Attention Must Not Always Be Paid
As species continue to go extinct, our oceans continue to warm, our political system continues to calcify, and our economy continues to divide into the haves and have-nots, my Facebook feed is filled, once again, with heated debates over moralistic crusades over “identity”:
- Jill Biden’s use of the honorific “Doctor”
- The annual holiday demand to “Keep Christ in Christmas”
- The continuing “They/Them” and other pronoun sagas
- And now “Latinx” vs “Latino”
To say these issue are not important is an understatement. They are not only unimportant—emotional assertions about “being offended” that have little or no real-world effect—they can’t even be resolved, just fought over.
So, instead of debating them—insisting on their importance or, if you are on the other side, mocking them—how about we give ourselves permission to not care, to be actively indifferent.
The next time you see such a “debate,” delete it from your feed. If someone asks your opinion simply say, “I see where you are coming from, but I don’t have an opinion.” And if someone insists that you must have an opinion—that “Silence equals violence” or “Christianity is threatened”—you can smile and say, sorry, for me, “Silence equals sanity” and religion should be a private matter.
And then ask them if they are aware that 80 percent of the species in the Arctic could be extinct in the next ten years. Or that soon half the jobs in the country will be replaced by AI. Or that two states called Dakota, with fewer than 2 million residents, get four Senators, and California, with a population of 40 million, gets only two.
Some issues are worth our attention. Others aren’t.
This coup d’état est fini
Of course Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives will seat the 100+ Republican congressmen who endorsed Trump’s attempted coup before the Supreme Court, but couldn’t she do something to indicate the seriousness of their unpatriotic, tribal and dangerous subversion of the U.S. Constitution, perhaps hold public hearings on whether they should be seated and how dangerous their behavior was?
The ring leaders could be called before the committee to justify their treasonous actions and cross-examined by counsel. Legal scholars could discuss the Constitutional provisions for the transfer of power and the dangers of subverting them. Experts on cults could testify, too, and suggest ways to deprogram people. Historians could explain how unique—and both dangerous and ridiculous—this moment is in U.S. history.
I’m just thinking out loud so would be interested in the thoughts of people more informed than myself.
The Supreme Court—America’s Diaper Genie
The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority, with half of those six appointed by Trump. Yet it took the Court only 24 hours to throw out his case as completely baseless. All nine justices didn’t simply reject Trump’s claim that he won the election; they refused to hear it. They didn’t say he was wrong—that would have required taking him seriously—they went further, saying his case was so empty it wasn’t even worth considering, so foolish that their refusal to hear it didn’t even merit an explanation.
Trump is undeniably the biggest loser in presidential history, a joke who became president only because of the vagaries of the Electoral College, an embarrassment soundly rejected by voters after one term, a trumped-up little tyrant hated and laughed at around the globe, a brat throwing a tantrum who will be history’s unanimous choice as the worst president of all time, a con man and a grifter, a common crook, the most unpatriotic, inarticulate, narcissistic, incompetent, clownish and mendacious man to ever darken the doorway of the White House in our 240-year history.
The only good thing one can say about Trump is that he is about to be over, tossed out like a used diaper. The most glorious moment of his few, short years on the national stage will be the first time we hear a prison door clang shut behind him as he’s led into the cell where he will die.
Kentucky Waltz
Let’s not forget that we—the residents of Blue states—are not only suffering due to the greed, stupidity and corporate control of Mitch McConnell and the Trumpublicans in Congress who are holding up Covid relief; we are paying for it.
Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky would have the economic health of Mexico—a poor, developing country—without the hundreds of millions of dollars sent to its backward, lazy residents every year by hardworking taxpayers in California, New York and Minnesota. For every 40 cents McConnell’s hillbilly-constituents pay in federal taxes, they get a dollar back. These Republicans are not just crooks and liars; they are leeches.
The states with the most political power are also the poorest, dumbest and most dependent. They suck us dry but refuse to acknowledge it. We pay the bills; they have the power. That cannot last.
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