Below is how I described things 7 long years ago. I couldn't then have thought things could get much worse. I guess I was wrong.
No one was paying attention. Do I have your attention now? Or better put, do these facts and conclusions have your attention now.
I wrote this at a time when I thought if you explained things to people you could change their minds. I turned out to be so completely wrong about that. Confronting people with the facts and Truth makes them feel cornered. For far more people than I would have believed have their opinions ruled by their emotions. Especially the ones that are, can I say, have less gifted brains than others. Often you can't explain things to them that they can understand. Conspiracy becomes their fall back. Once somebody's headed down the road to thinking that facts themselves are corrupted by conspiracy, well what can you do? They think it makes them smarter than you because that they figured out this conspiracy that everybody in the world has to be part of, except for them and a few other people, and you haven't.
Sometimes who's in charge of this conspiracy change to fit the circumstance but it comes down to the same kinds of conspiracies that have been promoted for a couple of centuries at least that at their core are anti-Semitic and opens the door to racism.
I've been thinking for several years that the Republican Party was on its way out just based on sheer demographics. I didn't expect that convulsions of their death throes would be this violent.
After having been wrong couple hot times it's hard to make predictions. I was wrong about Reagan (Back to the Future Doc is asked "who's president?" Ronald Reagan " the actor? Nawwwwwwww!" in his best Jim Ignatowski voice.) and of course now with Trump. In fairness to me even Trump couldn't believe it. Ivanka's tears were not tears of joy.
But I just cannot see how 2018 doesn't just turn into a democratic route. I know, gerrymandering. Still, with all the people that aren't running on the Republican side and the likelihood the Republican nomination process is likely to somebody even crazier than Trump it's hard to imagine we don't get both houses back. But still it's going to be Race by race seat-by-seat grunt work to get it done. They will have lots and lots of money and I know Democrats are still facing a fundraising backlash from Working Class People who coughed up money to Hillary's campaign and ended up wondering what they got for it. I know because I'm one of them. I remember being told in the fundraising calls in the last month that money contributed to her campaign might be spent on down-ticket campaigns because her campaign had so much money they didn't know what to do with it.
But then things get a little harder to figure. It's impossible to predict to what the lengths Trump would go to to retain the presidency. When the Republican Party came to Nixon and said it's time to go he understood he couldn't survive the process. At least he didn't go crazy. If Republicans come to Trump the same way he may be the one that becomes intellectually cornered and doubles down and falls back to the deep state conspiracy views that Steve Bannon fed him early on.
This is what I wrote seven years ago.
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I sometimes like to hang around Fox News websites and check out the silly things they manufacture outrage about. Ok, not really. I follow a link to a story there and can’t resist the urge to look at the comments.
Today it was a story about the T-shirts left on the chairs for the people who came to the tribute for the victims of the Arizona massacre. First of all, many seem "disgusted" because they say the behavior was "outrageous" in the memorial. Except it wasn't a memorial, it was a tribute. Words have meanings. A tribute is different than a memorial.
Then, there was a person who said they were disgusted by… they didn’t exactly say just what they were disgusted about but added something about we used to be a great country, which I guess means we aren’t anymore, which sounds less than patriotic to me. Personally, I can still make a case for American greatness, especially in the “compared to what” way of thinking.
Yes, what a great country it was; until big corporations shipped manufacturing oversees, closed thousands of factories, shipped every job they can think of to the lowest bidder while bankers took money that wasn't theirs and lost it in casino style gambles. Who could blame them? They could win, but they couldn't lose because they knew they were too big to fail and money from American taxpayers (and the Chinese) would bail them out. (Remember, TARP has Bush's signature on it. Don't get me wrong, Obama would have signed it too, there was really no choice).
Since the dot com boom, Wall Street traders had referred to themselves as "Kings of the universe". Still, they lost the bet and caused the collapse of a house of cards built on improperly rated bundles of home mortgages that caused credit lines to freeze around the world. Most people don't understand what the next month would have been like if Congress hadn't passed and Bush hadn't signed that bill. The entire capitalist trading system around the planet would have failed. Goods, including food, would have piled up on the docks in a world where everyone has adopted "just in time" flow of their stuff.
There are no warehouses holding large quantities of goods anymore, again, including food. And it's not just international trade that relies on lines of credit. We don't produce enough food to feed ourselves, (unless you're good with raw grain) and even if we did there would be the question of whether the credit freeze would have stopped the transportation industry.
The stock market tanked and the bail out money stopped a collapse. The only thing that stopped the economic collapse was the bailout bill. The only thing that separated us from the Great Depression was a run on the banks. Google that one. If you weren't nervous about money that you didn't see in green right in front of you, you weren't paying attention. By late October or November everyone would have been going to the bank to get their money, but the money wasn't there. In a bank panic the money is there one day and the next day it's gone. It wasn't yours one day and someone else's the next, it's just gone.
This is what Barack Obama inherited when he took the oath in Jan 2009.
So, this is my way of saying you have a perfect right to be upset, you're just upset at the wrong people for the wrong reason. Your anger is misplaced.
This is the information age. Information used to be hard to come by. It is not now. I implore people who are so outraged to use their search engines to find information that is outside the circle of people that are feeding your feelings, not your intelligence. If someone tells you something, ask them for a source. Sourcing information is the most critical thing there is right now because there are so many people that just stand up and say things as though they are true, when in fact they are not. Just because they may look like you or sound like you or seem like a member of your tribe, as I like to say, doesn't mean what they are saying is true.
So, again, tell me what you are disgusted about. I'll listen; just don't expect me to feed it right back to you undigested.
No one was paying attention. Do I have your attention now? Or better put, do these facts and conclusions have your attention now.
I wrote this at a time when I thought if you explained things to people you could change their minds. I turned out to be so completely wrong about that. Confronting people with the facts and Truth makes them feel cornered. For far more people than I would have believed have their opinions ruled by their emotions. Especially the ones that are, can I say, have less gifted brains than others. Often you can't explain things to them that they can understand. Conspiracy becomes their fall back. Once somebody's headed down the road to thinking that facts themselves are corrupted by conspiracy, well what can you do? They think it makes them smarter than you because that they figured out this conspiracy that everybody in the world has to be part of, except for them and a few other people, and you haven't.
Sometimes who's in charge of this conspiracy change to fit the circumstance but it comes down to the same kinds of conspiracies that have been promoted for a couple of centuries at least that at their core are anti-Semitic and opens the door to racism.
I've been thinking for several years that the Republican Party was on its way out just based on sheer demographics. I didn't expect that convulsions of their death throes would be this violent.
After having been wrong couple hot times it's hard to make predictions. I was wrong about Reagan (Back to the Future Doc is asked "who's president?" Ronald Reagan " the actor? Nawwwwwwww!" in his best Jim Ignatowski voice.) and of course now with Trump. In fairness to me even Trump couldn't believe it. Ivanka's tears were not tears of joy.
But I just cannot see how 2018 doesn't just turn into a democratic route. I know, gerrymandering. Still, with all the people that aren't running on the Republican side and the likelihood the Republican nomination process is likely to somebody even crazier than Trump it's hard to imagine we don't get both houses back. But still it's going to be Race by race seat-by-seat grunt work to get it done. They will have lots and lots of money and I know Democrats are still facing a fundraising backlash from Working Class People who coughed up money to Hillary's campaign and ended up wondering what they got for it. I know because I'm one of them. I remember being told in the fundraising calls in the last month that money contributed to her campaign might be spent on down-ticket campaigns because her campaign had so much money they didn't know what to do with it.
But then things get a little harder to figure. It's impossible to predict to what the lengths Trump would go to to retain the presidency. When the Republican Party came to Nixon and said it's time to go he understood he couldn't survive the process. At least he didn't go crazy. If Republicans come to Trump the same way he may be the one that becomes intellectually cornered and doubles down and falls back to the deep state conspiracy views that Steve Bannon fed him early on.
This is what I wrote seven years ago.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I sometimes like to hang around Fox News websites and check out the silly things they manufacture outrage about. Ok, not really. I follow a link to a story there and can’t resist the urge to look at the comments.
Today it was a story about the T-shirts left on the chairs for the people who came to the tribute for the victims of the Arizona massacre. First of all, many seem "disgusted" because they say the behavior was "outrageous" in the memorial. Except it wasn't a memorial, it was a tribute. Words have meanings. A tribute is different than a memorial.
Then, there was a person who said they were disgusted by… they didn’t exactly say just what they were disgusted about but added something about we used to be a great country, which I guess means we aren’t anymore, which sounds less than patriotic to me. Personally, I can still make a case for American greatness, especially in the “compared to what” way of thinking.
Yes, what a great country it was; until big corporations shipped manufacturing oversees, closed thousands of factories, shipped every job they can think of to the lowest bidder while bankers took money that wasn't theirs and lost it in casino style gambles. Who could blame them? They could win, but they couldn't lose because they knew they were too big to fail and money from American taxpayers (and the Chinese) would bail them out. (Remember, TARP has Bush's signature on it. Don't get me wrong, Obama would have signed it too, there was really no choice).
Since the dot com boom, Wall Street traders had referred to themselves as "Kings of the universe". Still, they lost the bet and caused the collapse of a house of cards built on improperly rated bundles of home mortgages that caused credit lines to freeze around the world. Most people don't understand what the next month would have been like if Congress hadn't passed and Bush hadn't signed that bill. The entire capitalist trading system around the planet would have failed. Goods, including food, would have piled up on the docks in a world where everyone has adopted "just in time" flow of their stuff.
There are no warehouses holding large quantities of goods anymore, again, including food. And it's not just international trade that relies on lines of credit. We don't produce enough food to feed ourselves, (unless you're good with raw grain) and even if we did there would be the question of whether the credit freeze would have stopped the transportation industry.
The stock market tanked and the bail out money stopped a collapse. The only thing that stopped the economic collapse was the bailout bill. The only thing that separated us from the Great Depression was a run on the banks. Google that one. If you weren't nervous about money that you didn't see in green right in front of you, you weren't paying attention. By late October or November everyone would have been going to the bank to get their money, but the money wasn't there. In a bank panic the money is there one day and the next day it's gone. It wasn't yours one day and someone else's the next, it's just gone.
This is what Barack Obama inherited when he took the oath in Jan 2009.
So, this is my way of saying you have a perfect right to be upset, you're just upset at the wrong people for the wrong reason. Your anger is misplaced.
This is the information age. Information used to be hard to come by. It is not now. I implore people who are so outraged to use their search engines to find information that is outside the circle of people that are feeding your feelings, not your intelligence. If someone tells you something, ask them for a source. Sourcing information is the most critical thing there is right now because there are so many people that just stand up and say things as though they are true, when in fact they are not. Just because they may look like you or sound like you or seem like a member of your tribe, as I like to say, doesn't mean what they are saying is true.
So, again, tell me what you are disgusted about. I'll listen; just don't expect me to feed it right back to you undigested.
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