When voting for infrastructure means betraying your country; how dying from Covid is sacrifice in the war against Joe Biden; when safety measures give false confidence; how QAnon and Pakistani radicals are similar; when birthdays were not a thing.
The Atlantic, 10 Nov 21: The Right’s Total Loss of Proportion, subtitled, “Support an attack on Congress? No problem. Vote for Biden’s infrastructure bill? You’ve betrayed your country.”
How does the Right think all these decrepit bridges are going to get rebuilt? In the 1950s did they oppose the Interstate Highway System too?
\\
Amanda Marcotte, Salon, 9 Nov 21: Insurrection by other means: Republicans are ready to die of COVID to spite Biden, Democrats, subtitled, “Why are Trump refusing the vaccine and risking mass death? It’s their sacrifice in the war against Joe Biden.”
No, the darker and harder truth is that this isn’t really about intelligence or ignorance. It’s about ideology, and specifically, about how far a good chunk of the GOP base has become radicalized toward the politics of insurrection. More than half of Trump voters claim they want to secede from the union, and nearly a third say violence is a legitimate means to impose their will on the rest of the country. Endorsement of violence rises to nearly half of Republicans if the question is abstracted to the idea that “a time will come” for such tactics.
\\
Slate, 7 Nov 21: Our Worst Idea About “Safety”, subtitled, “A concept that took hold in the ’70s has haunted everything from seat belts to masks—and it’s going to keep putting us in danger.”
The idea here is that any safety measure put into place — like seatbelts in cars, in the 1960s, which of course conservatives vehemently resisted — gives some people a “false sense of security,” as if the one measure will make a person invincible. Of course, life is more complex that. The idea applies to the response to Covid, as well.
\\
Religious News Service, 4 Nov 21: Radicalization’s path: In case studies, finding similarities
About the similarities between a QAnon radical and a Pakistani Islamist radical.
\\
Here’s an example of the counter-intuitive ideas I like, in this case simply pointing out that the things we take for granted today haven’t always been true. Things change.
The Atlantic, 2 Nov 21: The Strange Origins of American Birthday Celebrations, subtitled, “For most people, birthdays were once just another day. Industrialization changed that.”
The idea that everyone should celebrate their birthday is, weirdly, not very old itself.
Not until the 19th century—perhaps around 1860 or 1880—did middle-class Americans commonly do so, and not until the early 20th century were birthday celebrations a tradition nationwide. In fact, the song “Happy Birthday” is not far beyond its own 100th birthday.
