Day 1229 – Boxing, Vampires, and Alternate Realities
Sunday May 31, 2020
154 Days until the election on November 3rd
234 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
When I was in college a friend of mine said, “Have you ever watched two people box that have never boxed before? They stand six to eight feet apart and throw punches at each other.”
There is a new show (well, new to me, it’s only in its second season.) from New Zealand by Jeremy of “Flight of the Concords” fame. This show is a mockumentary about vampires. One of the vampires is “an energy vampire.” He sucks all the life out of you. He’s shown talking about really boring things and the people around him are listless.
What you are asking yourself does this have to do with alternate realities?
Ah well, good question, you see my friend, the “conservative”? Yeah, well we’ve tried to engage off line via email on a few topics. It hasn’t gone well. I know, you’re surprised. (NOT!)
I should have known better you say? I know. I know you know. But at least I tried. Didn’t make any difference did it? You’re right. Of course not. How could it?
In our opening email exchange I asked her what she wanted to talk about. I suggested a few topics I was interested in hearing her opinion on. She replied that I had asked what she wanted to talk about and then I proceeded to tell her what I wanted to talk about. She pulled up the email from months ago that she said I had never answered satisfactorily and that I never back up what I state with any evidence.
I was flabbergasted. If anything I had been quite careful to site examples and evidence. Other than when it was patently obvious and a simple google search would bring up lots of examples. In her list of things she wanted to know my opinion about was really a list of the right wing talking points about what’s wrong with the left. Am I in favor ov abortion when the fetus is so far along? Am I in favor of paying people more in welfare than they can earn at a job and then why would they go to work? Etc.
I was also admonished for siting others. She wanted to know my opinions, not others.
I asked her two topics in my email that she criticized me for bringing up what I wanted to talk about when I had asked her what she wanted to talk about. They were: 1) how did she think Trump had handled the pandemic versus say how Obama handled the Ebola outbreak? And 2) what did she think about the Laffer Curve?
I brought up The Laffer Curve in response, I believe, to her mentioning it.
I included in a follow up email where I sent her links to two of my screeds: the one outlining the initial discussion and the one where I explained the problem with the Laffer Curve.
Her responses were – well, here’s a summary:
It was too early to tell on Trump and the pandemic. She didn’t remember much of what Obama did. This seemed to be not only in relation to Ebola, but in general. She hadn’t brought up the Laffer Curve, I had, and this was just another example of my wanting to talk about what I wanted to talk about. As far as my two screeds went, she’d have to read them later.
And if you wanted to talk economists she liked she mention Kudlow and someone else.
Kudlow? Fucking Kudlow? He’s not an economist. He’s a blowhard on Fox who pretends to know something about the economy, but as far as I know he gives an opinion devoid of any fact. I stand corrected. I just looked him up on Wikipedia. He actually has some economic credentials. His bio is interesting. I wonder if any of his Fox followers know he was in SDS? (Look it up.) He used to support left wing politicians and causes but switched to right wing when he started to work for Reagan. He described himself as a “Reagan Supply sider,” and advocated cutting taxes and doing deregulation. The paragraph ends with him saying that when Bill Clinton increased taxes there would be an economic collapse. When the opposite happened, he claimed it was due to Reagan tax cuts.
Somewhere in all this I realized that I was spending an inordinate amount of time and energy ( physical, mental, and emotional ) in trying to think about and answer this woman. I find this is the problem of engaging such people. I spend a lot of time and they dismiss whatever it is I say. So what’s the point? Meanwhile, she puts up false and misleading headlines and writes “To Read Later.” Why not fucking read it now?
Because reading and understanding are not the point. In discussions with folks about these sort of things you get to a place where they either say, “I don’t believe it.” Or they accuse you of something off the wall.
Historically it would be like two armies getting close to each other. Before drones and satellites and reconnaissance airplanes an army had to depend on scouts to relay information about the position of the enemy. In order to do that the scouts had to keep in touch with the enemy. This required getting close, but not too close. There’s a term for this I forget what it is. It’s as if two worlds are colliding but instead of smacking into each other they just whirl around nearby with the peripheries touching. Kind of like a hurricane wind water formation model.
I can look into this other world (Fox, Rush, Breitbart, PragerU, InfoWars, etc.) and they can look into mine ( CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, BBC etc.)
The two worlds barely touch each other. Both see the other as unreality, I guess. Neither can except the others interpretation of the world. Each has a separate reality. I wonder if the number of deaths from this pandemic will change that in anyway?
I just read an article on Kim Jung Un and how he and his father and grandfather all have told whoppers of lies to their subjects that try to establish them as tied to the gods that founded the people inhabiting the Korean Peninsula. According to the article, Kim is having to revamp some of the story because as his people get more and more tech smuggled into the country he knows some part of the charade won’t be believed. (Update, his dad shot 11 holes-in-one in one round of golf. I had said five in an earlier post.)
I have to wonder if Kim knows, somewhere deep down inside, that what he is telling the people is horse shit? Or has he convinced himself? I wonder that about my friend too.
154 Days until the election on November 3rd
234 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
PS The temple of Koh Ker
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