BarretWallace

The youngest of my ancient aunts passed away from COVID earlier today.
 
< rant >
 
My mom's side of the family has been heavily into anti-science and faith healing long before our former president and his ilk came along. (Some of them believe it is sinful to go to a doctor or to take medicine but luckily my aunt isn't that extreme.)
 
In any case, most of them bought into the anti-mask and anti-vax misinformation because it matched their beliefs. And they also bought into the "the state can't tell us not to have church services in person" and into comparing it to people in previous centuries who'd been martyred for practicing their faith.
 
So they've gone through the whole pandemic not really buying into social distancing or why you shouldn't go to your nephew's birthday party with the rest of the family and the people in the neighborhood.
 
In any case, my aunt finally came down with it. They think she caught it at church because there's been fifty people in her church congregation of less than 200 adults & teens who've gotten COVID in the last couple of weeks. (Mini-rant: they're charismatics so they do a lot of running around the auditorium, singing/chanting in each other's faces, and crowding around each other laying hands and praying over each other during services. You can lay the hands of an amazing number of people on one individual if everyone is determined enough to give it a try. Last time I visited the church, I was tempted to see if there was a listing in Guinness for the largest number of people to be simultaneously touching a single person. And I don't have a problem with believers giving faith healing a go if that's their cup of tea, but as they were practicing it, at least some of the people getting the benefit from the laying on of hands weren't sick in any shape, form, or fashion. You can find out a lot if you're nosy enough to actually ask.)
 
So in any case, my aunt was sick with COVID and in the hospital.
 
The hospital let the family come in to see her if they wore a gown, mask, and gloves.
 
1) These are completely unvaccinated people. 2) They don't believe in protective gear so there's no reason to suspect that they'll treat the process of wearing it and taking it off seriously. 3) Since when can family come and go out of the room of someone with COVID? 4) The hospital is associated with the Mayo Clinic (but maybe the people who work there think that means mayonnaise?)
 
My wife is angry. She's angry at the family for the totally preventable death. She's angry at that church. She's angry at the hospital but to a lesser extent (at least until one of the visitors come down with COVID). She's angry that the aunt who died was my mom's little sister who my mom made sure got fed as a child by giving up her own food.
 
This isn't the first church-related outbreak for my family. On my dad's side, I nearly lost an aunt and uncle back in November. They'd had their kids take them on a trip out of state to attend a family funeral. They were late getting back in state so they decided to stay overnight with the kids and attend church with them the next day (one of the kids is a pastor).
 
So they go to church along with most of the family who'd gone to the funeral. Almost every adult there that day came down with COVID. In my family, everyone came down with COVID, children included, except for one of a set of twins. My aunt and uncle came very close to death. My uncle got that same shot of whatever it was that Trump got when he was ill (the name of the drug escapes me at the moment).
 
They're not as anti-science/anti-doctor as my mom's side of the family. But as a group they're Trumpy and were before Trump came along (maybe in some ways less Trumpy since Trump came along). But it's still deeply frustrating to deal with during a pandemic.
 
I told my dad before they made the trip that making the trip was a mistake. He patiently listened as I explained to him why from a medical point of view that it was a bad idea (listening patiently was a breakthrough at the time for him). The travelers wanted to stop off at his house for a visit while they were in-state and I begged him not to allow it.
 
I feel very fortunate that the caravan got infected after they left my parent's house rather than before.
 
I am so tired of people dying unnecessarily.
 
< /rant >

Richard Donner, Director of ‘Superman,’ ‘The Goonies’ and ‘Lethal Weapon,’ Dies at 91

This is where it has to start. Fear and hatred thrive on ignorance.
 
But powerful political and economic factions in America have staked their survival on keeping Americans ignorant. That's going to make reforming education that much harder.

I fly a flag in the summer.  You aren't suppose to fly the stars and stripes in the dark, and only in the summer is it already light by the time that I have to leave for work.
 
As for the politics and the meaning of the flag, I refuse to cede either my country or the flag that represents it to racist and fascist.

I’ve never flown the flag, but I’ve also never put up yard signs  and I don’t plaster my car with bumper stickers either.  I’m just not the sort of person who advertises much about myself. 
 
Having said that, I’m inclined to argue that as a symbol the US flag has become too diluted and used as a symbol of division too often to be considered a symbol of unity anymore.  I haven’t read the linked article because I’m disinclined to create yet one more account to do so, but I’ve spent a lot of time on the road for the past years and the number of (what I can only consider to be) bastardized US flags being flown in conjunction with (or in lieu of) “real” US flags is disturbing.  
 
Flags with a blue (or red, or green, or some combination of the two or three) line dividing it in half and the black and white variant.
 
Flags with the stars removed from the blue field and replaced with “2A” and the 2nd amendment printed on the white stripes. 
 
Flags with the standard 50 stars replaced  by a circle of stars surrounding the Roman numeral “III”. 
 
Flags that are the US flag for one half but the Confederate Battle Flag on the other.   Plus one variation I’ve seen which has a hand reaching across and lifting up the US flag to reveal the Confederate Battle Flag underneath. 
 
Flags which have a Trump campaign poster superimposed in the center. I thought I had hallucinated that the first time I saw one…
 
The part which really irritates me the most is that (judging by the politics being expressed) these are mostly the same type of people who “back in the day” would be getting all lathered up about the need for an amendment to protect the flag from being burned and here the flag is being treated like another piece of poster board for politics and profit. 

Very valid questions. Accountability to the electorate is supposed to be one part of that incentive. So are checks and balances like those within the American system, which are intended to prevent any individual or group from gaining so much power that they can work for their own benefit and against the interests of the state.
 
Of course as we've all seen, for those to work they require the majority of government officials to not be purely motivated by selfishness, and the majority of the electorate to be reasonably informed, critical, and responsible. That can no longer be assumed.

I tried explaining that to relatives and others during discussions in the middle of the pandemic...with about as much success at convincing people as you'd expect.

Yeah, I would have loved to attend family events earlier in the year, but waiting until all the adults were fully vaccinated gave me the peace of mind to actually enjoy the one I've been to so far.

I wouldn't bank on that....

I'm afraid I don't see the relevance of your comparison. Nobody in this video is from China. The Chinese system isn't under discussion. The United States is not supposed to be an authoritarian regime engaging in clandestine oppression, it's the wealthiest country in the world, supposedly the land of opportunity. These people are reacting to information that's freely available, from the perspective of their own experiences. The average cost of American health care, and the average lifespan of Americans, compared to all the other countries on that list, are objective statistical facts. The systems these global citizens live under have functioned for decades, in many cases generations. You don't need to be an expert on America to recognize these profound disparities, and that with America's vaunted wealth and resources it doesn't have to be that way. These people are collective proof that it doesn't have to be that way.

I do believe humanity has learned. The fact that so many people -- social historians, politicians, media -- are warning us that this is where the United States is headed if the course isn't corrected, demonstrates it. Many Americans have forgotten, yes, and some elected leaders actually want it. But it's not the same fertile soil as in the early Twentieth Century, and that gives me hope.

I think we learn.
 
Then we forget.

Love may be a stronger motive than hate or fear, but the latter two are much, much easier to access and manipulate.  So, if you want some hope?  It's maybe not that we forget, but that fear- and hate-mongering is now far easier to do than ever before, and on a massively larger level.

The fact that humanity wants to do the fascism thing all over again...less than a 100 years later...just depresses me beyond belief.

Just because he doesn't have all the free publicity anymore doesn't mean that Mr. Trump isn't still doing at least five stupid things a day.

But we have even more people in Congress now taking up his slack.

I wonder if they scream about the "liberal left cancel culture" specifically to provide a distraction from their own shenanigans.

I wonder if they scream about the "liberal left cancel culture" specifically to provide a distraction from their own shenanigans.

I wonder if they scream about the "liberal left cancel culture" specifically to provide a distraction from their own shenanigans.

This right here is why I'm so done.
 
I know way too many people who are essentially only talking about 'the liberal left cancel culture making the world like China' who can't see what the eff is going on in front of their face.  If I stopped talking to people who talked like that I'd have no friends I see face-to-face anymore, and half a family.
 
This is really not good.

I'm pretty cool with just having the extra two months of peace of mind that I wouldn't have had if I'd waited until someone tried bribing me to get vaccinated.