Dr. X's Free Associations

One year ago...

February 28, 2020:

Trump: "Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that right? Coronavirus, they’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, “How’s President Trump doing?” They go, “Oh, not good, not good.” They have no clue. They don’t have any clue."

Just days before that, Trump revealed to Bob Woodward that the virus was far worse than he was publicly admitting. That's on tape.

Why this matters now:

Several governors are lifting COVID safety restrictions prematurely. I understand that we can argue about the costs and benefits of opening businesses, but it is troubling that they're lifting mask requirements, which seems a reckless, unnecessary move. It is less a sober reflection of current public health circumstances than it is a politically symbolic concession to a lethal tribal rebellion.

If he isn't 100% responsible, Trump bears significant responsibility for fostering a climate of distrust of public health officials and public health precautions. From anti-masking to anti-social distancing, to anti-vaccine attitudes, there can be no doubt that Trump contributed, more than anyone else, to turning a public health matter into a culture war fight.

Now, we've learned that Trump and Melania were vaccinated secretly in January. Why would he do that secretly, at a time when public health officials are trying to persuade the public that mass vaccination is vital?

That's a rhetorical question.

Trump getting vaccinated did not fit right-wing culture war narratives that downplay the virus while fostering rebellion against precautions because it's all a Democratic hoax.

Additional observations from the non-Trumpist right:

An excellent observation by @BillKristol. There are costs/benefits to re-opening the economy. But what's the arguments against wearing *masks* in a pandemic? There is none. It's a lethal form of "virtue signaling." Hence the point about nihilism. https://t.co/Qg7np3S5Xv

— Peter Wehner (@Peter_Wehner) March 5, 2021

Bill is right. Anti-masking further exposed the darkness in parts of the right. It’s such a small thing to show love of neighbor, but that small thing was and is too much for all too many who claim to be pro-life. https://t.co/uv78PRfSId

— David French (@DavidAFrench) March 5, 2021

And here's an example of the confident foolery Trump's culture war tribalization of public health yields in the midst of public health crisis:

David, you can’t possibly be this stupid, so I presume you are just that much of a virtue-signaling fraud.

The data/science/logic prove that MASKS DO NOT WORK against a virus, & having the government mandate their use is an affront to everything for which this nation once stood.

— John Ziegler (@Zigmanfreud) March 5, 2021

Except they simply don’t work against a virus pic.twitter.com/lzSN2YsNCE

— John Ziegler (@Zigmanfreud) March 5, 2021

We get a few cherry-picked pre-COVID-19 studies with no examination of the details or the limits of the inferences.

A more recent review (January 2021) of research on the efficacy of mask-wearing to prevent transmission of COVID-19 finds that:

The preponderance of evidence indicates that mask wearing reduces transmissibility per contact by reducing transmission of infected respiratory particles in both laboratory and clinical contexts. Public mask wearing is most effective at reducing spread of the virus when compliance is high.

Read the whole thing here.

The GOP Reduced To Rank Clownery

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson forced Senate clerks to read the rescue bill out loud to an empty chamber until the wee hours of the morning while he played with his phone. The clerks read for 10 hours and 43 minutes from 3:21 pm Thursday until 2:40 am Friday.

What exactly did Ron Johnson accomplish with this stunt, other than fatiguing hardworking Americans who do his grunt work?

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson is now the only senator left in the chamber after he forced Senate clerks to read aloud the $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill — and he’s not even listening. He’s mostly on his phone.

— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) March 4, 2021

Cancel Culture Hypocrisy

After a few books featuring fictional characters were withdrawn from future publication by the author's estate, Republicans cried for days about cancel culture. Now, Trump and his supporters tell Fox News to cancel Karl Rove--a real human being--because he said something that hurt Donald Trump's feelings.

Vaccinated

I received my second Moderna dose on Sunday. I felt lousy on Sunday night and on and off through Monday, but it was well worth the temporary discomfort in exchange for the relative peace of mind. I'll continue to mask in sessions beyond the 7-14 days until achieving maximum immunity while we wait to see how concerns about virus mutations play out. Overall, though, I feel a great deal of relief in knowing that I am going to be well protected from the worst depredations of COVID while also posing little to no further risk to others.

Trump's soon to be revealed health care plan

🚨BREAKING: Sources say Trump to
announce the details of his new
healthcare plan this upcoming
Sunday at CPAC.

— TG (@TG22110) February 26, 2021

This tweet is, of course, a joke.

Beginning in 2016 and continuing right up to the 2020 election, Trump said his better and cheaper health care plan would be announced within weeks. Yet neither he nor his administration ever came up with this miracle plan.

I'd be flabbergasted when Trump supporters say, "name one lie Trump has ever told," if I didn't know the depth of the human capacity to lie to oneself, even with the truth staring one straight in the face.

Trump is a brazen liar who has learned that lying doesn't matter if he assumes the role of Big Daddy in the psyches of those who, through personality organization or circumstance, crave a chest-beating, bellowing father who will save them from enemies, real or imagined.

One of Marjorie Taylor Greene's Suporters And Closest Friends: We were there January 6th. Not Antifa

Claiming that the Capitol attackers were anyone but Trump supporters is ludicrous given the identities of those arrested and the events we saw with our own eyes that day.

Andrew kazczynski and Em Steck:

In fact, Anthony Aguero, a conservative livestreamer, activist and associate of Greene, said on video following the January 6 assault on the Capitol that he had been among those who entered and attacked those who falsely claimed it was done by "Antifa."

"We were all there. It was not Antifa and it was not BLM. It was Trump supporters that did that yesterday. I'm the first to admit it, being one myself," said Aguero in a video posted on January 7.

"I walked amongst all those people," he added, later defending entering the Capitol.

Greene and Aguero have worked closely together over the years on causes such as immigration and the border wall and have attended pro-Trump rallies together. In many since-deleted videos saved by CNN's KFile, Greene repeatedly calls Aguero "amazing" and a "friend." On social media, Aguero has called Greene "one of my closest friends."

"A message was sent," Aguero said in the video streamed live on January 6 while walking away from the Capitol on Pennsylvania Avenue following the riot. "These politicians are not going to continue to get away with the abuse as they've been doing. We will continue to press on these individuals."

Addressing the rioters that day, Donald Trump himself said: "You have to go home now...We love you." This isn't something he would say to Antifa.

Clearly, Trump knew that the rioters were his supporters because he called them to DC that day saying "It's going to be wild." They were at his rally. He told them if they didn't "fight like hell," they're "not going to have a country anymore," and he instructed them to walk to the Capitol to "stop the steal." He even lied and told them that he'd be with them.

In a bit of good news, the man who was recorded attacking Capitol police officers with a pipe and attempting to gouge out the eye of an officer has turned himself to authorities.

ARRESTED: Thomas Webster AKA #EyeGouger is a retired NYPD Cop accused of attacking Capitol Police with a pipe and gouging out their eyes. Webster's attorney, James Monroe, declined to comment Tuesday. pic.twitter.com/cwnADdlaqn

— Cleavon MD (@Cleavon_MD) February 23, 2021

The authoritarian epistemology: Everything is true, and nothing is true

Fox News is still dumping disinformation on its viewers.

Tucker Carlson: "We spent all day trying to locate the famous QAnon, which in the end we learned is not even a website. If it's out there, we could not find it" pic.twitter.com/mLESlsxURO

— Kat Abu (@abughazalehkat) February 24, 2021

Owning The Libs

The Atlantic:

I doubt that “We’d freeze to death to own the libs” is a popular sentiment in Texas, but drawing that impression is easy if you’re outside the state, listening to its Republican officials.

As the journalist Brian Kahn noted on Twitter, when California was struggling with much smaller blackouts in late 2020, ambitious Texas Republicans were sneering at the state on social media. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said, “This is what happens when the Democrats are left in charge,” while Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced, “California’s politicians did this, not the heat.” U.S. Representative Dan Crenshaw joked, “Alexa, show me what happens when you let Democrats control energy policy.” And U.S. Senator Ted Cruz said that California “is now unable to perform even basic functions of civilization, like having reliable electricity.” Last week, Cruz jetted off to Cancún with his family while his constituents were burning their children’s toys for warmth.

Local Shots

Snow again last night, but after weeks of deep freeze, we're supposed to see the mid-30s later today.

Local Shots

Alleys and roads are manageable but messy. Temperatures in the high 20s yesterday, which was a nice warm-up so we went for a walk, which was almost pleasant.

Sacrificing Reality At The Altar Of Loyalty and Ideology

By way of a convoluted chain of associations, Texas put me in mind of Robert Nozick, the late Harvard philosopher famous for Anarchy, State, and Utopia, an argument for the minimal, libertarian state. Those familiar with Nozick are aware that he changed his mind in the late 1980s, rejecting his earlier support for libertarianism.

This chain of associations led me to a Slate piece on Nozick's move away from the minimal state, but I'm not going to write about that article, which you can read here. All the preceding is intended to introduce a quote from the Slate article:

The essence of any utopianism is: Conjure an ideal that makes an impossible demand on reality, then announce that, until the demand is met in full, your ideal can’t be fairly evaluated. Attribute any incidental successes to the halfway meeting of the demand, any failure to the halfway still to go.

This is wonderful. It's a familiar defense of impossible 'isms' that go off the rails, whether it's communism that isn't fully communist, capitalism that isn't free-market enough, or any other ism that can never be pure enough. One can always locate the impurity that spoiled the whole batch.

The problem isn't that this is always a wrong defense of a particular ideology. The problem is that it's ALWAYS a defense for far too many believers.

Using the words impurity and spoiled above could be misleading. I'm not talking about psychoimmunological reactions or the moral domain of psychic functioning. With respect to economic ideology, I believe that the impurity defense has more to do with securing mutually protective tribal loyalties and defending ideologies that provide a reassuring sense of order and meaning. Drilling down further, the impurity defense supports a sense of security that mitigates the potentially debilitating effects of universal death terror. One cannot understand the rabid and sometimes violent intensity of loyalties and ideologies without appreciating the sense of deadly stakes driving it all.

Unfortunately, the cost of defending against death terror can be alienation from correction by reality. Another way of putting it is that protecting ourselves from death terror can end up killing us.

So a question for Texas moving forward is: Will the tribal loyalty or laissez-faire ideology prevent Texas from enacting solutions to prevent future crises, or will this recent encounter with deadly reality trump the false sense of security that loyalty and ideology might provide in this instance?

The Trumpist GOP

Two new dimwits in the House tweeted some fresh foolishness.

Madison Cawthorn, the homeschooled, first-semester college dropout who earned mostly Ds, doesn't seem to know that the Vatican is a sovereign nation ruled by a monarch. On a more encouraging note, Maddie has been appointed to the House Education Committee. Maybe they'll teach him things.

And then we have Lauren Boebert, who supports a constitutional amendment for term limits and agrees with a proposal for a constitutional amendment that would permit members of Congress to carry firearms in meetings. Still, she doesn't believe that we should rewrite parts of the Constitution.

Texas Governor Abbott Falsey Blames Renewable Energy For Texas Power Woes

Justin Baragona:

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ran to the friendly confines of Hannity Tuesday night to blame the devastating power outages currently plaguing his state on solar and wind sources, directly contradicting his own energy department. Millions were still without power in the Lone Star State as the governor spoke to Fox News...

A senior director for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, however, said hours earlier that frozen wind turbines during the deadly winter storms have been “the least significant factor in the blackouts,” noting that the main factors are “frozen instruments at natural gas, coal and even nuclear facilities.” Over the past 24 hours, numerous Republicans and right-wing media personalities have falsely claimed that failing windmills and renewable energy sources are the root cause of the widespread power outages in the Lone Star State, despite the fact that wind and solar shutdowns have only accounted for 13 percent of total outages.

Once again, the party of personal responsibility shifts blame. Texas has been Republican run for a couple of decades. The Texas power grid is independent and always has been because Texas did not want its system subjected to federal control. The real problem, at the moment, is that the Texas power grid is not adequately winterized. Many colder states that get more snow than Texas don't suffer these outages.

Republicans like to rip on Illinois, for example, but this majority Democratic state does just fine with far colder temperatures than Texas is seeing, and with winters that can dump far more snow. Recently, we had days of single-digit and subzero temperatures, and I snapped the photo below yesterday.

For those at Fox News and in Texas who need to see it for some reason, these are winterized Arctic wind turbines. If you build wind turbines to operate in frigid weather, they work just fine.

So whoever makes decisions about spending on the Texas power grid decided that the investment in more serious winterization was not worth it.

I get it. Cost-benefit calculations are made all the time. But blaming renewable energy for the pain that can come with these calculations is nonsense. The governor of Texas needs to confront the voters of his state with realistic options. Invest in winterization and pay more for electricity, or go through these deadly crises from time to time. That isn't the fault of renewables or liberals or Democrats or AOC. It's the fault of reality.

A Trumpist Republican Actually Tells The Truth

And it isn't pretty.

Newsweek:

(David Ball) The chair of the Republican Party in Washington County, Pennsylvania has strongly criticized Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) for voting to convict former President Donald Trump.

"We did not send him there to vote his conscience. We did not send him there to do the right thing or whatever he said he was doing," Ball said. "We sent him there to represent us."

Republicans by and large don't want Senators who think, deliberate, deal in facts, distinguish right from wrong, honor their oath of loyalty to the Constitution and consider the good of the nation within the broad limits of conservative political philosophy. They want weak men who blindly reflect the worst instincts of the violent mob.

Meantime, the FBI is still looking for this Trumpist foot soldier who went to DC, unencumbered by conscience, to represent Republicans.

 

Charles Blow On Courting The Ugliest Elements

Many have been saying this for years, but this is the first time I've seen a guilty party confronted face-to-face. I wish the clip included Steve Schmidt's reaction. If I can find it, I'll post it.

The Steve Schmidt takedown on Bill Maher is EPIC! 👇pic.twitter.com/kB44jzuaWV

— Boldly Blue🔹 (@BoldlyBlue) February 13, 2021