Stupendous achievements. Legacy intact. Physical impairments mounting. Less sharp. Aging. A shell of his former self. Yet, extremely prideful and throughly convinced he can still win.
The Difficulty Of Exiting The Stage
3
I Feel You Joe
“Biden plans to resume campaigning,” the lead article on the New York Times website right now reports, “as more Democrats urge him to quit.”
We know how this ends. With him quitting. But man, I for one salute his stubbornness because whenever everyone tells me to do something, like find a therapist, I instinctively don’t want to do it. And the more they push, the more I resist.
Maybe that’s human nature more generally?
There is one notable difference between Joe and me though. My knee-jerk contrariness does not threaten the future of our democracy.
The Kevin O’Learys Of The World Are Full Of Shit
Some ultrawealthy peeps are moving to states with no income taxes.
O’Leary says he moved from ‘Taxachusetts’ to Florida because he couldn’t afford to live In Boston anymore.
His net worth is reported to be $400m. That should generate $20m/year in passive income. Maybe $12m after taxes? With the price of Celtics’ tickets, it’s hard to get by in Boston on $1m/month.
One question for Mr. Hyperbole. What exactly, after paying taxes, can’t you afford?
More proof, the hardest part of being honest is being honest with one’s self. If O’Leary was honest with himself he’d say he doesn’t want to pay Massachusetts’ taxes. And maybe he wants to be surrounded about other right wing fabulists.
To which I say, have at it. Watch out for wayward amphibians, don’t forget to ask for the Senior Discount, and enjoy the humidity.
Tonight At The Trump National Convention
The theme is “Make America Safe Again”. Which can only mean one thing. The Trumpblicans ignore data that doesn’t align with their feelings.
Turns out, it’s not the Demos who are all in their feelings.
Paragraph To Ponder
“So here is what the Democrats should do. Tomorrow morning Chuck Schumer should put on the floor of the Senate a law mandating strict background checks for all gun purchases. Perhaps tie it to a reinstitution of the 1994 assault weapons ban that Republicans allowed to expire in 2004. Give it a name like the ‘Anti Political and School Violence Act’. Make Republicans shoot it down. Make them say, as Trump himself did after a school shooting massacre in Iowa this year, that we ‘have to get over it, we have to move forward.’ It’s not just an outrage when your right-wing authoritarian hero gets his ear nicked by an assassin’s bullet. It’s an outrage when anyone is shot by a nut with a gun.”
Pause and reflect on the last mindless phrase in an otherwise thoughtful paragraph. . . “a nut with a gun”. Consider an alternative description. A desperate, socially isolated person with nothing to hope for in the future, and therefore, nothing to lose.
An experienced former FBI investigator speculated on the shooter’s motives in ways that made imminent sense and will likely prove correct. The gunman was bullied in school, eccentric, and most importantly, socially awkward and isolated. The investigator called him “The Invisible Man” and compared him to Hinckley who wasn’t political at all. Hinckley shot Reagan to get the attention of an actress.
The Invisible Man can only take so much invisibility and commits a horrific act of violence to be seen. By any means necessary. Now, everyone knows his name and he will be remembered. Extremely negatively of course, but remembered nonetheless.
Ever notice the similarities among mass shooters? White, male, working class, bullied in school, socially isolated, parent(s) with guns.
The descriptor “nuts” suggests a randomness that defies reality. Reality is not every white, male, working class, bullied in school, socially isolated young adult with access to guns decides there’s nothing to lose. But what if 1 or 2 percent do?
That’s the country we’re living in.
The President Did A Presser
And I watched until I had to get ready for my hot dinner date. 37th anniversary and all.
Just now cued up the DVR and watched the second half.
And here’s most of what I was thinking. If I communicated like the President, my students would stop coming to class.
Age Is Just A Number
The Paris Olympics are the distraction we need. ESPN has a groovy interactive feature that allows you to pick Team (d)USA’s men’s hoops starting five. After assembling your team, you get immediate feedback on how they would likely fare.
ESPN’s computer did not like my vet-heavy choices.
Stop stressing about the weather, the Presidential Election, Project 2025, and the possible end of democracy, and pick your starting five. No doubt you will assemble a younger, better team, maybe even a gold medal winning one.
Postscript. My do-over.
Privacy Is So Yesterday
This is how the story starts:
“NEW YORK (AP) — Columbia University said Monday that it has removed three administrators from their positions and will keep them on leave indefinitely after finding that text messages they exchanged during a campus discussion about Jewish life ‘disturbingly touched on ancient antisemitic tropes.'”
Do not mistake what I’m about to write as exonerating the admins. I am not shedding any tears over their dismissals. Be prejudiced and stupid at your own risk.
That said, there’s a troubling story within the larger troubling story. I’ll leave it to you to decide which is more troubling.
The story is that none of the reporting I’ve seen raises a single question about the method used to bust the admins. Someone sitting behind them used their phone to take pics of one of the dismissed admins’ phone on which a group text was running amok.
You may have seen the recent story of some guy on an airplane wearing a wedding ring who allegedly hit on and hooked up with a fellow passenger. A nearby busy body passenger filmed the whole shady thing and then uploaded it to her socials. It went viral, people found his wife, and I don’t know how it turned out. I don’t even know if the vid was edited with the hope of going viral.
Way more interesting than the actual case study was the difference in how the story was told. Specifically, there was lots of conversation about what might be referred to as “electronic etiquette”. More to the point, whose actions were more egregious, the alleged philander or the budding movie maker? That’s an issue upon which reasonable people can disagree, but the point is her total ignoring of his privacy was a part of how the story was written up.
But not in the case of the Columbia grouptexters.
The larger question is whether we want to live in a world where everything we think and write—whether in public, semi-private, or private even—is subject to public approval or disapproval or not?
I can’t help but conclude, based on the complete non-questioning of the surreptitious phone texting photographer’s methods, that few people are sweating the end of privacy.
Maybe all that’s left of the privacy crowd is a sad sack Boomer with a humble blog.
This
Pressing Pause 