Monday March 22, 2021
It takes me a long time to understand dreams and behaviors. In fact, I’m terrible at it. I remember being in a psych class. The professor described a dream whose meaning was so obvious that he was using it as an illustrative example, and I’m like, “Huh? What?”
It took me years, decades in fact to be able to say, “I don’t get it,” when other are making comments about how obvious or wonderful something is. Frequently, I have now learned those that are making those “Oh I get it” comments and body language stuff don’t get it at all and are just playing along. I guess in hopes that they won’t get called on by the teacher kind of thing, or picked on by the bully.
I watched the interchange between Dr. Fauci and Rand Paul that happened last Thursday. I’ve been turning it over in my mind. I’ve commented on it in my writing, but something was still bothering me about it. AS Robert Persig wrote in his book “Lila,” those things are your mental in-box. Thoughts you haven’t finished working on. By keeping such things “as a brick in your lap” to be taken up and examined again what I am trying to do is fit the pieces together, to make sense of it. It’s a useful technique.
Yesterday, in an unrelated conversation the key came. It seems obvious now.
I was describing how the person running a group I am in posted “The Rules” of the group right after I had posted something. Obviously, in her mind I had broken the rules. This was the second time she had done this to me, even after I had asked her to tell me privately if there was something I had posted that was not in keeping with the rules.
My friend said, “That’s bullying.”
Yup. That’s it. And that is what Rand Paul was trying to do to Dr. Fauci.
In fact that seems to be what Rand Paul does every time I’ve watched Rand Paul do or say anything.
What made this so much like Kabuki theater is that this is what I saw the last time Paul and Fauci were in a meeting. It was set piece theater. The only difference was that the last time Fauci started off with a statement that said what Paul was saying was not only wrong but that he had been saying it a lot, and that it was dangerous so he, Fauci, wanted to speak to the science and make sure Paul and others understood the scientific facts.
This time what Paul was trying to bully Fauci into saying what he, Paul, believed, or at least what he wanted Fauci to say. Paul couldn’t straight up ask Fauci, he had to try and belittle and accuse Fauci of various egregious things as well.
An honest conversation would have been Paul saying that he hadn’t seen anything that supported the idea of wearing a mask after you were vaccinated that did any good.
Fauci could have then responded to that.
But that isn’t what Paul did. What he did was to say that there was no scientific study to support the idea of whether wearing a mask after you got vaccinated did any good and why didn’t Fauci just say that, and why did he keep advising us all to wear masks when it was a liberal hoax and wearing two masks was just theater?
Fauci for his part was kind enough to say that Paul had some truth behind what he was saying, in that if there was only the first kind of virus out there then what he said would make some sense. But as Fauci pointed out, repeatedly, there are now several variants and it is not known for certainty how much immunity a vaccinated person has against these variants. Yes, they have some immunity, because there will be “a spill over” effect, but how much is not known.
Fauci could have said at that point that there aren’t studies to say and that he was just going on his expertise and knowledge in dealing with infectious diseases. I mean we’ve had two months of vaccinating people? And Paul wants to know where the studies are?
Maybe Dr. Paul doesn’t understand that studies take time to do?
Paul continued to try and beat up and bully Fauci. There were no real fireworks here, as several media outlets tried to report, and depending on the outlet depended on whom they thought socked it to whom.
I don’t like when someone bullies. When Paul first ran for Senate he was shown to be a con and a phony, claiming to be “a board certified ophthalmologist” in a board he created to certify himself and trying to tell folks he was board certified. If that is board certified then I’m a doctor based on my degree awarded to me by The Rick Kinnaird University (and storm door company*).
* A shoutout to Bob Newhart’s “Grace L Ferguson Airline and Storm Door Company.”
What surprised me were the comments below in the Youtube piece I watched. Many of them called Fauci a liar and made fun of his stature. WTF?
I tried a new technique I’ve been learning “pulling the lens back for a higher level view.” I wondered who else had this sort of behavior?
Ted Cruz,
Mike Lee,
Tom Cotton,
Ron Johnson,
Rush Limbaugh…
It seems to me that the attitude of many of these “conservative” right wing folks is to bully. Bully experts and in so doing denigrate them and then to explain to their audience the new facts, which we would know as lies.
It is remarkable to me that people are so gullible, but they are.
Maybe, gullible is not the right word. They are desperate to believe the lie. That is for sure. Why? That is the harder question.
In this case believing the lie could get them killed. They could die from Covid. How many news articles have I seen, heard, or read where someone is in the hospital fighting to breathe saying something like, “I thought this was a hoax. It’s no joke.” ?
One article I heard on the radio talked about a intensive care nurse saying that people came into the ER with Covid and refused to believe it. It had to be something else. Why? Because Covid wasn’t real. Then they got transferred to the ICU and they kept complaining. Why wouldn’t the staff tell them what was wrong? Covid wasn’t real. The interviewer asked when did the stop complaining?
When a tube was shoved down their throat so they could breathe.
And when the tube came out?
They were either dead or complaining again.
So I propose for all those who don’t like the nanny state and don’t want to be told what to do that you follow up with ACTION!
1 – If you get a $1400 check from the government you don’t cash it.
2 – If you are getting that Social Security check form the government that you stop it and don’t cash it.
3 – Get off Medicare and and Obamacare
Don’t let those liberal things that the Democrats managed to get passed ,over the strenuous objections of the Republicans, be part of your life.
Go instead with the Republican plans.
I outline the Republican plans below:
Economics – Reaganomics, W, and Trump all based on trickle down economics. Under Trump they passed a $1.9T tax cut, which did little to improve the economy. They are complaining that this $1.9T economic package that the Democrats have passed will be an economic disaster. We’ll be able to look at the economic facts later this year and see which plan was better for the economy and think about which was better for you.
Healthcare – here is the Republican plan for the last 40 years:
.
.
.
End of Republican Healthcare plan.
Oh, I forgot the last press secretary for the past president handed the 60 Minutes folks a giant bunch of paper, like 1700 pages, and said it was their plan. When the reporters looked through the pages they couldn’t find a plan.
This is similar to when Obama went to Baltimore to see the Republicans who were meeting to come up with something and Paul Ryan had written up a budget. Obama opened to a page randomly and read what was on it. After reading the paragraph he said, “You can’t govern based on that.” It was obviously so. Ryan had written a wish, not a policy plan. In fact the whole “budget” had no numbers in it; other than page numbers.
Pack the courts with young right wing unqualified people, but they are right wing.
Restrict voting.
Cut the arts programs, welfare assistance, and anything that helps people by giving them money.
Cut taxes for the .1 of 1%.
Cut corporate taxes.
Cut regulations even if they make sense and keep us safe.
Get rid of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, by privatizing them.
Anywhere there is money in the federal government let their friends and donors run things.
End of Republican plans for the last 40 or 50 years. Did I miss anything?
So? How’s life?
PS Moon over Maine
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