national scale, you know what?  Still no consequences.  But once you leave office ... then there will be no consequences, apparently.  Because that’s the American Way: petty criminals get locked up for years; really big criminals get supported by politicians using phrases like “too big to fail” and “we just want to move on.” Democrats, think carefully: is this really the message you want to send to people?  Do whatever you want, we don’t care, we just want to move on?

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve fully predicted this from the beginning.  Trump will never spend a single day in jail, and probably not even a single day in court (nearly an exact quote from a previous virus isolation report).  Still, this is one of those times when I’d be overjoyed to be proven wrong.  Prove me wrong, Dems.  I’m begging you.

Meanwhile, the virus is not still raging: it’s actually getting worse.  I envy you people that are experiencing a second or third wave: for us here it’s all one big wave ... we haven’t left the house for anything significant for the better part of a year, and I would be absolutely stunned if there is not a “virus isolation report week 52” in my not-too-distant future.  Oh, sure: there’s vaccines out there, but even the folks on television who are normally all about letting big pharma inject them with anything at all as long as it has the “V” word stamped on it are saying that maybe it would be a good idea to wait for some larger trials, for some studies for side effects, for some independent verification.  Because, you know, as deadly as this virus is, it isn’t the most deadly thing you could have in your body: it is still possible for the cure to be worse than the disease.  As much as I hate being stuck inside, I think I’ll personally wait for a pretty wide concensus on safety for anything I want to inject into my children.  And, unfortunately, that just takes time.  There’s only some much you can rush it before you just end up with untrustworthy results and you’re back where you started.  So, while multiple vaccines are certainly welcome news, it’s the beginning of the next phase of waiting, not the end.

So, we soldier on, isolated for Thanksgiving, isolated for Christmas, isolated for New Year’s—although, to be fair, we typically spend those holidays by ourselves anyway.  There are 5 of us (counting only the humans), and we’re plenty capable of generating sufficient family drama without inviting extended family to help with that.  There are some parties that we would normally attend that we likely won’t get to (unless perhaps there are some smaller versions within our personal social bubble), but not a whole lot will change.  But, I gotta tell you, I miss going to out to sit down in a restaurant.  I miss going to work and seeing my coworkers.  I miss playing hooky from work and sneaking off with my family to the occasional museum or zoo or aquarium.  I miss going to the comic book and gaming stores, and to the movies, as rare as that was for us even before the pandemic.  When I do go out, I look at the retail locations that have closed, and I realize that even once things are “back to normal,” they won’t be normal.  And I’m bummed.

But surviving.

Isolation Report, Week #35

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Well, election day here in the US is finally behind us.  It was quite a stressful time, even though things played out almost exactly as was predicted.  Oh, sure, people are belly-aching about the polls being wrong, but all the polls said was that there was a 90% chance that Biden would win, and he did.  The polls never claimed it wouldn’t be a close race.  We read that into the polls.  We humans are shitty at understanding probabilities, and somehow we imagine that 90% means it’ll be a walk in the park, when all it really means is that, if you do it 10 times, you’ll only lose once.  And everything else was spot on: that the count would take several days to complete, that we wouldn’t know the winner right away or for days, that Trump would be ahead on the night of, and that Biden would close the gap as more and more mail-in ballots were counted.  All of that happened exactly like pretty much everyone said it would ... but, I gotta tell ya: there’s a big difference between intellectually accepting those things to be true and living through them.  Even though every single event happened exactly as predicted, we still sat around biting our nails, unsure of how it would all come out.  Blame 2016 for that: our capacity to dare to hope has been severely curtailed.  But now that phase is over: Biden won the popular vote, as almost everyone knew he would, and he even won the electoral college, as most said he would, but it was a nail-biter all the same.  Next up: can he win all the court cases?  And, assuming he does so, can he successfully evict Trump from the White House?  Neither of those is assured, although I think he has a pretty good shot at the second one if he can manage the first.

Trump (and/or his people) have done an amazing job of setting up the Supreme Court to support him in whatever cockamamie case he brings to have the election overturned.  Right now there are 6 conservative justices and only 3 liberal ones (and all the moderates have been skillfully excised).  If such a case comes before the current court, I think we can absolutely count on the 3 liberals (Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan) to vote against such a thing, and I think we can count on the two most recent Trump disasters—being, as they are, utterly unqualified to do much of anything else—to vote for him, and we can probably also throw in Thomas, who never met an argument he couldn’t settle in favor of the most right-leaning option he could find.  That leaves Chief Justice Roberts, Alito, and Gorsuch (the first Trump nomination).  Two of those three would have to vote to do the right thing, and, while all 3 are conservative, all 3 are also known for breaking ranks on some important issues: none of them are puppets, in other words.  So there’s a decent shot.

Then the trick will be to attempt to undo all the damage that Trump has caused, and I’m of mixed emotions about the ability of Biden and his team to accompllish that.  In case I’ve not been clear, I’m mostly liberal, and almost entirely progressive, but I am not a Democrat.  The Democrats are exactly half of what’s wrong with the American political system, and I have very little faith in their desire to effect real change, much less their ability to do so.  It’s looking more and more like they will not have the Senate on their side to do that either, and that makes it all the more up in the air.  Best case scenario we end up with a perfectly split Senate, which means Kamala gets to cast any tie-breaking votes, but that’s only if everyone votes along strict party lines, which, you know, they don’t, always.  There are several Democrats who are way more conservative than the majority, and a few Republicans who are more liberal than the majority.  One senator could conceivably hold up legislation for everyone if they demand something extra for their state, or just need to get their ego stroked.

So it’s by no means a sure thing that anythihng useful (much less exciting) will get done.  But at least it (probably) won’t get worse, which is the main thing I feared from a Trump re-election.  I said in a Facebook post, and I will repeat it here: people crying doom and destruction over Biden becoming president are only guessing at what he’ll do, or in some cases (but not that many) assuming that he will do what he says he will.  In neither case are they likely correct.  On the other hand, we already seen what Trump will do.  The damage is pretty bad: the environment has suffered setbacks that my children will have to deal with for years, the education system, park system, and post office will likely take years if not decades to recover, and, mostly significantly, the Supreme Court is now poised to take away my children’s rights to reproductive freedom, marriage equality, and employment protections.  These are not things I think Trump may do ... this is what he’s done thus far.  And, with Bill Barr behind him, telling him that Article II of the Constitution says he can do whatever he likes, it’s not like it would have gotten any better.  So I’m happy Trump lost and probably—hopefully—won’t be President again, but I can’t say I’m all that thrilled that Biden won.

My birthday was two days after election day, and my father called me supposedly to wish me a happy birthday.  But mostly just to yell at me for supporting the socialist takeover of our country.  The most amusing part of the call was when he called me out for not knowing what the Democratic platform was.  I responded by asking him if he knew what the Republican platform was.  “We’re not talking about the Republicans!” he hedged.

Of course, it’s not particularly surprising that my father knew the Democratic platform but not the Republican one, nor that I knew the Republican one but not the Democratic one.  Because my father didn’t really vote for Trump (who he describes as “an idiot”): he was just voting against Biden.  Likewise, I was voting against Trump (naturally), but I didn’t even have to vote for Biden: since I live in California, I had the luxury of voting for whoever I thought would actually do the best job.  I voted for the Green Party candidate, whose name I didn’t even know before I received my ballot (and didn’t bother to retain after filling it in).  I considered the Libertarian fellow as well, but I actually did read the platforms of all the third party candidates, and the Green Party sounded the most like my own views, so that’s who I voted for.  Of course, the majority of Americans think that a vote for anything other than a Democrat or a Republican is a “wasted vote” ... the Democrats and Republicans have worked together quite effectively to make us all believe that.  And, since we all believe it, it’s true.  So, if I lived in Ohio or Florida or Pennsylvania or Michigan, I would likely have a much tougher choice, but there are some advantages to living in a state where the color on the news maps is known well before the election even starts.  So my father and I voted against rather than voting for, and that’s fine.

My dad tried to explain to me why electing Biden was so bad.  But, other than the obvious assertion that he might die and then “that woman” would be President (oh, the horror!), the best he could come up with was that Biden was going to get rid of the oil companies.  This, of course, is hilarious for a number of reasons:

• It presumes that I believe Biden has enough balls to actually try to take on the oil industry, which I absolutely do not.
• It presumes that, even if he wanted to, he would somehow, as President, have the power to abolish the oil industry, which of course he would not.
• Most ridiculously of all, it presumes that I would have some sort of problem with getting rid of the oil industry.  Being as they are responsible for raking in billions of dollars in profts while paying no taxes (often actually receiving money from the government instead), that they are the primary polluters of the planet, and that they have worked tirelessly to retard our growth into more energy efficient industries (such as by killing the electric car), I would be more likely to dance on the oil industry’s grave than mourn its passing.  But somehow my father missed this memo.

But of course mostly that’s just a smokescreen for my father’s fear that a strong, liberal black woman from California (which is at least four strikes against her in his book) might be President someday.  I sincerely doubt he’s alone in this viewpoint either.  The racists (and sexists, and homophobes, and xenophobes—my father is all of those and more) have been much more comfortable showing themselves over the last 4 years, and I’m sure they’re not looking forward to having to crawl back into their holes again.  Many of them won’t.  And, I know that eventually most of these idiots will die and their minority will actually be small enough to ignore, finally, but it seems to be taking a really long time, and I’m sort of losing my patience.

If Biden does step down for health reasons at some point, Kamala becoming President could be quite a good thing.  I certainly have more faith in her than him for at least trying to get some big changes accomplished.  But I’m not holding my breath.  For the most part, things will go on as they always have ... well, as they used to back in the days before Trump anyway.  Sadly, right now that seems pretty nice.  I hope that doesn’t continue to be the case, because “business as usual” was already pretty shitty, as the continuing instances of police brutality continue to demonstrate, in shocking and tragic ways.  But I guess I can be happy that, while I’m not holding my breath for any real change, I’m no longer holding my breath that we might descend into further chaos either.  It was not particularly pleasant having to hold one’s breath from Tuesday until Saturday, but at least now it’s over.

Probably.

Isolation Report, Week #33

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Another two weeks gone in this seemingly endless pandemic, but of course it still doesn’t feel like we’re any closer to ... anything.  Honestly, even though the election will be done in another two weeks, it doesn’t feel like much of an accomplishment.  In the first place, two weeks these days can easily last two years, and, in the second place, the chances that we actually know who’s won on Election Night are so fucking slim that it doesn’t matter anyway.  I don’t give a shit: I’ve already voted.  It’s all waiting to see how it comes out in the wash for me at this point.

Today, I’ll give you thoughts on two things, one political, and one personal.  First, the political.

I’ve mostly been trying to ignore the whole Amy Coney Barrett thing: she’s going to get on the court no matter what happens in the hearings, so what’s the point in following them?  But I couldn’t help but hear about the moment where (Republican) John Cornyn asked her what she had been referring to during the hearing and she held up a blank notepad (to which Cornyn replied “impressive” ... because, you know, it takes a lot of effort to write nothing on a piece of paper).  This has been a source of many jokes, from both political camps: an unknown conservative described the blank page as a “list of Joe Biden’s accomplishments,” while comedian Kathy Griffin said it represented a “picture of his [Trump’s] brain scan.” What I haven’t heard anyone point out, though, is that a blank page is actually the perfect inspiration for Barrett’s “testimony”: it reminded her to keep her experssion entirely blank, her voice entirely neutral, and her statements entirely devoid of content.

And, honestly, it’s not even fair to pick on Barrett: any liberal judge in her position would do (as has done) the same.  Judges are full of opinions—it’s their fucking job description, for fuck’s sake—until you put them in front of Congress, and then all of a sudden they have no viewpoints on anything whatsoever.  There’s a metric shit-ton of “it wouldn’t be fair of me to talk about a case I might adjudicate one day” and “I have to keep an open mind until I hear the facts of such a case” and many other such empty platitudes.  So, if the point of Senate confirmation hearings is not to hear a judge’s opinions on the law, what the hell is the fucking point, anyway?

And we don’t have to stop there.  Over the past 4 years, we’ve seen and heard a whole fuck-ton of people “testifying” before Congress, and magically none of them remember any details about the stuff they’re supposed to be experts on, or the stuff they actually did themselves.  Sessions has appeared before Congress, and Dejoy has appeared before Congress, and Barr has appeared before Congress, and DeVos has appeared before Congress, and Mueller has appeared before Congress, and Zuckerberg has appeared before Congress, and can anyone name one single thing that has changed because of it?  It’s all pure theater at this point.

And then of course we have the debates ... it’s a fun little time where two people refuse to answer the questions they were actually asked or follow any of the “rules” set forth at the beginning.  At the end of the allotted time, you know absolutely nothing that you didn’t know going in, and all the “analysis” is centered around who flubbed a word or had a fucking fly on their head.  Let me be clear: the Democrats are not any better than the Republicans here.  I’ve often said that all answers in a debate—or even your average press conference—can be classified as one of 3 animals: a duck, a weasel, or a dead horse.  West Wing often gets accused of being “liberal porn,” but part of the reason it was so good was that even the Republicans on that show were better than the Democrats we have in real life.  Remember the episode in season 7 where Alan Alda’s character got his (Republican) campaign back on track by holding a press conference with the radical idea of just fucking answering all the reporters’ questions until they couldn’t think of any more?  When have you ever seen that done in real life?  Yeah, me neither.  And they wonder why we’d rather live in televsion land than in real life.

For the personal thing, I’ll let you know that this week I had my first, and quite possibly my only, colonoscopy.  I’ve told everyone I can think of that, if a doctor ever comes to me and says “you have to get another colonoscopy or you might die” I’m going to reply “let me think about it.” (And so I apologize if you’re one of the folks that had to hear that bon mot more than once.)  Now, if you don’t know what a colonoscopy is, it’s where they jam a camera on a tube up your ass and see how far they can get it up there, taking pictures and whatnot as they go.  Now that sounds horrifying, but the truth is that they knock you out completely for this whole thing, so you don’t actually feel anything.  You just go to sleep, and then you wake up, and you’re a bit bloated because you’ve had some extra air injected into your guts, but basically it’s like nothing happened.

So why do I say I’ll never do it again?  Well, those of you who’ve had this procedure before already know the answer: it’s the prep.  See, the day before, you can’t have any solid food.  Which is not great, but not terrible either.  I mean, you can still have water, and coffee or tea, and fruit juice.  I mean, no milk or cream in your coffee or tea, and no pulpy fruit juice, just clear stuff like apple or white grape, but that’s not bad.  And you can have chicken broth, which is not super filling, but better than nothing.  And you can have Jello and popsicles and sports drinks like Gatorade or VitaminWater, but certain colors are out (presumably because of the dyes): no red, no blue, no green, no purple.  Now, one of the (many) medical people I talked to in preparation for this preparation described this as “only leaving the crappy flavors.” But, as it happens, I love orange, as a flavor at least, so drinking orange Vitaminwater and “eating” orange Jello all day was just fine by me (orange popsicles, as it turns out, were not as yummy as my nostalgia had portrayed them).  So, still: not great, but not awful either.  Then there’s the medicine.

The first problem with the medicine is that someone decided that it was so disgusting that they needed to make it taste like fruit.  Unfortunately, this just makes it taste like disgusting fruit, which is still not great.  You have to mix it yourself, and then you have to drink it, slowly, but finish all 16 ounces within 30 minutes.  Slightly oxymoronic, but okay.  And you do this 3 times over the course of the day.  And the function of this medicine is to make you shit your guts out.  Because, you know: they don’t want any yucky stuff on their nice camera that they’re going to jam up your ass.  So they want you to get it all out.  All of it.  So, fine: spending more time on the toilet than not for roughly 7 hours is not my idea of a fun time, but, you know what?  We have technology for that now.  My kids spend 7 hours on the toilet all the time: you just need a phone or a tablet or what-have-you and you’re set.  But here’s the problem: after a while, you’re done.  There is literally nothing more to expel.  Except you’re still drinking this nasty-tasting shit, which somehow manages to come out exaclty as fast as it went in, and it’s all so violent and ... I dunno, repetitive.  And you know how you get when you have diarrhea for even just an hour and you start trying to raid your kids’ diaper ointment?  Yeah, multiply that by 7.  A fun time, it was not.

On the other hand, I now know that I do not have any polyps, cancerous or otherwise, that I do have diverticula, which are the breeding ground for diverticulitis, and I have some lovely pictures of the inside of my guts.  I thought about sharing them with you, but my family discouraged me.  They seemed to think you wouldn’t find them as fascinating as I do.  Ah, well: your loss.

In any event, my next virus isolation report will be from the far side of the election, so perhaps things will look better then.  But, given 2020 thus far, I shall not be holding my breath.

Isolation Report, Week #29

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Another two weeks, another 14 days spent marveling at how much worse “worse” can get.  The fact that none of it is even surprising—not that no police officers will be charged in the murder of Breonna Taylor, not that our president will not agree to leave office peacefully if defeated in the election, not that the Republicans are completely comfortable with their hypocrisy regarding Supreme Court appointments, not that the Democrats are toothless in their response and blustering pointlessly, not that the number of deaths from the pandemic continues to rise while the rest of the world is handling their shit and revoking our passports, not that the president knew how bad it was in Feburary and did nothing—is possibly the most depressing thing.  Literally the only thing that surprises me any more is that anyone else is surprised by any of these things.

The fact that Ruth Bader Ginsburg died was not so much surprising—this is 2020, after all—as it was a punch in the gut.  Someone that I watch (probably Stephen Colbert) said that they had been getting texts all weekend with various expressions of sadness and profanity; this was reflected perfectly in our online chat at $work where the NPR story reporting her death was followed nearly immediately by two messages: “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO” and ”FUCK!!” ... I’ll leave it to you to guess which one of those was from me.  Besides the terror at what damage Trump and the Senate Republicans (who have already pledged to confirm Trump’s nominee, without even finding out who it’s going to be) can do, it’s also worth reflecting on the fact that it’s just a massive loss for democracy.  I’ve watched several tributes to her life and legacy, but I highly recommend Trevor Noah’s, which touched me the most.

There isn’t a lot of other news to report: there’s been a bit (more) family drama, a guinea pig funeral, a colonoscopy appointment made, a broken dishwasher.  There’s a new D&D book coming out that I’m quite looking forward to.  The smallies and I finished season 2 of Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, which is just a beautiful, funny, touching animated series; if you have both Netflix and children and you haven’t watched this yet, you really must do.  My sleep schedule is nearly completely random at this point, but $work is still going moderately well.  Well, as well as can be expected, I suppose.  The humans in the house have mostly committed to not killing each other.  At least for now.

I understand that many folks (including my own parents) are starting to go out more, even eating in restaurants.  So far we’ve held off on that.  I pointed out to my mother this weekend that she couldn’t really be wearing her mask while she was eating.  She said, no, you just wear it to the table and then you take it off to eat.  I said that was like wearing your hazmat suit to get to the radiation and then taking it off once you arrived.  Call us overabundantly cautious if you like.  We’re fine with that.

Oh, and I did actually take a COVID test recently.  I had no fever, but there was a sore throat, and just a touch of labored breathing, so I figured better safe than sorry.  There’s a drive-through place near us where they basically hand you the giant Q-tip and tell you what to do and then you give yourself the test.  Then they text you the results; they told me to give it 3 – 5 day, but I got a text within 24 hours.  Negative, if you were concerned.  Which, as I say, I figured, but one doesn’t want to mess around.  I still believe we’re all going to get it eventually, but I really want to know when I’ve got it.  I don’t think I’m in any particular danger once I get it, but of course we have the kid with the heart condition, so one has to be careful.

I think that’s all there is to report.  I hope the world gets better soon.  I’d certainly like to start having lunch with my coworkers again, and I know The Mother would just like me to leave the house, lunch or no lunch.  And my children wouldn’t mind getting back to a semi-regular field trip schedule.  But we wait, and we watch, and we hope that the election gives the country a chance at recovery.  If not, then ... then I don’t know.  Other than being able to predict that Trump and his family will be enriched by the continued deaths of the American people, I can’t guess what that dystopian future would hold.

Hopefully it doesn’t come to finding out.

A Fresh Start

One year ago I told you to have a wonderful 2016.  However, you did not listen to me.  You had a crappy 2016: you let Prince die, and you let David Bowie die, and you let Leonard Cohen die, and you let George Michael die, and you let Carrie Fisher and her mother die, for crying out loud, and you tried to reroute an oil pipeline through sacred Native American lands, and you broke up a nearly-half-century-old agreement while simultaneously depriving the European Union of half its military, and you completely destroyed the third oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, and you let the police kill somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand people, and, worst of all, you elected a sleazy pussy-grabber with ties to white supremacy and the Russian oligarchy to the post which is still, for just a bit longer, considered to be the most powerful in the world.  So, fuck you guys.

I will not tell you to have a wonderful 2017.  I’m not sure 2017 is capable of being wondeful at this point.  I’ll just advise you to have a better 2017 than you did a 2016, because, if it gets any worse, I may have to just sit on the sofa and consume beer and Cheetos until the end finally comes for me.  Either that or I’m gonna hafta start researching how to create the virus which will start the zombie apocalypse, ’cause the point at which The Walking Dead starts looking better than the real world ... that’s some fucked up shit.

So try to calm down a bit for this year, wouldja?  Let’s all just chill out a bit and see if 2017 can be a bit more relaxing, a bit less fatal, and feature signficantly less misogyny and racism.  I’m setting my expectations fairly low here.  Please don’t disappoint me.

Thanks.

Reflections on a Disturbing Election

Last weekend was my birthday, so I celebrated by eating too much, drinking too much, going to see Doctor Strange, and spending lots of time playing D&D and Heroscape with my kids.^*  And definitely not thinking about the upcoming (at the time) election.

Now, I’ve made no secret about being a liberal, which many people conflate with being a Democrat.  The truth is, I really don’t care for the Democratic party.  It’s just as corrupt and hypocritical as the Republican party, and just as repsonsible for the two-party stranglehold on our system.  Furthermore, I don’t care for Hillary Clinton.  I liked Obama (before he got into office, anyway), but Clinton I never liked.  She’s too facile, too adaptable to whatever audience she’s addressing, and I don’t believe much of anything she says.  But, you know: that’s how I feel about most politicians, so that’s no great surprise.

And, while I staunchly protest against being labeled a “Democrat,” it’s certainly true that I voted for more Democrats than anything else on this past ballot—and on every ballot I’ve ever filled out, if I’m honest.  I only voted for a single Republican^** this year, and that was really only because I had to pick two people out of ten candidates which included eight avowed Republicans.  (And one total nutjob.^***  As much as I typically dislike Republicans, they’re still better than nutjobs.)  Which I suppose is the perfect segue into talking about Donald Trump.

But let’s be clear: I don’t disparage Trump because he’s a Republican—truth be told, he’s not much of a Republican.  I disparage Trump because he’s a nutjob.  And, in some ways, worse than a nutjob: he’s the worst sort of scummy salesperson, the kind of sleazy used-car salesman you run away from and decide that riding the bus isn’t so bad; he’s a “rich” guy with six bankruptcies who managed to lose nearly a billion dollars running a casino; and the only time he’s not saying whatever (some) people want to hear is when he’s saying things that are utterly insane.  Most bizarre of all, we now have a “grab-em-by-the-pussy” president.  When I can’t repeat the words of the president-elect of the United States of America at work because I would be committing an HR violation, I have to believe there’s something seriously wrong with our country.

And I’ve heard, and greatly respected, the words of some excellent speakers who have urged us to move on, and to heal, and to try to understand the position of the other side: Stephen Colbert, and Trevor Noah, and Chris Hardwick, and others.  Hell, Thandie Newton appearing on The Late Show was surprisingly (and beautifully) eloquent on the topic, telling all of us that we need to reach out to the people on the other side, and reminding us that the speech of hate is generally motivated by fear.

And I wish I could go along with that.  But I can’t.  Because of the whole “grab-em-by-the-pussy” thing.

And, yes, I keep saying that, and I’ll probably say it a few more times before we’re done, and, yes, it might offend you, but that’s a good thing.  If it doesn’t offend you, and you voted for Trump, well then I totally understand that and I’m not surprised.  But if it does offend you, and you voted for Trump anyway, then I have a problem with that.  Because, sure: Trump’s not a politician, and all politicians are scum.  I’m right there with you—hell, I voted for Ross Perot, once upon a time.  And Perot was a bit of a nutjob too, and quite probably a bit of a scumbag in business, just like Trump.  But he wasn’t morally repugnant.  And you were voting against Clinton, who is a liar and quite possibly an unconvicted criminal.  I’m with you on that one too, but the problem is that Trump is a liar and quite possibly an unconvicted criminal as well, plus he’s a bully, and a racist, and he said it was okay to grab women by the pussy.

Hopefully I’ve offended you again.  Now, it’s entirely possible that every person who voted for Trump was a racist misogynist scumbag just like he is, but I don’t believe that.  Mainly because I don’t believe that very very close to 50% of the people in this country—or at least 50% of those who voted—are that sort of person.  I’m a cynic, you may recall, but also a romantic, so I retain just enough optimism to refuse to believe that we have that many Ku Klux Klan supporters, and xenophobes, and male chauvinist douchebags.  Oh, there are a lot of them, I know—I’m related to a whole bunch of them, in fact—but half the country?  I’m just not buying it.  So, if you voted for Trump, but you’re not in one of the above categories, then I’m still having difficulty wrapping my head around it.

Oh, sure: I understand not voting for Clinton.  I didn’t vote for her either.  But you could have not voted at all, or voted for Johnson or Stein (or several others, even less well-known), as I did.  We whinge on and on about only having two choices, but no one put a gun to your head and said “pick one of these two.”  Now, many of my co-liberals are now going to scream at me: “you voted for a third party?!? people like you is why Clinton lost!”  I understand that viewpoint.  But it’s oversimplified.  For instance, I happen to live in California.  As I told my eldest while being bitched out for voting third party, it ain’t like if enough people had voted for Hillary California could’ve gone double-Clinton in the electoral college.  Sure, it’s true that in certain places (such as Florida) the difference between Trump’s votes and Clinton’s votes was smaller than the total votes for Johnson, but to assume Johnson cost Clinton the election means assuming that every disaffected Republican who voted Libertarian would have voted for Hillary if he hadn’t been an option ... and that’s just silly.  There were plenty of Republicans who voted for Johnson—or just plain stayed home—and that’s perfectly reasonable.  But they were never going to vote for Clinton.  And the ultimate point is, I have to believe that if only the Klan-loving, woman-hating extremists had voted for Trump, there’s no way he could have won.  (Note: Technically speaking, he didn’t win.  But the vagaries of our electoral college system are the subject of an entirely different rant.)

So I’m really trying to wrap my brain around the rationale for a rational human being voting for Trump.  Because, you may recall, this is a man who said it was okay to grab women by the pussy.  Now, I’ve heard a few defenses of this comment.  One of them goes like this: it’s just locker-room talk.  As Trump himself said: “It’s just words, people.”  Oh, good: because it’s not like we need the president of the United States to be able to talk to people or anything.  Nope, being a leader never involved actually speaking.  So that’s a moronic defense.  Here’s another one I heard today: we just don’t know what Trump will be like as president, so we need to give him a chance and see what he does.  Well, sure: we also don’t know what Charles Manson would be like as president, so let’s elect him next.  You know why we don’t know what Trump will be like as president?  Because he has no fucking experience.  He’s never been in charge of anything other than his daddy’s money.  So, yeah, we technically speaking don’t know what Trump will be like as a president.  But I know what spoiled rich boys are like, and I know what entitled old white men are like, so I think I can make a pretty good guess.

And, you know what, you could accuse me of stereotyping, and being prejudiced in my own right ... except for that whole “grab-em-by-the-pussy” comment.  It really does all come back to that.  I am prejudiced if I assume that Trump will act in the worst way of entitled rich white men if all I know about him is that’s entitled, rich, white, and male.  But the fact of the matter is, I don’t have to make any assumptions about his actions—I don’t need to pre-judge him.  I can actually judge him, because he’s quite open and outspoken and rather blatant in his distasteful, shameful actions, and his almost pitiful need for attention.  People, this is a man whose handlers no longer trust him with his Twitter account.  But we thought he could be trusted with the most powerful military in the world?  I honestly just don’t get it.

I want to move on.  I want the country to heal, and I want to try to empathize with the disaffected and the disenfranchised and the ignored.  But I’m not sure I can.  Because it seems like a significant number of Americans may not have been racist and misogynist themselves, but they’re apparently okay with having a president who is.  And I’m not okay with that.

__________

* And missing another blog post for you guys.  Sorry about that.

** That I know of.  I voted for three people with no expressed party affiliation, so any or all of them may have been Republican as well.

*** Well, actually, I think one of the Republicans may have been a nutjob too.  But I wasn’t completely sure.

Sanity Restored?

Since I moved entirely across the country, from our nations #2 worst traffic to its #1, I have primarily missed my friends.  My attitude towards friendship is one I hope to explore in a future blog someday; for now let it suffice to say that personal relationships are the thing I most value in life.  So, yes, I’ve missed seeing those people every day to whom I’d grown close.  And that’s it.  Really, nothing else about living on the East Coast was worth crying over.  Oh, perhaps I spent a few moments here and there bemoaning the radical difference in Chinese food (you order chow mein here and they bring you lo mein, for Christ’s sake!).  But that’s hardly a serious worry.  Basically, if everyone I had left behind just had the good sense to move out to California like I did, there would not be a single reason for me to ever regret no longer living in Washington DC.

Well, until yesterday.

For the first time in three and a half years, I actually thought about not living in DC any more and went “bummer.”  The reason?  Why, Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity, of course.

I was listening to NPR on my way home just Friday night, and I heard this curious comment, from Timothy Noah, who is apparently a “senior writer” at Slate:

I have had the growing suspicion that the participants in this rally don’t entirely think of it as a comedy show, anyway. I think that they are mistaking this participation in this rally, they are mistaking for some sort of political statement. That confusion troubles me.

Now, normally I like Slate, but I have to say that Mr. Noah’s confusion troubles me.  The idea that someone might make a political statement that is neither Democratic nor Republican, neither Conservative nor Liberal, neither right nor left, is obviously so inconceivable to Mr. Noah that he can’t even consider it.  No, any attempt to “restore sanity” to our political process is obviously a “comedy show,” of course.  And he sure hopes everyone who goes there knows that they’re just supposed to laugh at the silly men on stage and then go home and get serious about voting.  ‘Cause if those people thought they were making some sort of “political statement” ... well, that would just be sad.  Imagine that! a political statement about reasonableness and compromise!  What a joke!

Now, at this point I have self-identified as a Liberal, because I have not only admitted to watching “The Daily Show” but also to listening to NPR.  Geez, how much more liberal could I get?  Well, obviously I could be watching MSNBC or listening to Air America, but somehow that distinction is lost on most people who lean even slightly to the right.  So I fear I will have to let you know that, if you already think I’m a Liberal at this point, there’s not much point in reading further (not that you should be reading at all, of course: see title of blog).  If you know that people who listen to NPR and Jon Stewart are Liberals, then you already know everything about reasonableness and compromise that you’re going to learn in this lifetime.  So save yourself a giant waste of time and move along.

So the question for those of us who remain is, am I a Liberal?  A famous Winston Churchill misquote (though based on actual quotes from some French dudes) is: “Show me a young Conservative and I’ll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I’ll show you someone with no brains.”  There is something to be said for that line of thought, I suppose.  In American society at least (and I suspect in most Western countries), the older you get, the more you have to deal with monetary reality, and the less you have to deal with sociological pronouncements from academics.  With that sort of climate shift, is it any wonder that you might start caring more about the amount of money that the government removes from your pocket than the disadvantaged members of our society who eventually receive it?  You perhaps have a family now, and you require money to keep them safe and happy, and more money to send your children to school (maybe a private school, and certainly college), and then what about retirement?  You want to take my money and give it to “poor” people?  By God, if you keep on dipping into my wallet like this, I’ll be poor!

So I’m not saying I don’t understand it.  I’m just saying I don’t buy into it.  I know that there are people in our very own “richest country in the world” who are starving to death, and it isn’t because they’re lazy, because they’ve been coddled for too long on our cushy welfare system, or because of some defect of character.  Those who believe this—even very quietly, to themselves—remind me of Ebeneezer Scrooge ... not the fellow from the countless theatrical adaptations, but the fellow from Dickens’ own pen:  Are there no prisons?  And the Union workhouses?  Are they still in operation?  The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?  Ah, but Scrooge, many can’t go there, and many would rather die.  Well, if they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.

This seems to follow, not only very logically, but inevitably, from the proposition that I’m taxed too much.  I’m sorry, but as long as there are people in the streets of my city starving to death, I’m not being taxed too much.  And we can argue that the government’s vast inefficiency is swallowing the money instead of it getting to the people who need it, and we can argue about whether the homeless poeple you see on the streets are actually starving or whether, no, they’re quite well off: they can make more beggging than many people do in an honest day’s work, and blah de blah de blah.  That’s just fiddly bits.  The basic question is whether you believe that you, as someone who is most likely middle-class, as someone who most likely has never had to wonder where your next meal might come from, bear any financial responsibility whatsoever for those less fortunate than you, or whether you believe in saying “fuck ’em.”  You can dress it up and call it capitalism and wax eloquent about it being the foundation of our system, but, in the end, it really is that simple.  At least to me.

So, yeah, I reckon I’m a Liberal, and an old Liberal at that.  I suppose that makes me brainless.  Of course, if you followed that link about Churchill’s misquote above, you perhaps read this: “Surely Churchill can’t have used the words attributed to him. He’d been a Conservative at 15 and a Liberal at 35!”  So at least I’m in good company.  (Not that I was a Conservative at 15, or any other age.  But you know what I mean.)

Now, I’m not entirely a Liberal, of course.  Hardly anyone ever is entirely this or that.  For instance, I’m in favor of the death penalty, and I’m opposed to gun control (for the most part).  But, sure, I’m mostly a Liberal, and I don’t really have any problem with admitting that.  So, as a Liberal, the Conservative is my arch-nemesis, right?

But that’s just silly.  Let’s take my friend Alain.  Now, Alain might say that he’s more of a Libertarian, but, then, I might say that too, and that hardly demonstrates the great political divide between us.  So let’s just stick with the classic right/left thing.  Do I think that Alain is a moron?  No, of course not.  Do I even think that he is a heartless bastard?  I emphatically know that he is not: honestly, he wouldn’t be a friend of mine if he was.  He’s just someone who has a different perspective than I do.  And you may recall that I even pointed out that I understood his perspective.

On the other hand, Alain is one of those people who knows that I’m a Liberal based on my Tv and radio choices.  And that I really don’t understand.  Alain tried to explain to me once why he thought Jon Stewart was a Liberal, even though he makes fun of everyone.  “When he makes fun of Liberals, he makes fun of what they say.  When he makes fun of Conservatives, he makes fun of what they believe.”  Now, for the life of me, I can’t see this on the show.  Obama is someone I supported very strongly for president, but he hasn’t always lived up to my expectations, and Stewart has always been there to point those things out as well, often quite unflatteringly.  He has roasted Nancy Pelosi just as mercilessly as Karl Rove, and lampooned MSNBC every bit as much as Fox.  This past week, he interviewed Obama directly.  When Obama tried to weasel his way out of a question Stewart had to put to him, Stewart came right back and asked the question again.  Did he fail to push as hard as perhaps some Conservatives would have liked?  No doubt.  But he’s played that same softball with many Conservatives as well: the man’s just a polite interviewer.

So I watch Jon Stewart because he’s an equal opportunity critic.  Because he’s sane and reasonable in his interviews, even when talking to people who are decidedly not (check out his Rod Blagojevich interview for a prime example).  Because he calls people out for saying the opposite of what they said yesterday and denying they ever said it, and then runs the tape to prove their hypocrisy.  And he does that to everybody.

So when the man says “let’s hold a rally to restore sanity to political discourse,” I do think that’s a political statement, not a comedy show.  (Colbert is a whole ‘nother can of worms.)  And I think it’s a statement worth making.  And that’s why I ever so briefly wished I still lived in DC yesterday.  So that I could join the throngs of people making the bold statement: I disagree with you, but I’m pretty sure you’re not Hitler.

Maybe I’ll get a T-shirt.