Saturday: Hili dialogue

November 28, 2020 • 6:30 am

Saturday is here already: due to the holiday, the week seems to have flown by. It’s November 28, 2020, and National French Toast Day (this is cultural appropriation in both name and object). I love French toast with sausages on the side and real maple syrup; my mom used to make it for me if I was a Good Boy. It’s also Turkey Leftover Day (this will go on for a week), Letter Writing Day (I can’t remember the last time I wrote a real letter, but we should do it more), and Red Planet Day, celebrating the launch of Mariner 4 in 1964, the first spacecraft to fly by Mars and give us close-up views of the planet.

News of the Day: I watched the news and read the NYT on Friday evening (as I write this), and it’s very grim. COVID-19 is making a huge comeback, and if I don’t miss my guess based on holiday travel data, in about two weeks we’ll see a huge spike.

Is there war impending in the Middle East? The top nuclear scientist of Iran, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated yesterday in his car, shot by gunmen along the road he was traveling. He’s long been identified by both the U.S. and Israel as a key figure in Iran’s supposed covert program for developing nuclear weapons, and Iran blamed both countries for the killing.  I doubt that there will be all-out war between Iran and Israel, but it’s unsettling, and I doubt Iran will do nothing in response.

Crikey, yesterday statues were defaced and toppled all over the U.S., and I’m not talking about Confederate statues, but those of respectable people. In Minneapolis, a statue of George Washington was toppled and defaced with the spray-painted words, “Genocidal maniac.” A statue of pioneers was also defaced. The Star-Tribune article mentions other vandalism that happened this week:

In Chicago, somebody tried to pull down a statue of President William McKinley in McKinley Park. The sculpture was also tagged with graffiti and the words “Land Back.” [JAC: This is the slogan for promoting giving land back to Native Americans.]

In Spokane, Wash., a statue of Abraham Lincoln was vandalized with red paint. In Portland, Ore., a monument in the city’s Lone Fir Cemetery, dedicated in 1903 to the veterans of the Civil War, Mexican, Spanish-American, and Indian wars, was tagged with anti-colonialism graffiti and its statue toppled and sprayed with red paint. Three people were arrested after protest-related vandalism damaging storefronts and spraying the words “Land Back” on buildings, Portland police said in a news release.

Here’s the photo of the toppled Washington in Minneapolis; you can read “Genocidal Maniac” on the left.  What genocide did Washington commit? And a “maniac”?

Photo: Shari Gross

I’ll pass along a reading recommendation from reader Ken. I’ve read the Brooks op-ed, which is good, but not yet the other one. The issue is distrust between the elites who determine what is “true”, and the others, who feel disenfranchised and empower themselves by embracing conspiracy theories. Ken’s note:

I don’t know whether you’ve had a chance to read David Brooks opinion piece in yesterday’s NYT “The Rotting of the Republican Mind.”

It cites, and is largely based upon a longer piece from National Affairs by Jonathan Rauch, “The Constitution of Knowledge.” That essay deals in greater depth with the Right’s detachment from reality covered by Brooks’s piece, but, in the latter part, also addresses the problems caused on campus, and in the media, by the radical left. It is well worth the read.
And some good news from the site: Matthew’s new book, The Idea of the Brain, has been named one of the Time’s “Best Philosophy and Ideas Books of the Year 2020” and a Sunday Times Book of the Year. The announcement:

 

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 264,724, an increase of about 1,400 from yesterday’s figure.  The world death toll is 1,451,167, a big increase of about 11,600 over yesterday’s report. 

Stuff that happened on November 28 includes this:

  • 1520 – An expedition under the command of Ferdinand Magellan passes through the Strait of Magellan.
  • 1582 – In Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway pay a £40 bond for their marriage licence.

Here’s the marriage record. Shakespeare was 18, Anne Hathaway 26, and pregnant with their first child:

A photo of that first vote from the New Zealand Herald:

Heavily outnumbered by men, women turn out to an Auckland polling booth in November 1893 to vote in their first election after securing the right to vote. The overall turnout of female voters was unexpectedly high. Photo / File

What this means is that this was the election in which Kiwi women were first allowed to vote.

Here’s Duryea’s winning vehicle. Average speed: 5.4 miles per hour (a marathon runner does way better than that!):

  • 1919 – Lady Astor is elected as a Member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. She is the first woman to sit in the House of Commons. (Countess Markievicz, the first to be elected, refused to sit.)

Lady Astor served until 1945; here’s a photo:

  • 1925 – The Grand Ole Opry begins broadcasting in Nashville, Tennessee, as the WSM Barn Dance.
  • 1941 – In Germany, Mufti of Palestine met Adolf Hitler in November-28-1941, whose agents had to convince themselves he is not “pure arab” in blood.  The nazi leader still refused to shake his hand or even drink coffee with him for considering Arabs inferior. They agreed on cooperation against Jews.

And here’s a photo of that meeting:

  • 1958 – First successful flight of SM-65 Atlas; the first operational intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), developed by the United States and the first member of the Atlas rocket family.
  • 1967 – The first pulsar (PSR B1919+21, in the constellation of Vulpecula) is discovered by two astronomers Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish.
  • 1972 – Last executions in Paris: Claude Buffet and Roger Bontems are guillotined at La Santé Prison.
  • 1980 – Iran–Iraq War: Operation Morvarid: The bulk of the Iraqi Navy is destroyed by the Iranian Navy in the Persian Gulf. (Commemorated in Iran as Navy Day.)
  • 1990 – British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher resigns as leader of the Conservative Party and, therefore, as Prime Minister. She is succeeded in both positions by John Major.

Notables born on this day include:

Like many artists, Blake couldn’t draw cats. Here’s his “Tyger”:

  • 1820 – Friedrich Engels, German-English philosopher, economist, and journalist (d. 1895)
  • 1904 – Nancy Mitford, English journalist and author (d. 1973)
  • 1908 – Claude Lévi-Strauss, Belgian-French anthropologist and ethnologist (d. 2009)
  • 1929 – Berry Gordy, Jr., American songwriter and producer, founded Motown Records

Gordy, now 91, is still with us, and is responsible for much of the great soul music of the Sixties and Seventies.

  • 1962 – Jon Stewart, American comedian, actor, and television host
  • 1987 – Karen Gillan, Scottish actress

Those whose lives were obliterated on November 28 include:

Part of Bernini’s interior for St. Peter’s Basilica:

Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s baldachin, interior of St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City. Ivor Clarke/Alamy
  • 1859 – Washington Irving, American short story writer, essayist, biographer, historian (b. 1783)
  • 1939 – James Naismith, Canadian-American physician and educator, created basketball (b. 1861)
  • 1954 – Enrico Fermi, Italian-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1901)
  • 1960 – Richard Wright, American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet (b. 1908)
  • 1976 – Rosalind Russell, American actress and singer (b. 1907)
  • 1994 – Jeffrey Dahmer, American serial killer (b. 1960)
  • 1994 – Jerry Rubin, American businessman and activist (b. 1938)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili finds a reason to go on living:

Hili: In spite of everything.
A: In spite of what?
Hili: In spite of everything I’m curious what will happen next.
In Polish:
Hili: Mimo wszystko.
Ja: Co mimo wszystko?
Hili: Mimo wszystko jestem ciekawa co będzie dalej.

And in nearby Wloclawek, Mietek and Leon are on the prowl together (note that Mietek is now full grown!):

Leon:  Let’s go back, there is nothing for us here.

In Polish: Wracamy, nic tu po nas.

A meme from Divy:

An great early New Year’s meme from Bruce. Better early than never!

Posted by Seth Andrews on Facebook:

Screenshot of a tweet sent in by Smith Powell. This is a good one:

From reader Barry, two tweets showing Jordan Peterson. The first I don’t think shows that he’s a “grifter”, he simply hadn’t thought through the issue when he pronounced judgment.  The second is a bit reprehensible: a demonstration of confirmation bias by Peterson, who’s conversing with Matt Dillahunty.

Tweets from Matthew. This first one is indeed a stunning time-lapse photos. It also shows that the birds leave the tree in horizontal flight:

Here’s an Amazon comment on Matthew’s new book; the loon is apparently identified in the comment thread:

It wasn’t the cat!

Imagine what the staff had faced in the past!

Matthew channels Rudyard Kipling. Read about mosasaurs here.

 

43 thoughts on “Saturday: Hili dialogue”

  2. “I read the news today, oh boy…”

    PS

    There are thirty-five – 35 – tracking, fingerprinting, and advertising methods in use on this site. That’s an increase from a month ago of possibly 20 total methods.

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    1. My tracking report says only Facebook and Reddit are able to profile me on this page. Reddit is interesting because I don’t have a reddit account.

      While I think about it, now the site is fixed, I need to check if I can re-enable cross sit tracking prevention.

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        1. I have cross site tracking blocked now (Safari) and the site is working fine now. (Safari reports only two trackers on this page for me, Facebook and Reddit.)

          (And, boy, do I like being able to correct errors!)

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    2. ^^^^ that was mobile, iOS, Brave.

      “desktop” version of site pushes 6 ads and trackers, and only 6 ads and trackers.

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    3. -> 35 total things blocked
      -> allow fingerprinting
      -> 27 total things blocked
      —————————–
      8 active WordPress fingerprinting methods on “mobile” platforms

      I still do not understand what the fingerprinting is being used for, other than identification of the user.

      [ turns fingerprinting block back on]

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  3. I know you didn’t write this, Jerry, but “The Bible says to do unto others as others have done unto you” is the quickest way to turn the Golden Rule into the Code of Hammurabi I have ever read! Being an atheist, perhaps I shouldn’t care, but that really is a gross misinterpretation of the New Testament.

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  5. Some things I’ve been thinking about since (US) Thanksgiving…

    (1) Sometimes, when something big happens, I turn on the TV news, just to see how it’s being portrayed. I kept hearing, over and over, the words “Israel is suspected [to have carried out the attack],” but no evidence for the assertion. Would I be surprised if it was Israel? Both yes and no — yes because they’re usually more subtle, and no because it’s the top official in charge of Iran’s nuclear program. But Iran has tons of enemies across the Middle East and beyond, and may even have surpassed Israel in this past year as the least popular country among other Middle East countries. So, suspects abound.

    (2) Regarding the fracturing of conservative thought from “reality” and the role of elites in this, I have quite a bit to say. I’ve touched on this previously, but I always try to put myself in other people’s shoes and see things from their perspectives. Lately, I’ve been thinking about this very issue. What would I think if I was a conservative and saw how the government and media not only allowed, but portrayed as valiant the widespread protests across every city in America in the middle of the lockdown, all while being told that I must stay indoors, not go to my church, not gather with my family and friends, and keep my distance from everyone at any cost? That I must not gather in public to protest this lockdown, lest I spread COVID, while others are being hailed as heroes for marching in the streets while causing rioting, looting, arson, billions of dollars in property damage, and an unprecedented rise in violent crime?

    The above would make me think that the elites — at least those in the mainstream media and many at the government level — want one set of rules for people like me, and another set for the people they like politically. This thinking would be reinforced by maybe having children in college, who I find out are being taught critical race theory and social justice politics as if it’s gospel and who often can’t have speakers who reflect their own views without deplatforming or risking a loss of reputation on campus by helping to organize it. It would be reinforced by what else I see going on at my child’s campus, like the administration supporting explicitly Left movements (e.g. BLM), allowing students who support Left politics to break any rule they please, and bowing to every demand made by students and activists on the other side. It would be reinforced by huge corporations running ads supporting certain Left-coded positions and often taking seriously employees’ claims that the mere opinions of people like me make them feel “unsafe.” To sum up, it would seem very clear that the “elites” do not like me and want to suppress people like me, and I would seek out other explanations and forms of media completely separate from these elites who seem very much opposed to me and my speech and freedom to move about and gather with like-minded people.

    I’m not saying that the thoughts and conclusions in the above paragraphs are true or proper, but I can certainly see the logical through-line. All I’m advocating for here is empathy, not agreement. How would I react if I was well to the Right of campus and mainstream media politics, and if the freedom of people on the Left to protest was supported by the media, and by my mayor (if I live in a city), and perhaps my governor, while my right to gather at my church or have a backyard barbecue was denigrated or even disallowed?

    Anyway, those are the scattered thoughts I’ve been having lately. I don’t see how we can bring this country together again without extending some empathy to people with whom we disagree and without treating both sides equally when it comes to this lockdown.

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    1. You’ve certainly captured (for argument’s sake) the right-wing mindset at its most tendentious, BJ.

      Still, even were I to accept such grievance-mongering with complete fidelity, I should hope my response would not be to retreat into an impervious, fact-free epistemic bubble to believe (as 77% of Republicans do, despite an utter dearth of evidence) that Joe Biden won the 2020 election only because of massive voter fraud, or to believe that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, or to believe that Hillary Clinton had Seth Rich murdered to cover up that the 2016 DNC email hack was an inside job rather than conducted by Russian intelligence agencies, or to embrace climate-change denialism, or to reject (at potentially mortal risk to my loved ones) the scientific consensus regarding public facemask-wearing and social-distancing as the COVID-19 pandemic runs rampant, or to sit by as my party happily endorsed QAnon conspiracists for national congressional office.

      The reaction to such grievances — even where such grievances are entirely legitimate — should not be the wholesale abandonment of any effort to maintain an evidence-based worldview in favor of conspiracy-based paranoia.

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  6. Aw, that cat paw print in the pie reminds me of my first two cats. My family and I memorialized them by buying a ceramic circle in which we pressed their paws to forever have their impression of them, and then we decorated it with colorful stones before the material dried. It now sits in my family home’s backyard, in my first cat’s favorite place to sleep during the day: under the hedge next to the swimming pool.

    Those two cats are long gone now, but I have two others: the one I adopted ten years ago and the one who, as regular users of this site might know, I rescued from heat exhaustion and a respiratory infection when her mother abandoned her outside my house. For those who don’t know, my new kitten was found laying at my deck door back in July. She was a stray who belonged to a cat family that lives under my deck and her mother abandoned her (I can see why now, as her siblings are far bigger than she is and she was clearly going to die within the week when I took her in). She sat and slept outside my door for 28 hours before I let her inside. She kept trying to come in! Somehow, she knew my door was the right one and I was the person who would take her and save her little life. She has rewarded me by being the cutest darn kitten I’ve ever raised. I could go on for hours about all her adorable quirks.

    EDIT: Just to be clear, I waited 28 hours to make sure her mother had abandoned her. It certainly wasn’t because I didn’t want the little affectionate bundle of personality!

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    1. Was sure that weren’t just being heartless, but I do like reassurance. And a reminder that sometimes you need to wait to see if a rescue is needed.

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  8. David Brooks says:

    “Under Trump, the Republican identity is defined not by a set of policy beliefs but by a paranoid mind-set. He and his media allies simply ignore the rules of the epistemic regime and have set up a rival trolling regime. The internet is an ideal medium for untested information to get around traditional gatekeepers, but it is an accelerant of the paranoia, not its source. Distrust and precarity, caused by economic, cultural and spiritual threat, are the source.”

    When Brooks mentions the paranoid mind-set, he should be giving credit to Richard Hofstadter, perhaps the most influential historian of American history ever. Although dead for half a century, Hofstadter has achieved what most historians can only dream of – immortality. In November 1964, he published in Harper’s Magazine an essay entitled “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” It is truly remarkable that this essay, even today, is frequently on Harper’s most read list. This essay discusses how the paranoid style of the right wing discussed by Brooks is nothing new in American history. Although some of the examples of the paranoid style that Hofstadter offers have been challenged by other historians, the general thesis is widely accepted.

    Trump and the right-wing have taken the paranoid style to a higher and very dangerous level. This is because they are attempting to de-legitimatize the institutions that are the bedrock of American democracy: the sanctity of elections and the departments of government (including public health agencies). As a result, the Trump cult, aided and abetted by right-wing media, will view Biden’s presidency as attained by fraud. The right-wing success, particularly on the state level, is due to the sad fact that its supporters care nothing about democracy. They are only concerned about their own petty grievances. Perhaps, it is fair to say that most people, regardless of ideology, don’t care about democracy as an abstract good. For them, if they perceive democracy is not meeting their needs, they will not hesitate to discard it for an authoritarian type of government. It has occurred many times in other parts of the world, and it can most certainly happen here. This adds up to the great likelihood that the Biden administration will come under intense right-wing assault, probably greater than Obama experienced. Political and social division will grow greater. For those who like democracy, the coming years will be ones of intense anxiety.

    https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/

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  9. Blake mentioned lions and tigers quite often, nearly always only in a mythological or symbolic manner. He wrote his wonderful Tyger poem after seeing a real tiger on public display in the Tower of London, and being completely stunned by its ferocity.

    His question concerning “Did he who made the lamb make thee?” which he leaves unanswered, is an honest one, which he repeats throughout the poem, but leaves unanswered. Of course, Darwin did answer it 60 years later, and since then, Christians have learned to either avoid that question or swiftly propose some ridiculous answer.

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  10. Prof. PCC(E), is the £40 cost of Shakespeare and Hathaway’s marriage licence meant to be the modern equivalent of what they paid? I ask because £40 in the 16thC. is the equivalent of around £8,200 (approx $11,000 US) today, which sounds an awful lot to pay.

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    1. Not a sum likely to engender the embrace of the institution of blessed matrimony. Was there an Elizabethan baby-mama phenomenon?

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      1. Turns out that the £40 was only payable if the marriage was later found to have been illegal, and even then, neither Shakespeare nor Hathaway would have been liable for the sum. See comment 13 and replies below.

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  11. For the price of the spray paint, guy could have printed out—and laminated— a thoughtful, one page explanation of why this statue should be removed, an explanation of “Land Back,” maybe even a mention of an organization that supports it. And be seen as a protestor, rather than a common vandal.

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  12. Can’t argue with the geography of David Book’s argument as it has been going that way for many years. Look at almost any state you want to check the blue and red areas. Almost always the population areas turn blue while all the rural areas are red. As more and more people leave the rural areas the numbers favor the democrats (the urban party). But it is the desperation of this large red area and the Trump induced delusion that really makes the difference. Trump only exist because of television. This level of propaganda and removal of reality from the mind cannot make it without television. Just take television away, at least remove the Trump channel and the whole business would go down the toilet.

    Part of this movement of people to the population centers is caused by education itself. Check the senior high school class from every small town or rural area. The kids who go away and get higher educations do not come back. That is just the reality.

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  13. I just commented but it isn’t showing, even after refreshing page and going to the next article and back. If the original appears then I apolgise for the double post, albeit with more information in this one.
    Anyway..
    £40 for a marriage licence in 1582? That’s the equivalent of around £8,200 today which sounds a tad excessive, Shakespeare or not. It would have put the price of getting married out of reach of most of the British population back then. It’s more likely that they paid around 4 shillings, the equivalent of approx £40 today, but I’m happy to be corrected.

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      1. Ah, thank you, that made it clearer.
        Nobody had to pay anything, but friends of the couple signed a bond which made them liable to pay the sum if, after the marriage, it was discovered that they were not legally entitled to wed. There were apparent irregularities in their application for a licence, including the wedding taking place in a diocese in which neither of the couple lived, which was apparently suspicious but not a cause to refuse the licence outright. From the link:

        that two relations, guardians or friends of the couple, acting as sureties, bound themselves in £40 that certain conditions, normally four, had been, or would be, met. The conditions were: firstly, that there was no obstacle to the marriage; secondly, that there was no legal process pending concerning it; thirdly, that the groom should not proceed with the marriage without the consent of the bride’s friends or relations; and fourthly, that the groom should save the bishop harmless from any challenges to the marriage which might arise thereafter. William and Anne’s bond contained all four conditions.

        An equivalent would be when a person stands as guarantor on a loan: the guarantor only has to pay if the loanee defaults.

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  15. Your paragraph about Lady Astor made me curious about the other woman mentioned, Countess Markievicz. Quite the character! Here’s a line from her Wikipedia bio which gives something of the flavor of her life:

    “The sentence was commuted to life in prison. When told of this, she said to her captors, “I do wish your lot had the decency to shoot me”…”

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    1. This is an interesting thought, although I think the chances are higher that this operation was carried out by the Israelis because there is such a long history of scientists killed abroad by the Mossad.

      “The Mossad is suspected and accused of the murder of Ardeshir Hosseinpour (2007), Massud Ali-Mohammadi (2010), Madschid Shariari (2010), Dariush Rezaie (2011), Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan (2012) and Mohsen Fachrisadeh (2020)[33]. All six men were scientists working on Iran’s nuclear program. It is also suspected that the Mossad is also behind the attempted attack on Fereidun Abbassi (2010).”

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    2. I’m sure you are both right. The Israelis know they can do this with impunity on Trump’s watch, and as a bonus Trump has found surrogates that will gladly wreck the possibility of Biden re-joining the Iran nuclear agreement.

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    3. My thoughts too. Just a call from Trump to Netanyahu, or the other way around, would put it into play. Trump would add, “This can’t be traced back to me, right? And we never had this conversation.”

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  17. I never understood all that enthusiasm about J. Peterson.

    It seems to me that he is very good at giving the impression that he has profound philosophical thoughts, preferably directed against mainstream views, but in fact his statements are neither astute analysis nor do they offer any epistemological novelty.

    There are other excerpts of his absurd statements on Twitter, so he seriously believes that the DNA double helix is depicted in ancient Chinese, Aboriginal and Egyptian art.

    https://twitter.com/zei_squirrel/status/1331506968490610689

    This man is so overrated, but masses cheer him.

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    1. I agree. I think people cheer him on for two reasons. The first is that he came to prominence fighting Canada’s absurd new law about pronouns, and the second is that he sounds smart and sometimes says something that’s valuable to the right person. But I can’t think of anything he’s ever said that was original, while I can think of many things he’s said that were bullshit, bonkers, or obfuscatory and/or quasi-religious psychobabble.

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    1. The Rauch article is also good at explaining what’s happened to truth. He concludes that our institutions are starting to deal with misinformation and disinformation, though he ends with colleges and universities as being “all downside”.

      One memorable word Rauch introduces to me: “acephalous”. I can see using that in some fine insults. I hope I remember to use it.

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      2. Well said, PT. *Very* well said!

        What’s curious—and something I’m not really sure that Rausch’s major premise gives a good account of—is the fact that academics (at least, the tenured, senior members of academe) are the people who have the least emotional incentive to concoct a specious alternative to reality as a way of gratifying our need to matter. We’ve been told we matter continuously ever since we got tenure, we have gilded and burnished CVs displaying books, papers, invited conference presentations and so on, big offices and so on, and on, and on. We referee papers for journals and books for distinguished academic publishers, we get sizable grants (less so than in the past, but still…) and we travel on our university’s or the NSF’s dime to gorgeous places. The analysis that Rausch offers does not, I think, completely account for the fact that many people whom this description fits are eager participants in the ‘downside’ he refers to, which is—isn’t it?—just the mirror image on the left of the epistemic dissonance he attributes, in the case of people on the right, to socioeconomic disenfranchisement. His story certainly makes sense if you’re looking at rural vs.metropolitan Georgia. But how does it explain the corresponding aberrations on the left at Yale, Columbia and Oberlin? Something quite different is going on, surely?

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  19. I think even as you’re writing that, BJ, you realize there is no equivalency. How many of the 80 million+ Biden voters do you think embrace “queer” sociology or critical theory or deny the bimodal nature of sex? (How many of them do you think you could give you more than a blank look if you asked them?)

    Whereas, the paranoid conspiracy theories I set out in my comment above are embraced by over half of Republicans — or at least have been while the GOP has been beset by the Trump fever. We have a case here where one of this nation’s two venerable political parties has followed a career grifter down a rabbit hole. They have been played for marks — every bit as much marks as the students who paid through the nose to attend Trump “University.”

    I, too, would like to think “the vast majority of people on both sides are good citizens who genuinely share the goal of making this country better,” And I do believe that there are still the remnants of a Responsible Right out there; they just no long have a home inside the Republican tent, at least for the time being.

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    1. Unfortunately, I edited my comment by one word and WordPress ate it up.

      Anyway, you say, “over half of Republicans” believe the things you wrote down. It’s a very misleading statistic that people like to use a lot because they know that most people will read it as “over half of the people who vote for Republicans.” In reality, it would be more like about 15% of people who have registered with a party in this country. It’s not half the country. It’s not even half of the people who voted for Trump. At most, maybe it’s 20%, and it could be even ten or fifteen points lower than that. I know plenty of Trump voters, and none of them believe in that stuff.

      Also, I said in multiple sentences that there wasn’t an equivalency. I laid out in an entire paragraph the points I was making with the comparison: (1) that we should try to treat people with as much empathy as possible, regardless of political leaning, and (2) we shouldn’t be treating people differently — specifically when it comes to government regulation/recommendations and whether or not they’re following them — based on their political leanings. And that doing the latter will only help bolster those who already believe in conspiracies and make people who don’t far more likely to do so.

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      1. Not sure how you transmogrify this poll showing that 77% of Trump voters believe Biden won by voter fraud (or this one showing that 68% think the election was rigged) into no more than 20%.

        Conversations with individual Trump supporters in this regard are nice, but provide no substitute for data.

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  20. New Zealand was the first self-governing country in the world to allow women to vote. Good on ya NZ! There are a lot of women in my family & I hope they all got out & voted!

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