I am on a Facebook diet.
I don't blame Facebook for being toxic. I blame Americans--me included--for wanting toxic stuff.
I still look at a few Facebook posts that involve fall colors, vacations, and pictures of children, happy stuff. Stuff from junior high classmates. But then I leave without looking around. It's a bad neighborhood.
The media is full of news about how Facebook manipulates us by referring things that reinforce our anger, insularity, outrage, and tribal ignorance. We liked "civic low quality news," because it made us angry. It was like eating Red Hots candies. It hurts, and for some reason we like to savor the hurt.
I don't blame Facebook. They aren't a mental health fiduciary. They are a merchant. Merchants display and stock what people want to buy.
Facebook is on us.
Let me continue in that vein.
I don't blame Big Oil, either. My friends on the environmental left are angry with oil companies and blame them for the climate crisis. I don't. I blame us. We Americans are dependent on electricity, most of which is generated with fossil fuels of one kind or another, still mostly coal. We built interstate highways and live in single-family houses in spread out neighborhoods, so of course we are dependent on cars. Or actually trucks. The most popular vehicles in America are the Ford F150, the Chevy Silverado, and the Dodge Ram.
Big Oil gives us the fuel we need to live our lives. If fueling stations stopped selling gasoline and diesel today, by the second day the country would be in panic, with people stranded and trucks parked on the side of roads. By the fourth day we would need martial law. We couldn't get anywhere and neither could people we depend on for food, power, water--for everything. We would freeze to death in the dark if roving gangs of people desperate for food, water, and whatever gasoline we still had in our tanks didn't kill us first.
Blaming oil companies for climate change is hypocritical. It displays our moral blindness. How can we condemn the people who sell us what we demand? Climate change isn't on Big Oil. It is on us.
I don't blame Biden. Progressive Democrats are disappointed that he is not delivering transformational change. Give him a break. He doesn't have the votes in the senate. Progressives think their policies are popular but they didn't elect progressive Democrats in swing states and House Districts. Progressive Democrats talk like they deserve the fruits of victory because they came close to a majority and their cause is righteous. That is the same error Trump's supporters make, thinking they deserve the presidency because they came close in 2020 and they think Trump righteous. Progressives turned off a lot of voters--incredibly enough, about as many as Trump turned off. They failed themselves.
I don't blame Joe Manchin, either. He told liberals an unpleasant truth, that he has never been a liberal nor pretended to be, which is why he is a Democrat who gets elected in West Virginia. Liberals should quit complaining about Manchin and start wondering why they lose White working class voters by four-to-one margins, then do something to fix that. It isn't happening and it's getting worse. The results in Virginia indicate that the Democratic candidate for governor, Terry McAuliffe, lost western rural counties, the ones adjacent to West Virginia, by a margin of five-to-one.
No one, including myself, likes thinking that the problem is with oneself. It is more pleasant to blame Facebook, the oil companies, Biden, and Manchin for some of the frustrations we feel. The most psychologically pleasant thing to do would be to add a comment to a Facebook post that complains about the climate crisis saying the whole thing is because Biden is weak and Manchin is a jerk from a coal state and he should be primaried.
Democrats need to reconnect with working Americans, most of whom are patriotic, religious, protective of their families, resentful at being called racist, and suspicious of people making top-down rules that appear to bear harder on themselves than it does on the rule-maker.
Crazy and extreme and dangerous as the Trump-ified GOP has become, and as much as voters don't like them, it turns out that in Virginia, and lots of other places, voters seem to dislike and distrust Democrats even more.
15 comments:
Most Americans have it pretty good. Anyone with adequate food, water, clothing and shelter is better of than much of the world. For the most part we have what are called “first world problems.”
On the other hand, we also have world problems: global warming, rising sea levels, out-of-control forest fires, superstorms, etc. But even these we are individually responsible for. It’s pretty obvious that governments are part of the problem, so it’s up to us. We can all take advantage of renewable energy sources, use less gas, avoid plastic, etc.
As Pogo was pointing out, all of our problems are due to our own behavior.
Sometimes it is another's fault.
By blaming everyone one actually gets out their own responsibility; "It's all of us" and the perennial favorite, "Both sides are the same".
No, there are victims and perpetrators, and predators.
Big oil does have responsibility to be a player in developing alternate energy, which they are, to be fair. Just not enough. Let's start by taking a look at the $20b a year subsidies they get. Individuals can help by conserving, and government can provide incentives, but it's those who are in denial of climate change (Republicans) who are most guilty of impeding progress.
Progressives drive Priuses (Priusi?), and some need a big truck to make a living. They will mostly be electric soon.
As far as Virginia is concerned, although no one will say it, Democrats had a flawed candidate. They essentially lost the election in the primary by choosing a moderate, post Clinton OWM who failed to energize young and minority voters. Republicans ginned up their base with mask mandate boogiemen and CRT BS (white supremacist dog whistle) and, just like 2016, moderate Democrat hubris and voter apathy guaranteed a loss.
...and Sen. "Joe Coal" Manchin is obstructing important legislation that is supported by a majority. "If it quacks like a duck"...
...and Facebook is a sociopathic monopoly that is out of control and doing damage to our society.
"making top-down rules that appear to bear harder on themselves than it does on the rule-maker." Like what? Gun control? Vaccine mandates? Stop signs?
Don't get me started!
A "Senstor" representing .05 % of the population is derailing HIS? PRESIDENT'S AGENDA. TO MUCH POWER VESTED IN A COAL LACKEY. PERIOD
We I tried for Senator but got Senstor....let's go for "Non-sensitor" "Too much " the typos are not due to inebriation just pudgy fingers :-<
Yes, we can blame corporations for lying about the harmful effects of their products. Opioids, tobacco, lead, oil.
Mostly I blame capitalism and religion.
Remember: Companies and cartels that produce and sell oil, drugs or whatever are meeting our demand. That's what they do. If we want them to stop, we need to consume less.
Rick brought up the Virginia election. The only way a Republican could have won is through massive voter fraud - it was rigged!!!!
It will be interesting to see whether election officials receive the sort of death threats they're subjected to when a Republican loses.
I don't blame Donald Trump. The vast majority of the (non-college-educated) working class has been abandoned and scorned by the college-educated, smug, Prius-driving Democratic elites. They were an entirely untapped political market until Trump came along.
The response of the Democratic elites? To call those working class voters "racists, "deplorables," etc. Fighting words. And we saw that fight come back on the Democrats last night.
Eventually, one of the two political parties will decide that they want to appeal to the working class. Romney-style catering to the rich didn't work. Progressive catering to the woke has also not worked.
My bet is that the Republicans will catch a clue first. Too many Democrats have their heads inserted way too far into a woke place where the sun of common sense doesn't shine.
Actually, we call white nationalists racist. Why? because they are. And we call people who don't give a rip about the attack on our Capitol deplorable. Why? Because they are.
Sounds like somebody "woke" on the wrong side of the bed this morning.
Keep it up Mike, and you won’t like 2022 or 2024 any better than 2021.
Sorry, Michael, but facts are facts. The leader of your party is a sociopath and compulsive liar who tried to overthrow the government. Yet Republicans love him because like attracts like.
Obviously Democrats need something more to run on than being against Trump, but god forbid that we should let the Insurrection Party take over.
Semi-random thoughts, of course in order of importance:
—Thanks to this blog I see Ferrara Pan candies for the first time in years. Always colored, super-flavored crunchy balls in a small rectangular box. Alexander the Grape, Lemon Heads, Cherry Clan, Johnny Apple Treats, etc.
—And the redoubtable Pogo, though I can’t imagine 1971 was the first airing of his classic admonition. I miss Churchy. The first or second Earth Day? I almost expected to see Ira Einhorn lurking amongst the other garbage.
—Agreed, no need to blame Biden any more than Trump. They are symptoms, not the disease. Poor Democrats had best find another hobbyhorse, and soon. Youngkin is more a Mitt Romney, but no Trump lapdog.
—Democrats today, especially the TV analysts, after last night’s multi-state debacles seem to think anyone not visible from their navels, or in their hand mirrors, is a “white supremacist”. Pharisees won’t win in ‘22 or ‘24.
Convenience and inertia, the ad , 10 at a time (bumper) then 10 more and then a talking air head. Station break and another 10 ads. Finally we are beaten to submission. Purchase the object from another country whose container ship pollutes to here from there and back again for more as the truck then delivers and returns as we speed to the store and back again. Then dump the pamper that lasts a 1000 years and the worn out instant gratification mood ring that can’t and will not glow any longer no matter what. And the jobs, oh, the jobs. Extract, grow, pollute, slash and chop and on and on. Then wars. Finally Jesus is sent back and reappears and reigns for a thousand years over total waste and destruction and extinction with hooded eyes. Thy will be done, Amen.
I'm curious, Mr. Trigoboff; what would you call those "ignored White working class" folks who marched through Charlotte carrying Confederate and Nazi flags, shouting "Jews will not replace us" ? Or those 'peaceful tourists" beating Capitol Police with American Flags, while untold thousands of dollars in Damage to the Capito Building ?
I’d call them a disreputable sideshow, not the main attraction.
Ad your point a strawman.
Entered by Peter Sage on behalf of John Coster:
Good question LD and thank you for the good insights Jim. So Xi is 68 and maybe he’s got 20 years left to fill his ego before it gets taken from him (one way or another). Im always surprised by the boundless avarice of leaders throughout history who have been willing to sacrifice or impoverish countless people for a cosmically few moments of being “in power”- only to be forgotten or despised in the dustbins of history.
John Coster
Post a Comment