Saturday January 8, 2022
Item – In her book “Strongmen” Mussolini to the Present, author Ruth Ben-Ghiat outines one of the characteristics of authoritarians is their ability to play the victim. Hitler did it and Trump has done it to a tee.
The other point is that they will use this to tell a lie and once believed there is little or nothing they can’t tell their followers that won’t be believed
Item – A woman who writes for Politico and follows the Supreme Court was astonished at the as she described “surreal nature” of the conservative justices toward the two cases brought against Biden’s imposition of vaccine mandates. She was stunned to hear Justice Alito saying he wasn’t sure the government had the authority to impose such mandates, and questioned whether OSHA could do so. They are ignoring the clear and present danger that the virus poses. Then the conservative justices seemed to doubt whether the vaccines were not dangerous in some hidden yet unknown way.
Item – One of the authors of the book “Nudge” was interviewed. Nudge is the idea that you can influence people to make decisions you want them to make by providing subtle cues. For instance putting healthy fruit at eye level in a super market. Or if you want to discourage some behaviors make it harder and less convenient. Take voting, if you get rid of drop boxes, early voting and move polling places far from the population you can anticipate fewer people voting.
Item – The average white voter take 6 to 7 minutes to vote. The average black voter takes 42 to 53 minutes to vote.
item – An interesting montage was played on Jan 6th on The Reid Out. The show played Trump’s words about the Jan 6th Insurrection where he said there was a lot of love and the film footage showed the police fighting to stop the surging mob.
We are in dangerous times.
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