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31 Dec 20, 4 tweets, 2 min read
"Shutdown" = Restaurants/bars takeout only 10:30pm-6am. Seriously, that's it. Open any hours they want, dine-in allowed most of the day.
COVID discourse is warped by GOP officials lying to the public, falsely calling minor restrictions "shutting down businesses" to stoke outrage.
Most use "lockdown" or "shutdown" to mean closing everything & telling everyone to stay home. But some politicized commentary uses those terms for minor restrictions with everything still open.
It confuses people, unnecessarily stokes anger, and likely increases virus spread too.
-You've been in lockdown all year?
-Yes
-Insane. Stay home a few weeks maybe, but all year is way too much.
-We don't have to stay at home
-Oh. Well, sorry your business is closed.
-It's open
-So...?
-Late night is take out only
-The worst affront to civil liberties since slavery
What's the perfect COVID policy?
I don't know. And different people may weigh the tradeoffs differently.
But we'd be better off weighing the actual tradeoffs instead of political leaders lying about them and equating any minor restriction with a "lockdown"

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More from @NGrossman81

Nicholas Grossman Profile picture
1 Jan
Janet Yellen is one of the most impressive, most accomplished people in the world. She played a major role in preventing the global financial crisis from turning into a second Great Depression, heading off a lot of suffering. People pay her to speak at conferences. This is fine.
Big speaking fees are corporations/conferences trying to buy clout, not secret agreements for speakers to provide a favor in the future.
For speakers it's: "All I have to do is show up, say some words of my own choosing, and you hand me a giant check? OK."
How corporations think: "We got Yellen! That's a Big Name. She ran the Fed! People will think we're important."
How they don't: "We got Yellen! Now she owes us. We'll ask for a favor and, despite having proved she can make money easily, she'll be so in thrall to us she'll do it."
Read 6 tweets
Nicholas Grossman Profile picture
15 Dec 20
Was GW Bush more fascist than Trump?
This good @michelleinbklyn column highlighted for me why I'm not the left.
Because not only do I disagree with those who say Bush was worse than Trump, I don't think "who was more fascist?" is a useful question.
1/x
 nytimes.com/2020/12/14/opi…
Much of left discourse fixates on fascism. Some use "fascism" to mean any right-wing govt, anything bad about govt, or sometimes just "bad thing."
But even those who are more precise fixate on it, which leads them to search for parallels to historical cases and fascist theory
2/x
Instead of asking questions like "closer or farther from a free society?" or "how strong are these institutions?," the fixation on fascism leads to "how much does this resemble 1920s-30s Italy or Germany?" and "how close is this to that scholar's description of fascism?"
3/x
Read 9 tweets
Nicholas Grossman Profile picture
6 Dec 20
Republicans Meet the Modern GOP
A running thread of Republicans/conservatives expressing surprise & dismay that so many seem to actually believe election conspiracy theories as if distorting reality hasn't been central to the GOP for years.
If you spot good examples, let me know.
First, an incomplete list of false conspiracy theories pushed by prominent GOP officials and right-wing media figures in recent years
-Birtherism
-Pizzagate
-Colleges indoctrinate students into socialism
-Seth Rich
-QAnon
-Ukraine was really behind 2016 interference
-Hunter Biden
Ross Douthat, in a solid column exploring different types of paths to—and levels of—belief in conspiracy theories, showing he was at least somewhat in denial about the Trump-era GOP.
Yes, many average GOP voters really believe. They weren't just saying it.
nytimes.com/2020/12/05/opi… Image
Read 5 tweets
Nicholas Grossman Profile picture
26 Nov 20
Many misunderstand the Flynn case because they don’t know the difference between counterintelligence and law enforcement.
Flynn was in big counterintel trouble, and got to plead guilty to a small criminal charge because he gave info to help FBI/Mueller counterintel investigation.
Michael Flynn’s defenders and apologists, from Glenn Greenwald to QAnon, elide the counterintelligence-law enforcement distinction, acting as if the only thing Flynn did wrong was lie to the FBI.
But the lying charge—which he pled guilty to multiple times—was the sweetheart deal.
To everyone asking if Flynn broke a deal by withdrawing his guilty plea and can now be charged for other things, I think that also confuses counterintel and law enforcement.
Info from Flynn is in the Mueller report. He gave something of value, so his CI deal is likely intact.
Read 9 tweets
Nicholas Grossman Profile picture
24 Nov 20
Rubio spent four years excusing, defending, apologizing for, and protecting the biggest cause of America's global decline.
Relative decline for a unipolar power is inevitable. But it didn't have to be this fast, with US stupidly throwing away so much influence, from TPP to COVID.
Trump, Kushner, Pompeo, Esper, Barr, Mnuchin and other top admin officials went to Ivy League schools.
Clearly, where top officials went to school is not a good predictor of how they'll perform in office.
Rubio knows this. He just thinks faux populism will appeal to his audience.
US had TPP, the world's largest trading bloc, including a variety of Pacific Rim countries but excluding China. A great geopolitical move.
Trump bailed for no good reason, failed to get bilateral trade deals, and now there's a new world's largest trading bloc with China but no US
Read 7 tweets
Nicholas Grossman Profile picture
11 Nov 20
Abrams acknowledged her loss, though maintained it was unfair, so she's already ahead of where GOP is now.
Her opponent was the official who oversees Georgia elections. He purged 340k voters from the rolls, many of them black. Abrams lost by <55k.
What's the equivalent in 2020?
After a successful lawsuit forced Georgia's now-governor Brian Kemp to release a list of purged voters, analysis revealed Kemp claimed thousands of voters he purged had moved out of the state, except they hadn't.
What's the equivalent evidence re: 2020?
rollingstone.com/politics/polit…
I know that "whatabout Stacey Abrams?" is a go-to move for people looking to excuse Trump's behavior, but we've never seen evidence-free claims of mass fraud and refusal to acknowledge results before.
The weakness of this whatabout highlights how abnormal that Trumpist claim is.
Read 4 tweets

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