Letters from an American, October 28, 2022

… Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi attacked… all indications are that while the attacker may have been a little off his nut, he was steeped in right wing hatred and had been radicalized by conspiracy theories promulgated by the right… this puts me in mind of this quote from Don Quixote by Cervantes:

When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?

… HCR goes on to discuss the ratcheted landscape where violence ideation is running rampant… national security departments are all warning of a heightened threat environment surrounding the midterm elections…

… and then she turns to Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter… Musk has promised, threatened?, to allow 45 back on Twitter… pundits speculate that a content moderation free environment on Twitter isn’t likely as advertisers would run from the platform… General Motors has already paused its advertising until it sees what things look like under new management… right wingers seem to be testing the new management as there has been a significant uptick in antisemitic and racist posts on the platform…

‘Bros’ and ‘Ticket to Paradise’ Reviews

… Bros came to our local theater and i contemplated going to it… thought i should go to it just to take in a gay romantic comedy, but at the end of the day i really didn’t have much interest in watching guys get it on, romantically or otherwise… turns out i am not alone as the movie has been a box office failure… perhaps rom coms are not the best format for exploring LGBTQ+ love… still, i am aware that there are love comedies that i might enjoy, such as two women falling in love and getting it on… or, possibly a transvestite falling in love with a straight man… my kinky proclivities run in the direction of cross dressing, though i never have but in the most minimal way… sounds like i would enjoy Ticket to Paradise… hopefully that too will come to my local theater…

Everyone Agrees Democracy Is in Danger. No One Agrees Why.

… according to a recently released New York Times/Siena survey—that 59 percent of respondents in that category believe it’s the mainstream media that poses a “major threat.” That compares with 45 percent who say Trump is a major threat, and 38 percent who say Biden is.

… butchered as that first sentence is, its a bit astonishing that a far greater majority point to the mainstream media as a problem than in any other direction… as a liberal, i immediately think that this would be because moderates and liberals think Fox and (if they know a thing or two about media markets across the country), Clear Channel are the problem and there are more of them in general… i do think media and social media are a problem… even on the left, it is easy to get a bit siloed into looking at things through one lens only and all media does what it needs to do to gather peoples attention and this often means playing up the threat levels of the other side…

• 28 percent say Democrats pose a major threat

• 33 percent say Republicans pose a major threat
• 27 percent say the Supreme Court poses a major threat
• 33 percent say the federal government poses a major threat
• And 27 percent say the Electoral College while 20 percent say electronic voting machines and 33 percent say voting by mail pose major threats

In short, a whole lot of Americans—71 percent in total—think that our democracy itself is in peril, but there’s no consensus as to the source of the danger.

… although i had no idea of the diversity of options for democratic failure blame, i was very certain that when MSNBC cited polls suggesting that the preservation of Democracy was a top concern for voters across the country, that did not represent a consensus on what the problem was… right wingers are being told democracy is threatened and believe it, just as much as left wingers are and do… personally, i think the case left wingers make is more substantial at the present moment… even so, there is not national clarity on this issue…

Imagine back in 1941, on the eve of Pearl Harbor, if roughly equal percentages of Americans had been as worried about at attack from Britain as they were an attack from Imperial Japan.

… how does one find a way forward when there is no consensus?… in this regard, my plan has been to refuse to talk about my side vs your side, my guy vs your guy… i instead want to focus on particular issues and discuss feelings and ideas about them… our politicians and the media have pressed us into being team players… we need to resist that…

Ruben Östlund on the Realism and Black Humour of Triangle of Sadness

… this movie actually sounds pretty interesting… it makes the to-watch list…