(diary)
Fri 7 Feb 2020
Every week is exhausting and I don’t want to write and think about what is happening.
Just today, in casual conversation, I spoke with a guy who said–politics not having been broached prior–that it’s stupid to think that the political climate is worse than it’s ever been. This is the same guy who once said that he doesn’t follow political news because you can’t trust anyone. Yes, those two ideas express an internal, intellectual contradiction. This is what we’re up against. (Unrelated: he also felt that it was stupid to encrypt medical data because everyone “shares all of their personal information on social media anyway.” I pointed out that encrypted data gives them the choice to reveal what they’re comfortable with revealing. His response was a defensive retreat, explaining that he just found it “humorous” that people stress over medical privacy while at the same time revealing medical conditions. This is a corollary to reality TV syndrome: watch people make bad decisions in life so that you can feel superior. This form is: label others’ decisions bad so that you can feel superior. (The mood of the conversation ended poorly.))
Monday: The Democrats fuck up the Iowa caucuses with an inscrutable process that combined casual, populist mechanics with paper+digital voting with ranked voting. Chaos ensued.
Tuesday: Romney crosses party lines. Watch Colbert’s intellectually impassioned commentary. It makes me cry.
And, parenthetically, I need to read A Man For All Seasons.
(My memory, even just on Friday, is fragmentary at this point. I had said previously that the fire hose of offenses and lies makes us forget all specifics.)
Wednesday: SOTU. Shameful is a meaningless word. The lies were… non-stop. The spectacles were TV-valuable. Rush Limbaugh was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom (hereon: the presidential medal of freedom). A black, female 4th grader was given a scholarship. A vet was reunited with his family in a Surprise Reveal. Republicans chanted “four more years!” in chilling repetition to the President’s repeated suggestions of 8/12/16 more years.
Thursday (?): Prayer Breakfast. He declares that Pelosi’s statement of praying for him is a lie, that she prays for something else, that she doesn’t pray at all. There were other things but that should be enough. Threats against those who went against him (was it here or during the later press conference where all were convinced he was high?).
Today: Vindeman brothers were fired. The heads-on-pikes that shockedSHOCKED the R Senators was writ large.
Collins said post-acquittal that the President has learned a lesson. Alexander says the guilt of the crime wasn’t enough and that anyway the President will take it to heart. The other Republicans are worse in that they glibly take the benefit of party solidarity.
I’ve missed a lot in my memories of the past week. I don’t want to write and think about what is happening.