The choice remains of how to address a crowd. Should I be woke af adopting the popular slang du jour, the modern abbreviate lexicon useful in the sense of wading through reams of TMI? Or is it still okay to use shorthand I adopted years ago to convey broad strokes in simple slanguage that most can still grasp? Both works great for me. Just don’t expect narrow definitions; people can take offense at either, but the intent is what matters. Using ‘totally mental’ can be intended to insult people whose brains are obstructed with illness or can be used to suggest something is not at all logical or defensible, silly beyond words, etc.
Illogical people can’t be defined in any simpler or way. Is it more accurate to use openly hostile words like ‘stupid’? Some people have acted in ways that have made themselves targets of ridicule and mockery and deserve the pushback. But some pundits and 15 minutes of Internet Fame celebrity are quite obviously water carriers and baggage handlers for powerful interests like Big Business owners, a few thousand scandalously wealthy people, Big Religion figureheads, Big Weapons Sellers, and a host of other interests.
I favor all being heard if you want to speak to an audience, no matter your economic class or differences in background, experience or origin.. As long as it’s understood that speaking publicly on anything controversial means you’ll likely experience negative feedback because so many people online are, like, totally mental. Thick skin is an essential accessory in the public square. Or one can whine on endlessly claiming they’re the victim of mean people. I mean, it’s logical that some people are victimized in life and that they can complain loudly about being wrongfully targeted. But it’s pretty unseemly when it comes from people born to wealth and comfort. Power looks pretty weak when a person or group with wealth at their command whines like a baby telling a parent “It’s so unfair!” and running off to pout. Maybe they should get a marker and a piece of cardboard to beg at the corner for sympathy. It’s terrible marketing strategy. Unless you can sell. And some people are so totally mental that they’ll buy anything, even from an open source free range highly visible pickpocket.
I never mentioned any names but most people can quickly grasp that it fits only a few broadly known people. And perhaps a few you know locally.
This is not open advocacy of a pure libertarian approach to anything goes media megaphone free speech access. Limits on people shouting ‘fire!’ in a crowded theater seem perfectly reasonable as a legal limit. If you spew dangerous shit that causes the early deaths of thousands of people, or causes extreme doubts that a majority of voting citizens have voted properly and the vote counters by the tens of thousands have engaged in a vast conspiracy while exhorting their followers to acts of violence and insurrection outside the law deserve to be shouted down and have their mikes pulled by emcees and moderators, just like occurred before the internet and before TV. The damage done by people instigating violent wars and poor reactions to a deadly pandemic can get their mikes cut off when ridicule and mockery aren’t lifesaving enough. The owners of the media outlet have the right to do that for the best interests of the many , but if they do so from a perch in a publicly traded company, they should so in response to the will of the majority of its shareholders. That’s where the public oversight should be mandated.
And the powerful getting their mikes pulled have equal rights to hire expensive lawyers to demonstrate their right to shout ‘fire!’ If they can demonstrate the visible example of actual flames. Fire is not hard to prove. If their lawyers can’t do that, repeatedly, then they lose. Simple enough.
This is not a diatribe favoring unlimited blather, nor a railing against political correctness, it’s just saying reasonableness in pursuit of the safest outcomes can insist that people can advocate unpopular opinions but brakes can be applied by the megaphone owners to save thousands of lives.
It’s not easy to conceal the evidence of corpses in morgues nor the wounded in hospitals. It’s not a slippery slope of excessive censorship to pull the mike of people with demonstrable intent to fake the facts when violence is being overtly proposed.
with the results so visible.
Exhorting non-violent resistance should be fervently protected from all intrusion. But free speech rights stop where someone’s capacity to live is being abrogated. That line is not at all hard to see by reasonable adults.
meanwhile, you retain all rights to define reasonable from totally mental.
Onward …
A Pew Poll was released Sunday that tried to define what religious clergy preached about in the past year amid an unusual election year, a pandemic and an international protest against racial hatred and responses to deadly force utilized by armed public servants that prove deadly because of racial profiling and racial stereotyping. (The same holds true when those public servants are called to rein in someone posing a threat to themselves and others due to extreme emotion, mental illness or inebriation. If those servants aren’t well trained to mediate and calm people in those crisis moments then police need to be retrained or they need to be compelled to call in third party mediators. Because that’s been proven to cause less corpses. But I digress.)
The Pew Poll indicated percentages of topics that were heard by mainstream US Protestants from their ministers. And what evangelical Protestants heard. And Catholics heard from their priests and what Black Protestant laity heard from their ministers.
In my view, the clergy in all of those groups failed badly with roughly 50% or less discussing or preaching about those three socially dominant issues. Even the groups with more than 50% hearing those topics fell short of a 3/4ths majority. Catholics heard the least of those 4 groups at 41%.
And I didn’t hear the percentages of what was being preached at temples, synagogues and mosques. Pew’s poll should define percentages for any faith with millions of adherents. For example, I bet the ministry of Unitarian Universalists and the ministry of Native American spiritual leaders were talking about those big three topics in much higher percentages. I can’t prove it, though. It’s like profound influencers of millions of people are completely discounted.
That sharply diminishes the value of the poll, which is itself, an influencer.
And again with the ongoing pandemic. The Delta variant of the virus now makes up more than 50% of the new cases in the US and 99.7% of the people catching any strain of the virus are the unvaccinated.
I saw public reports Sunday indicating that 18 states are seeing fresh rises in new covid cases. I reviewed the charts of all 50 states, plus DC and Puerto Rico. I checked Worldometers and the NY Times charts (the latter being more useful in defining county hot spots and percentages vaccinated.) I found that DC, Puerto Rico and 40 states were showing rises. Only two of those without rises were in the 40 most heavily populated states/regions. The ten without rises were in tiny population states, most in wide open spaces like the Dakotas.
Even little Vermont showed a rise but when your daily new cases is under 10 and it goes to 15, it still doesn’t pose such a big thread. What is clearly visible, however, is the rate of the rise that the graphs display. Modest rises exist even in giant states like CA, NY and IL but the spikes uphill in a few states is pretty frightening. Missouri and Arkansas were the first displaying that. Now Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Kansas, Utah and Nevada, are displaying rises of 50% to 360% within brief periods though it typically takes at least 3 weeks of rises to properly gauge how high each is racing uphill. By far, the worst looking graph now belongs to Florida, the largest population spiking from a 7 day average under 1200 to nearly 3400 in the past 3 weeks.
In Florida, 55% of the population has had at least one dose of the vaccine but 90% of the over-65 age group has had at least one dose. Some of the states dip below 40% vaccinated still. And it becomes quickly evident that the worst vaccinated states display the stunning spikes of the quick rising. (I only saw 2 outliers in that pattern. Ohio (49%) and West Virginia (46%) have stayed flat. So far. )
The correlation between vaccine rates and steep risers are obvious and undeniable. States where 65% or more have gotten one dose, the rate of rise is significantly less. Those states will be able to stop the rises by simply continuing to vaccinate at present rates.
The difference can’t be highlighted enough: it’s young people getting most of these new cases and they’re getting much sicker and much sicker quicker, reaching the ERs faster than the elderly population did with the original two virus strains.
Ignoring the visible evidence indicates a broad swath of tens of millions of people are totally mental. All because, deep down inside, they’re scared of a needle prick. Oh, they’ll say it’s about freedom and rights and stuff but most of the new cases are covering up the fact that they are just plain old cowards.
Two weeks from now, everyone who cares to look will see what the rates are for their state to gauge the spike speeds. Under 3/10ths of one percent of the new cases belong to the vaccinated. I can’t think of any other vaccine in history with that level of success except smallpox. Even in my relatively small state of Oregon with 70% of people over 18 with one dose at work can’t help the other 30%. It’s hard to get them woke enough to save their own lives. That’s totally scairedy cat stupid.
In addition to the exceptional guitar licks of Billy Strings, this is how country music shines at its finest. It made me think of my dear and departed Marlene, a force of nature in her daily presence in my life. The best friend I ever had or wanted.
And some days, I just feel totally mental.
Share your thoughts too.