There's a trope where a crooked PI or lawyer or whatever will join some virtuous-sounding professional organization and pay the dues just long enough to get a membership card and certificate to put up on the wall and create a good impression for people walking in.
If Donald got to stay in office for 20 years and in the 20th year of his reign you couldn't go out without one of those Biovyzrs or you'd pass out, he'd still be talking about "the cleanest air and crystal clear water".
And he would still be objecting to every attempt to put back some kind of environmental standards with, "But why do we need regulations when we have the cleanest air and crystal clear water?"
But I think even more than that kind of abject denial that is so transparently false, the bigger danger is in the transitional period. Wildfires aside ("APART FROM THAT, MRS. LINCOLN...") our air quality isn't so bad. Why? Because of regulations.
Even if you axe the regulations, there's going to be some inertia. Factories aren't going to pay to rip out their equipment and downgrade it before it needs replacing, for instance. Automakers won't all immediately revamp their production lines.
Even when Donald was running the first time he would say, "Why do we need regulations when our water is so clean?"
There are a lot of things going on here and part of it is that Donald just thinks he can create reality by stringing together positive descriptions and superlatives. Part of it is seriously that simple. Dump whatever you want in the water. Say "very strongly" that it's clean.
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We're pretty lucky in that the pandemic isn't going to affect our Thanksgiving plans much, insofar as it was probably always going to just be our one household having a nice meal together.
Imagine if we had an actual functioning government with actual public health initiatives pushing a message like "Celebrate Thanksgiving apart so we can survive together." Commercials showing people having small celebrations in their own household and then calling their relatives.
We will probably be ordering our meal from Cracker Barrel, who back during Easter surprised and impressed us by sending us an email from like a director of HR or somebody like that saying, "We notice you've ordered holiday meals from us in the past. Your local store delivers!"
Okay. Masks on, lather up, keep your distance, shut things down, cancel gatherings, be careful.
"No. We have to learn how to LIVE WITH it."
Payments to everyone to keep things afloat?
"No. LIVE WITH it."
...do you mean die?
"We lose thousands to the flu every year!"
Yeah, and that's with a robust but not perfect or universal vaccination effort, education, and a few simple, sensible mitigation attempts. A completely uncontrolled flu season would be terrifying.
Imagine if we *did* start wearing masks and keeping our distance during flu season. Imagine if we'd all been washing and sanitizing our hands sufficiently all along.
Imagine how much lower those flu numbers could have been this whole time.
As the grown-up child of a daycare mom, it is wild to see home daycares being lauded as something new and branded as "CareBNBs".
I know that nobody's experience is universal but I always had a weirded out reaction to the trope of "Oh we have to get our kids on a waiting list for preschool 17 years before they're born." because my town was all in-home daycares and the public school ran a preschool.
My mom added educational and enrichment components to hers rather than sending us to preschool, and eventually all the teachers were trying to get their kids into her daycare because she was good at it.
"The night isn't dark and full of terrors. It's short and it's lit very strongly, lights like no one has ever seen, and it's full of, I don't know, pistachios. Pistachios and jobs and a healthcare plan that I definitely have, and will have very soon. Within the next few weeks."
If Donald Trump seriously makes "Winter isn't coming." part of his closing message I am going to lose it.
This is something I've talked about a lot with my thinkin' buddy, @dynamicsymmetry: Trump is so deeply embedded in a bubble of a very particular brand of Very Online rightwing thought that he doesn't know how to connect his messages to most voters anymore
That's not the only reason he's floundering (no cause with just one effect and no effect with just one cause) but it's a big part of it, a big part of why he can't replicate the same types of effects that put him over the top in 2016.
He can say "they call it 'the laptop from hell'" as many times as he wants but he's not going to get the average voter to care about a laptop the way he got them to care about her blessed emails because most people aren't invested in that narrative.
Still not 100% sure if I'm watching the debate or not. I have MSNBC on for the moment but 25 minutes to go and I'm not sure I'm not just going to bed then.
Okay, I think I'm doing this. If you want to shoot me some money for replenishing my liquor cabinet after, feel free.
Kristen Welker looking forward to a "robust debate". I'm reminded of a classic shaggy dog joke punchline and imagining her going, "But not so robust as that, sir!"