Day 1272 – The Double Pandemic: Stupidity and Idiocy

Monday July 13, 2020

111 Days until the election on November 3^rd

191 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

And oh yes there’s that other pandemic caused by the coronavirus, but the two I mentioned in the title: stupidity and idiocy are self inflicted.

We can stop the Covid-19 pandemic, but the other two? Right now it seems hopeless.

I have a friend who lives in Florida who kept saying that Florida only had 20 deaths per 100,000 while New York had more. So he asked where would you rather be? He seemed to miss the point that New York got hit hard at first, but their governor took steps to stop the virus while the Florida governor did not. Now Florida broke it’s all time high and just before that it’s seven day average of new cases was 9087 per day versus New York at 634. When I went to comment I found he had taken the post down, but not before several people managed to ascribe political motivations.

Then I have the friend who keeps posting stuff from PragerU. The latest was that the Constitution never mentions “blacks” when they talk about the 3/5s of a man rule. No shit. The term “blacks” didn’t come into vogue until centuries later. The Constitution did mention “slaves” and what was the color of the skin of most of those people? Don’t worry old PragerU says there were white slaves too. Of course, the very name is a con. It’s a right wing disinformation site and has no credentials and is not a university. But my friend says, well of course not, everyone knows that. Yeah? Then why the con? 

If you want to know about Prager look him up along with Samantha Bee who did a report on him. He slices and dices the truth to make it seem, via the headline my friend posts, like this is normal stuff. It’s not. 

Then there’s the guy I went to high school with who posts the really outrageous memes. The ones that show Hillary and Comey should be indicted. Or a post of a policeman posted like he’s armed for combat and it says something like “Bet you won’t repost this”

Damn right I won’t. Remember when the cop was Officer Joe Bolton and he made the rounds of downtown checking locks? What happened? Officer Joe knew everybody in town. 

I saw a thing on the Sunday Morning show about the city of Shreveport. Terrible crime and violence twenty years ago. Then this native of the city started going door to door meeting his neighbors. Crime is down 50%. They have houses that serve as community centers. A couple lives there and takes in kids who need to get out of their own house. They have teen counseling. High school graduation is up. Kids are healthier. All from meeting your neighbors.

Maybe it’s time to get out and socially distance and meet your neighbors. Wearing a mask.

In other news, this is a weird fact. States where the governors listened to the health professionals and followed their advice have fewer cases of corona virus. States that listened to the politicians have out of control epidemics. Hum, maybe there’s a connection?

When did we get to this anti-science place? When did stupid become a thing? 

111 Days until the election on November 3^rd

191 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Bryce Holliwell, my alter ego, reporting from Paris for WhaDaFoook radio/cable/TV 

(Well it was before green screens, so it’s almost Paris.)