It's no good trying to talk sense to a Fox News addict

 

I received another letter from “home,” and it was more of the same. This is the last time I’m going to indulge my Fox News addict family member here, because it’s like a dog chasing its tail; it makes absolutely no sense, but some people have to find a way to expend that pent-up “energy.” I mean really: he wants to talk about the same things over and over again, only with a slightly new “angle” or something he heard someone on Fox News say, nothing that really illuminates the issue at hand at best, and at worst merely serves as yet another dodge to avoid facing uncomfortable facts.

Joe Biden, in bed with the teachers’ union who are his big supporters—won’t open schools because the unions say it is Covid-19. The private schools and Catholic schools have no problems being open and teaching the students in-house. How about the Keystone pipeline Biden shut down. We all know it is  all political and the garbage of climate change as the reason.

Gasoline is up from $2.29 to $2.99 per gallon and a barrel of crude oil is just a buck or two from doubling in price since Biden has taken office. Good news—yes?

We all know all construction jobs are temporary jobs, but where is Biden’s plan for right now—non-existing for the 11,000 who lost their jobs? Future maintenance of the Keystone  pipeline of 50 people to clean the interiors and inspect for problems—they are called troubleshooters, The non-existing jobs assembling solar panels would possibly 400 to 500 dollars a week—there are no jobs available and if they do become reality they will be made in China who will be the low contract bidder. What job will be eliminated get the $1500 weekly needed to take care of their families.

Well, he left me with quite a bit to unpack there, but while it isn’t hard when you live in a reality-based world, it certainly is a chore to explain how the world works to someone whose beliefs are dictated by personal prejudices and invented “facts.” Attacking unions is a right-wing hobby (yeah, they really “care” about working stiffs), and I do agree that many children learn better from “in-school” teaching than by the “remote” method, but I don’t think anyone should be second-guessing policy when public health and safety is at issue.  Catholic and private schools are “for-profit” institutions, so I wouldn’t put them up on a pedestal of “virtue.”

In regard to oil and gas prices that they are due for a correction upward is inevitable. Prices plummeted during the pandemic because fewer people were driving their POVs either to work or “play.” Many—and probably most—office employees were working “remotely,” and there were no restaurants and movie theaters open. People either stayed home, or they went out jogging or riding bicycles for “amusement.” But with pandemic restrictions being lessened in some states, more people are going to get into their POVS and hit the road. Saudi Arabia among other oil-producing countries reduced output because of the lack of demand, and there is every reason to believe that oil and gas prices will stabilize once production is ramped-up again. “Logic,” of course, defies some minds.

As for the Keystone pipeline project, it has been a boondoggle for one country: Canada. As I mentioned before, those 11,000 jobs number is just a PR stunt by TC Energy (TransCanada) to get this thing jump-started again. Only 1,000 or so would be employed at any given time, and only to work on a section of pipeline for a few months before they would be replaced by the next crew. Those 50 “permanent” jobs? TC has been “coy” about that (as in everything else about the project), but they will likely be filled by Canadian citizens employed by TC. The pipeline is to go first to a refinery in Nebraska, then to the Gulf of Mexico, giving TC a more “warm weather” way to export its oil year-round to countries not named the United States.

There is some argument about how much if any of TC’s petroleum product through Keystone will actually be sold in the U.S. or exported to other countries; but given what happens to most of the oil that ends-up in Gulf coast facilities, it is also likely that most of it will be exported to other countries. At best, those who favor the pipeline, and “fact-checkers,” admit that the only thing they have to “rebut” claims that the U.S. will see no economic benefit from the pipeline is that it is “unlikely” that all of the oil will leave the U.S. This is an important issue, because the U.S. is taking on potential environmental damage and public health risks for the biggest infrastructure project in U.S. history that seemingly solely benefits a foreign country.

So the U.S. will very likely see little benefit economically from this “deal.” This is the truth of Trump’s “America First” unreality. You know what “America First” should really mean? Do you know what being “energy independent” is? It is not relying on a finite source of energy (fossil fuels), but one that is based on what is as “infinite” as the earth is old.  By the way, most parts of wind turbines constructed in the U.S. are made in the U.S.; there are 500 wind-related manufacturing facilities in 43 states, employing 114,000 people, and there should be no reason why we can’t do that here with solar technology as well.  And it’s “clean.” Who has a problem with that, save Fox News idiots and their fans?

Then he sneaks in that thing about a living wage. It’s funny hearing a right-winger talking about how it costs $1500 a week (that’s $75,000 a year) to raise a family proper, but he’s always singing a different tune when it comes to the “others” who apparently do not have a right to a living wage—because they only have themselves to “blame.” Tennessee doesn’t even have a minimum wage law, although it has to “respect” the federal rate of $7.25 an hour. It just seems a tiny bit hypocritical to complain about how $40-an-hour is just barely enough to raise a family (of white people?), yet on the other hand claim that a minimum wage law of $15 is an “outrage” and a “job loser” (for the “others).

You must be aware Biden is all in favor and gives the blessing to Russia to complete their pipeline to Europe (Germany).

The U.S. doesn’t have any cause to stop a Russian pipeline into Germany, because unlike the Keystone pipeline, the oil that comes out of it is directly intended for the consumption of Germany and other European countries. After all, Russia’s economy is in a shambles, and it needs the money bad. Sure, Russia could threaten to cut off supplies in times of stress, but that would be like cutting-off its nose to spite its face. Europe could just buy OPEC oil instead, and it has just as much political leverage as Russia does.

Where is the concern for the Green New Deal and climate change. John Kerry just over a month ago stated we only have 9 years to take care of climate change—FEAR MONGERING!!!

I just can’t understand what people have against “green energy.” It just doesn’t make any sense. Many European countries are aiming for 100 percent “green” energy for their electricity needs. Why is that so frightening  to people here? I just don’t get it. Is it because in their minds it is too closely tied to “radical leftists” and they just knee-jerk oppose it because they are partisan knuckleheads? Now, I admit that some people are so blinded by their white grievance that they can’t look into the future further than the next day, or Sean Hannity’s next show, but when is the “right” time to start being concerned about climate change and energy? Nine years from now? 50 years from now? How about today? Or better yet, how about 20 years ago?

How about the southern border crisis, from January 20, 2021 to March 1, 2021 one hundred eight illegals tested positive for COVID-19 virus in Brownsville, TX? As of two days ago more than 1500 illegals have tested positive  for the COVID-19 virus, and you have to remember not many of the illegals get tested. They are put on buses and shipped anywhere U.S.A. Now about the over-crowding and holding the illegals more than 72 hours. That is all the law allows for illegals. Why does Biden and his cronies, not allow the so-called press access to the facilities that illegals (children) are kept in? Are they in cages or shipping containers?

I should tell him that you can’t on one hand dehumanize human beings as “illegals,” and on the other hand deal in hypocritical “whataboutisms” like you actually “care” anything about them as human beings. Did Trump and Miller ever follow the spirit of the law on immigration and asylum? No, they deliberately undermined it, and the fact they used unabashedly racist terms to “justify” it does not make it more "acceptable." This alleged border “crisis” is exactly what Republicans want it to be seen as because they know it moves the “base” more than any other issue. I think Democrats are playing scared on the issue and right into white nationalist hands.  Migrants have been coming here for over a century to fill labor needs that few acknowledge because it exposes their own hypocrisy. Oh and by the way, 31 million people have tested positive for the COVID-19 in this country, which is about 10 percent of the population. The Brownsville testing found 6.3 percent of the migrants they tested did so positively.  Just throwing out a number without context, of course, is how to frighten paranoid bigots.

Insurrection: January 6, 2021—How many guns were confiscated by the police—NONE—and how many shots fired  by other than police—NONE, but the Capitol police did shoot and kill one lady (a “lady”?) from California. Remember how your far left and fake news lied about the police officer who died, saying he was struck over the head with a fire extinguisher, another lie—DID NOT HAPPEN!!!

Yeah, okay, the insurrection never happened and nobody was killed, except that one “lady” and a police officer. In regard to the insurrection, while it was true that only a few guns were confiscated, that is likely because most of the rioters got away before they could be searched; on social media, many bragged that they had arrived “armed” and were ready for “action.” Those who did have guns confiscated had them out in open, or police found them in vehicles they searched; for example, they found assault rifles, full magazines, Molotov cocktails and pipe bombs; what were those people planning on doing with all of that? Two dozen people were arrested for carrying items that could be used as weapons to cause lethal harm. Many of those arrested later were found to have serious armaments in their homes that they may well have taken with them, but were not caught with at the time.

And you don’t need to have a gun to kill someone; four of the five persons who died during the insurrection were not killed by guns. The woman who did was no “lady,” but a far-right militia extremist intent on causing some damage and she was among those trying to smash through a door despite being ordered to cease and desist. And does it really matter the precise details of how that police officer died, which is still under question? What we do know is that he and those four other persons would not have died had it not been for the riot. You can’t just explain that away, especially with idiot commentary culled from Fox News.

I did take the time to watch some of the liberal left so-called news programs you suggested. I watched CNN and MSNBC. All I got from them was ANGER, RACEISM (sic) and BIGETRY (sic).

Well, I should have known better, but what the hell. I suspect that he didn’t step into the world of reality with an open mind—if he actually did watch CNN or MSNBC, the latter’s whose hosts usually carefully lay out the facts for all but the deliberately ignorant to understand. If he thinks that all you get from CNN and MSNBC are things like “racism” and “bigotry,” either he didn’t actually watch them, or his definition of racism and bigotry comes from the white nationalist and white grievance perspective. Let’s face it: he is so brainwashed by right-wing hate talk that it is impossible to even listen to alternative views that are just as valid from the perspective of (I dare say) of a majority of people in this country, although what passes for “valid” in his case is an extremely relative term.

Then he went on to try to “explain” why he believed I didn’t share his right-wing beliefs, comparing me to my half-siblings who are more plainly Caucasian than my plainly “ethnic” self. Ok, so a college degree didn’t get me a great job, but life has been one adventure after another, and I am doing what I want to do (even if I’ve seen no money from it), which is to write, and Google has allowed me to write any damn thing I want without anyone’s “permission”—1,800 posts and counting. I’m “content” in a fashion, and I have thousands of mostly “classic” films in my video collection to keep my company. I don’t really consider myself to be a “flaming liberal” at all, and I am not one of those “woke” people; I’ll pick a fight with anyone who is a hypocrite, self-serving and uses self-righteous “victimhood” to justify oppressing others, or to gain advantage for themselves, or to have their 15 minutes of “fame.”

I also have no illusions about the world I live in. When I enlisted in the Army, I did finally figure out what was “wrong” with me and that what I experienced even within my own home was a lesson in what discrimination was; the belief was that I was more likely to be “dead or in jail” than to be a university graduate, let alone someone who hasn’t spent more than two weeks out of work since he left school. I realized that everything I knew was a lie when in basic training a drill sergeant asked me “Is that how you fold your socks, you Mexican”? When I told him I wasn’t a “Mexican” he suggested that was how a “Cuban” and then a “Puerto Rican” folded his socks. He ended-up saying “whatever you are”—just not a “real” American like he was, or the rest of my family.  

The drill meant all of those terms to be derogatory, almost racial slurs, and since then I refused to live in a world of illusion. I know what people “see” and what they think. I despise bigoted hypocrites, and I will call them out at every turn; if you have to be labeled a “radical leftie” or “socialist” or some other ridiculous “slur” to see them for what they are, then so be it.