The she-devil and Daniel Webster

 

In one of the films I reviewed last month, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Sandy confronts Miss Brodie on the order in which she places her “anxieties.” First comes the “harm” done to her, and the last is the reason for it—sending the gullible Mary to her death to inflate her own ego. In this country (or at least for the media) it isn’t policies that promote death (virus-denial), violence (Second Amendment “freedoms”) or promoting prejudice against entire groups of people (migrants/Hispanics) that produces the greatest amount of “anxiety.” No, such things won’t cause someone to lose their day job if they are in a position that allows for a media feeding frenzy, and provides temporary “fame” and a feeling of “empowerment” for people with grudges that need massaging.

It was reported on Wednesday the family of Angelo Quinto, a former Navy veteran, was suing the Antioch, California police department and several of its members including its police chief, for Quinto’s death last December, after a police officer pinned his neck to the ground with his knee for five minutes during what was called a “mental health crisis.” Yet another George Floyd-type killing in which the victim is Hispanic isn’t “big” news; what is “big” news was New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has been in office for 10 years, resigned. Ten years as the chief executive of one of the more prominent states in the country is plenty of time to swell one’s head and become in the minds of many—especially women—to be too big for his britches, so Cuomo was an easy target for women who thought he was a little too presumptuous about his personal “magnetism.”

Hardly anyone in this world is “innocent”; pick anyone off the street and conduct an “investigation” into their past life, and if you are only interested in information from people with an ax to grind and who probably will make exaggerated claims that go unchallenged, and the person conducting the investigation has motives that perhaps do not bear close scrutiny, then of course the end result is a “scathing” report from which the only way out is to resign before  the self-righteous media frenzy. If New York Attorney General Letitia James’ report was “scathing” for what amounted to “unwanted” touching and comments that were “offensive” to one’s ego, we have a right to suspect that James’ ulterior motive for what is essentially a deliberate hit-piece is the hope to use it for political advantage in the now “open” governor’s race in 2022, although she might have some “competition” from current Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is due to become the first governor of New York in the next few weeks.

Of course, for this kind of thing to work you have to at least be a real “victim” and not make false claims about the person you are trying unseat. In the recent Democratic Manhattan District Attorney primary race, Tali Farhadian Weinstein’s attempt to use the gender victim card to smear her opponents backfired; she  attacked the eventual winner, Alvin Bragg (who is black) as being a danger to (white) women in campaign ads that offended many as being racist and Willie Hortonesque. She also attacked Bragg for suggesting he would be open to investigations into more possible cases of innocent men in prison who were prosecuted  by Linda Fairstein, the  fanatical former head prosecutor of New York's sex crimes unit, and who was responsible for the wrongful conviction of the Central Park Five; to this day she continues to claim they are guilty even after the only DNA evidence found implicated another  man who confessed that he alone was the perpetrator.

Knee-jerk reactions are all too often these days, and it helps if you are a Republican, because your supporters will dismiss it is a political hit-job from the left. In 1987, Sen. Gary Hart seemed on his way to the Democratic nomination for president and an odds-on favorite to beat Vice President George H.W. Bush. But he was undone when he was photographed with a fashion model named Donna Rice on a boat. No claim was ever made that “Monkey Business” was going on (that was the name of the boat), but just the media titter that there “probably was” was enough to tank Hart’s presidential ambitions. Hart denied there was any untoward intent, and later the Bush campaign was accused of staging the photo op—the kind of “dirty play” that Bush would again do against Michael Dukakis with the Willie Horton ad. Bill Clinton would be accused of much worse but decided to just barrel through, helped by the fact that if wife Hillary, who endeared herself to fellow feminists and had ambitions of her own, could get past his indiscretions, so could they.

What was comedian and former senator Al Franken forced to resign over, which he now regrets doing? For what a radio broadcaster named Leeann Tweeden would belatedly called a “forcible kiss” while filming some comedy skit. Would she have been less “offended” if it was just a “peck?” The “infamous” photo of Franken putting his hands on the sleeping Tweeden’s breasts was also not “real”; it was “pretend” and his hands never actually touched her. Yet his Democratic colleagues were more fearful of the optics than just accepting an apology for high school prank behavior. That would have been enough back in 1989, when a House Ethics panel was satisfied with Rep, Gus Savage’s apology to a female Peace Corps worker who claimed he made an unwanted advance on her.

Men in prominent positions in politics have been putting their careers at risk for succumbing to “natural” impulses since at least ancient Roman times. In this country, what is happening now can be traced back to around 1850. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts was famed for his oratory and legal acumen, which was celebrated in the Stephen Vincent Benet short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” which was made into a film in 1941 that is regarded as a classic. Webster opposed slavery and sought to limit ban its expansion into the territories, but he was not willing to risk breaking up the Union over the matter. Because of his refusal to take a clear stand to abolish slavery (Abraham Lincoln himself famously said that if he could save the Union without freeing any slave, he would do it) this aroused the anger of journalist and women’s rights activist Jane Swisshelm, who wished to take down this “Godlike” man. How to do it?

Swisshelm portrayed herself as an ardent abolitionist, and after the Civil War briefly published a newspaper called The Reconstructionist,” although many of her women’s rights contemporaries, like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were exposed as being “secret” racists, and used ugly racial verbiage in attempts to make common cause with Southerners in opposing suffrage for former slaves. Swisshelm herself had a paternalistic notion about Native Americans, assuming they could live side-by-side with whites in harmony while they were being robbed, starved and forced onto the poorest land in violation of treaties. The Dakota War of 1862, which was the culmination of many abuses against the Natives that exploded into violence against the settlers who were allowed on treaty lands taken from them, Swisshelm in her St. Cloud, Minnesota newspaper advocated

Exterminate the wild beasts, and make peace with the devil and all his hosts sooner than these red-jawed tigers, whose fangs are dripping with the blood of the innocents! Get ready, and as soon as these convicted murderers are turned loose, shoot them and be sure they are shot dead, dead, DEAD, DEAD! If they have any souls, the Lord can have mercy on them if he pleases! But that is His business. Ours is to kill the lazy vermin and make sure of killing them.

Writings like this inflamed the local population’s desire for blood. In a military tribunal in which most of those who sat in judgment were locals, over 300 tribesman were convicted and sentenced to death. Upon learning of the case, Lincoln requested the trial transcripts, and among other things, found only two instances in which it was proven that white women had been violated, and he determined that only the 38 who were proven to be involved in the massacre of civilian were to hang. When told that his vote count from Minnesota would take a hit in the 1864 election, Lincoln replied that he wasn’t going to kill people for votes.

But Swisshelm’s attack on Webster was part and parcel with her contempt of men in general and her tendency of being “deliberately provocative.” She made so many unreasonable demands on her husband that when they eventually divorced, it was easy for her to proclaim “I having, voluntarily, assumed the legal guilt of breaking my marriage contract, do cheerfully accept the legal penalty—a life of celibacy—bringing no charge against my husband, save that he was not much better than the average man.”

In order to bring down this “Godlike” man, whose “prestige of his great name and the power of his intellect were turned over to slavery,” Swisshelm published a hit-piece in Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune. Word had it, she claimed, that in Washington D.C. there was a “family of eight mulattoes, bearing the image and superscription of the great New England statesman, who paid the rent and grocery bills of their mother.”  Webster had mistresses who “are generally colored women—some of them big black wenches as ugly and vulgar as himself.”

There was some concern that Swisshelm’s attacks on Webster would cause a backlash against the Tribune, but apparently it was not taken seriously, because actions speak louder than words. Webster did support the Compromise of 1850, which included the fugitive slave law, as a last-ditch effort to prevent a civil war, but it was doomed to failure because it satisfied no one. But in his personal life, Webster—who was known to be often in financial difficulties—was generous with what funds he had in paying for the freedom of at least four slaves before he died in 1852. Swisshelm had her moment, and like other egotists who seek “fame” by attacking those more prominent with scandalous gossip, retreated back into the shadows of history.

Blame it on "mental health"

 

“Mental health” seems to be a big issue these days, starting with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle telling us how difficult it is to block out the noise from the British tabloid media, which has more or less stopped—not because of any “pressure” from “the Firm,” which seemed to enjoy all the shade being dumped on Markle—but probably because the tabloids were having trouble getting recent photos of Markle wearing “inappropriate” shoes to complain about, and the fact that the American media doesn’t really care that much what they do. That doesn’t mean the talk concerning their mental health is over (we’ll probably find out more than we want to know in his upcoming tell-all), bust I suspect that a lot of people wish they had their mental health “problems.”

Some people are praised for their stand on mental health. For example, commentators in the above ground media have been supportive of the “bravery” of American gymnast Simone Biles for stepping aside (briefly) from Olympic competition because of her “mental health” issues; when some questioned why she was even there to take to spot of another gymnast whose mind might be more “in the game,” Biles came back out and reported that her aunt had passed away recently. The underground sports media was less forgiving; everyone has problems, you just have to rise above and perform. Biles did come back and win a bronze medal, but given the fact that the U.S. was supposed to sweep all the gold medals in women’s gymnastics and only won two, she certainly let her teammates down, and probably receive sympathy points from the judges for the one bronze medal, nudging out someone who was probably more deserving.

There are other ways people deal with “mental health” issues. Everybody knows that Aaron Rodgers has his “issues”; is holding grudges from his high school years a “mental health” issue? Some people might think it is. Of course Rodgers’ idea of “therapy” is being a Jeopardy host, spending time in Hawaii during OTAs, playing golf during mandatory mini-camp—just having “fun” and letting other people do his moaning for him in public.  Rodgers wasn’t dealing with a “mental health” crisis, he was just pouting about his hurt feelings; this is the Rodgers who refused to run the plays that Mike McCarthy called in that last season, and the team tanked with a 6-9-1 record. I still think that Rodgers fiancé had something to do with all of this, particularly as training camp approached and Rodgers wasn’t going anywhere; she seemed genuinely upset when she basically reposted Stephen A. Smith’s angry harangues on social media.

Other people have different ways of handling “mental health” crisis. The day before the December 22, 2003 Monday Night Football game between the Packers and the Raiders, Brett Favre’s father died of a heart attack. Favre indicated that he believed his father would have wanted him to play; now, Favre had started every game since week 4 of the 1992 season, and that probably had something to do with the equation as well. Favre certainly didn’t perform that night like he down in the dumps; he performed in a way that would make his father proud—playing his best half of football of his career, throwing for 311 yards and four touchdowns by halftime. Favre didn’t use “mental health” as an excuse to not perform as he was capable of.

Mental health issues are often equated with “suicidal” thoughts, or a failure to “cope” with a situation that may or may not be theirs to control. But why are we supposed to “cheer” the “heroism” of celebrities who confess to failures to cope when things are not set for them on silver platters, while ignoring people with real mental health issues, like, say, the guy walking down the sidewalk shouting vague but menacing threats at nobody in particular; such people exist in a scary world of their own. Dementia, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s—those are mental health conditions that can’t be “cured.” And we are supposed to “cheer” people who feel sorry for themselves because they can’t “deal” with being put upon or not getting their way?

There are also “mental health” conditions that just seem so because words and actions matter go against the grain of what most people would say is common sense and simple human decency.  It can take the form of mass psychosis (check out any video of Jordan Klepper’s travels in Trumpworld),  that is aroused and amplified by the kind of people who in “normal” times who would be dismissed as “crazy”: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert, Lauren Boebert, Jim Jordan, Josh Hawley, Mo Brooks, Ron Johnson—and of course Donald Trump. Charles Pierce in Esquire called people like this a “one-stop shop for all things insane” and that modern conservatism is “rotten” to the core, and it is people like this who are “parasites” who “feed on the decay.”

Trump may be out of office, but that doesn’t mean there are no others in power willing to ride his “crazy train,” like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who insists on being contrary in the face of the fact that Covid-19 is out-of-control in his state. People are dying in his state because of his pigheadedness; there has to be some kind of “mental health” condition that describes a disease whereas someone refuses to get off the train tracks when a locomotive is coming straight at him. And there are those willing to stand on the tracks with him; as satirist Jonathan Swift wrote, “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceived, it is too late—the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect.”

And then again there are people who just don’t fit the mold of what “normalcy” is supposed to look—and sound—like. When it comes to “what’s wrong with the kid,” their parents just don’t want to hear from “mental health professionals” that the problem might be their parenting.   Some kids might seem not “normal” because they don’t talk much, or keep to themselves. Whatever the reasons for this, sometimes these behaviors have no chance of being “corrected” because some people think you can beat or punish kids into “normality,” when in fact they are just pushing them more and more inward, and more apt to do things that are defensive mechanisms because of “uncertainty” caused by the lack of benefit for “good” behavior—i.e. asking for something seems more likely the cause for punishment if a parent thinks you are “taking advantage” of them during a brief spell of  “niceness”—and thus doing things “on the sly” has a higher risk/reward benefit.  When someone doesn’t want to face the truth and try a different way—like simple human kindness—it naturally leads to “self-fulfilling” results.

Whether real or not, Johns Hopkins claims that 26 percent of adults in this country suffer from some form of “mental health disorder,” which I suppose will come as a surprise to some people.

How to deal with “wokeness” in America? Just stay away from “woke” people

 

I was in a retail store, waiting in a long line with only two cashiers on duty. After an interminable period of not moving, I put down the hand cart I was carrying because it was fairly heavy as was starting to stretch my arm. The aisle was narrow, but I was observing the six-feet social distancing rule still in place, and I was not expecting any trouble from the couple that was in front of me engaged in animated conversation. Suddenly the man of the couplet decided he had something else to do, and without looking where he was going just turned around and bull-rushed past me, knocking over the hand cart and crushing a few items underfoot.

Now, I was annoyed by the fact the line wasn’t moving and I had places to go and things to do too, but if I decide to make a move elsewhere on the fly, at I would at least be aware of my surroundings and make sure there were no “obstacles” in my way (like other people), especially if it means inconveniencing someone else or causing destruction. My immediate reaction was to tell this person “Will you watch out!” His reaction was merely to acknowledge that something was in his way, and then to be annoyed that someone was miffed by what he had done: so what, what was the big deal? His wife, who was still in line, reiterated his “point”—if anything was crushed, just go get another one, as if anyone was going in the growing line was going to “save” my place.

Frustrated by their unapologeticness about what had just occurred, trying to turn it around on me, I started to say “You guys” and then was cut off by both demanding to know what I meant by “you guys.” Momentarily confused by the question I wondered “What?” Note I did not say “you people”; when someone uses the word “guys” it is just an informal and normally inoffensive term to apply to either sex. But this situation was not “normal,” because these two people were black, as was almost everyone else in that line.

They thought they “had” me, but not quite. I asked the man “Ok, so what do you want me to call you?” This time, I had them. They were stumped by question, and not receiving an answer I observed that I was “sick” of people who are always trying to a make a race issue out of everything. The man then made the usual of threat of taking this “discussion” outside so that he lay a beating on me; his wife told him to just go because I was being “anal.” I’m the one who is being “anal” I asked, before observing aloud that “this your answer to everything, just beat on someone.” Everything went quiet after that. Nobody else had said anything at all; it was just taking a deep breath and stepping back like the Colorado Rockies organization was forced to do, withdrawing a statement the other day which announced its “disgust” at racial slurs by a fan at a black Miami Marlins player, admitting upon further investigation that the offending fan was actually just trying to get the attention of the Rockies’ mascot, “Dinger.” I mean, if “Dinger” sounds too much like the “N” word, then they should change it.

Now, I am not unmindful of “anger” that dwells inside of some people; Ralph Ellison begins his novel Invisible Man with the black narrator imagining himself beating an anonymous white man on the street simply because he feels his humanity is not being recognized, and thus he is “invisible” in eyes of most white people. But that is simply not true today, and if anyone whose humanness is  “invisible” these days, it is anyone who is or looks “Mexican,” which is the reason why these people felt they had a “right” to abuse me.

People like me recognize hypocrisy and ignorance more than most. I was told when I was old enough to remember that I was like “everyone else” in the almost all-white neighborhoods and schools I existed in. I believed my parents (my natural father I never knew, but he did leave his "mark" on me), but eventually you wonder why nobody was interested in being my “friend” after they reached “puberty” because, you know, I wasn’t suitable company in anyone’s “social class.” But perhaps in a way being by myself all the time actually helped me survive this world of illusion. When I joined the Army and encountered all these people who were not white at close quarters for the first time in my life, I just kept my social distance from everyone, because that was easy for me to do, and so it wasn’t easy to make accusations against me. Of course, there were some people who took my social distancing “personal,” but I remember one person telling someone else that I was “OK” because I was “everyone’s friend,” when of course he was just being “ironic.”

Things have changed a lot since I was kid; society was more ordered in the “natural” way things. But times change, and just about everyone is full of shit these days, and power is sometimes put in the hands of people who misuse and abuse it. Being a “loner” also helps when dealing with females with “attitude,” since it allows me not to deal with them at all. Of course, I don’t deal with men all that much either; I’d just rather write and watch movies. Unfortunately there are times when I have no choice but to interact, especially with people who as children were taught “stranger danger”—and especially adults who as white children were taught to “beware” of people who did not look like them: they were “BAD.” 

Of course in this country there is nothing that can get a man into trouble faster than any accusation that has something to do with s-e-x. Unlike, say, murder, robbery, drug-dealing etc., there is no “trial” to determine guilt or innocence, let alone a presumption of innocence. The only “evidence” required is someone’s “word” that they were “offended,” and today it is so easy of offend people in this country, because they want and are looking to be offended.

While there is a “feminist” movement in Europe, the level of “wokeness” is limited by the fact that unlike in this country, people really don’t have a problem with sexuality. For example, Europeans are more comfortable with public nudity, at least in places where it is “acceptable,” like public parks and beaches; it has nothing to do with “sex,” it is just people feeling more “comfortable” in the buff. That obviously is not the case in this country. When I was in the Army way back when, I “qualified” to join a select group from the brigade to participate in a live fire exercise on the Greek island of Crete (out of the 13 “teams,” mine was the only one to receive a “go” rating when it was over, which at least made the lieutenant happy). For “fun” we went hiking in the Samaria Gorge, because previous groups had been “bored” with trips to the Minoan ruins, which is what I would have preferred to do.

We also had time to visit the beaches with their clear blue Mediterranean water—and the other “sights.” I have to say that Americans can act so stupid, but whose fault is that really, coming from a country where sexuality and the body is something that must be hidden from view—and for many women in the “woke” and “MeToo” era, there is no “pleasure” to be had in it, because it’s a “crime” against their “dignity,” or whatever.  Hell, you can get into trouble just by making the first “move” if the woman chooses to be “offended” by it. There have been many female heads-of-state in Europe, so one may presume that a society that isn't caught up in anti-sex gender "wokeness" hasn't harmed their ability to advance the "natural" way, not the "shaming" way.

The relative lack of “wokeness” in Europe—the German women gymnastics team at the 2020 Olympics is an exception, although perhaps they need to redesign their full-body leotards given the fact they helped them win exactly 0 medals—can be explained by such “disturbing” realities such as the fact that "puritanism" never took hold there; it was just "deported" to the American colonies. Thus in Europe, prostitution is legal and regulated; in the Netherlands, it is a storefront operation that hardly anyone notices anymore, just like the use of cannabis. Over here in this new “woke” period, women who engage in the sex trade are always portrayed as “victims.” In Europe, clubs and bars in some places don’t just have rest rooms, but “sex rooms,” where young adults who still live with their parents can find a place to engage in their natural proclivities without being "scolded" or "shamed."

I’ve already talked about the hypocrisy of “woke” Seattle, where they have statues of nude male figures (including one some accuse of promoting “pedophilia”), while that of the female form is banned. In Europe, nudity is not generally viewed in sexual terms, especially in the north; some people just feel more “comfortable” without any clothes in settings that don’t require it. Nudity is allowed on network television after a certain hours (nudity is not uncommon in British “adult” dramas—those scenes were just “cut” when shown on PBS). Thus in Europe nudity has been “desexualized”; in this country, nudity is not “normal,” but only something that occurs only in the context of “sex.” Even in American movies, the simple acts of taking a shower or changing clothes is meant to “titillate,” because that is how Americans have been “programmed” to treat sex and nudity—not as a “natural” function of living. In this day and age of radicalized gender politics, it is something that is programmed in people to see as a “danger” or a threat to their “self-worth.”

I have to deal with the ignorance of people every day whose “wokeness” is of a limited, self-obsessed variety, from people who are too dumb to see someone who is a college-educated male who served in the military, not some sex-fiend, drug dealer or car-prowler. Women especially; I can’t tell you how many times in my current night job when some female tenant who never saw me before (and vice versa) just randomly shows up, and then the next day I am told that they have to move me to another location—not because of anything I had done, but because I made the woman “nervous” by just being there—and its always because of the paranoid stereotypes concerning males of my supposed “ethnicity.”

Life is short, so why bother with such people? Of course it is easy for someone like myself who is “wired” differently than others. I have never shared living accommodations with another human being since I left school, haven’t interacted with anyone I felt any particular “personal” need for, and have no stomach for “drama.” I just spend my time writing and indulging in my large film collection. Thus I have the freedom to say what I want because my personal experiences tell me it is true, and because nobody can accuse me of having done something to their person that “offends” them. That’s how I deal with this “woke” world: just stay away from “woke” people.

We don't need a "divorce" from the post-honeymoon Biden presidency, just a restraining order against Republican virus-deniers and anti-vaxxers

 

With another modest surge of the Covid-19 underway in mainly under-vaccinated states, or in Republican states that have banned locally-mandated safety measures, how this will all shakeout is already being depicted as what will “define” the Biden administration. Of course if the pandemic was clearly on the way out, political commentators would find other “problems”; for a while there, immigration was the top target of the right-wing and hand-wringing “liberals,” but that has drifted (slightly) into the background as both the right and the left have taken the administration to task on its “contradictory” response to the current surge in virus cases, after the goal for total vaccinations and the subsequent “end” being in “sight” not quite where the administration was hoping for.

Of course the media from both ends is playing this for all its worth for their own purposes, anywhere from vaccines “proven” not to work (Tucker Carlson), to governors being accused of being “pied pipers” enticing ignorant fools to follow them (Ron DeSantis). The truth of the matter is that this country has seen “waves” of diseases before, and the H1N1 virus, which triggered the 1918 influenza pandemic, is still around, mutating every year. If anyone is wondering what people did to avoid contracting it, perhaps this photo from the files of the Seattle Police Department at the time should give one a clue:

 

 

The last significant iteration of the H1N1 virus was the one that caused the so-called “swine flu” epidemic of 2009. Mutated strains of the virus come and go every year, with varying degrees of troublemaking, and people have learned to live with it to the point of it not even being something of concern, although people are advised to get a yearly flu shot for the latest version (although relatively few do).  With the Covid-19, we are seeing one mutation that appears to be at least more contagious than the original strain (Delta), and another—Lambda—that appears to have a protein spike that is resistant to current vaccines, but has remained situated largely in South America. We will probably be living with mutated versions of Covid-19 for years to come, until enough “herd immunity” occurs so that cases are mostly either mild or asymptomatic. In the meantime, getting vaccinated and following common sense to avoid passing the virus around will at least buy time for the human body’s immune system to adapt without too many people having to die first before people with thick skulls (DeSantis) decide that there is a “problem” they should be bothered with.

In the meantime, we have to go through the attacks on the Biden administration by Trumpists and handwringers. One of them is Conrad Black, a Canadian-British “media mogul” whose tanked his business and mostly makes money writing historical fiction and right-wing commentary, was appointed a “baron” by the Queen without much thought concerning his ethics; all you have to be is “famous,” British, and live long enough.  This right-wing felon who was convicted of mail fraud and obstruction of justice (he and his chauffeur were caught on security camera removing a dozen boxes of financial documents from his office) and spent over three years in prison, wrote an overly rosy (i.e. fictional) “bio” of Trump (a former “business” partner), which of course did what it was supposed to do—secure another controversial pardon.

Of course neither the Queen (who did not rescind his peerage after his conviction), nor The Hill thought that being a felon (“pardoned” or not by a man who is clearly a crook himself) was reason enough to ostracize him, and so he is still allowed to write an op-ed in The Hill this week in which he proclaimed that the Biden “honeymoon” is over, and Americans may want a “divorce.” Why? His handling of the pandemic, of course, which he says is what took down Trump, and not all those moral, ethical and impeachable offenses reasons. Black claims it is a “matter of dispute” whether the “uproarious ambience” of Trump was “chiefly the fault of the president or of his “mortal enemies.” But while “Trump was in the country’s face every day and tweeting at it every night” he has been replaced by a “regime that is not just quiet but often almost comatose.” Well, if we are speaking about twitter that is certainly true, but compared to Trump’s whitehouse.gov, the Biden administration seems like it is on steroids.

Black goes on to say that while it may be a “balm” for the country’s “nerves,” being relatively reserved,  it isn’t the “answer” to its public policy wishes,” whatever that means. One remembers how Biden in the past was apt to go running away at mouth, which he has managed to control somewhat—and is actually proof that he isn’t suffering from dementia  like some suspect Trump is; just because it was Trump who “normalized” ignorant doesn’t mean that there isn’t something wrong with being ignorant.

But in regard to the pandemic, Black claims that the “Trump-hating political media created a state of national hysteria over the coronavirus and then hung it around the president’s neck like a noose.” But it was Trump and his friends at Fox News who were chiefly to blame for people to wonder WTF. Why wouldn’t people be appalled by a president who only thought of himself while a half-million died on his “watch”? Because he was plainly “irritated” that the media kept asking him what he was going to do about, when he really doesn’t care about all those nameless “little people”? Trump never accepted that pandemic was anything but some invented “conspiracy” to hurt him politically.

For almost two months Trump poo-pooed the virus as nothing more serious than the sniffles, and it would “go away” in a day or two. Once it was in full swing, he still refused to show leadership; he hoped that the vaccines would be developed quickly only because he wanted that “magic bullet” to save his regime. But wait, Black proclaims: Trump was the “mastermind” behind the vaccine. Oh sure. Trump is too intellectually incompetent to have had anything to do with the development with vaccines; he just authorized as many corners to be cut, and not because he thought it was “safe” to do, but because he still wasn’t willing to listen to or give credit to scientists he had repeatedly demeaned in the past.

Black doesn’t mention that Trump never came out publicly and advised people to get vaccinated. It can be a hair-pulling experience to listen to a Trump supporter even today concerning the virus and vaccination. After expectorating paranoid delusions about the safety of the current vaccines, one individual where I work claimed that his mother had told him that there had been no other occasion in the past where a vaccine was “forced” on people against their wishes; I pointed out that 600,000 people hadn’t died before, either. It’s amazing how annoyances like facts can shut a moron up. The hypocrisy is mindboggling; Black wants to give Trump undeserved credit for the vaccines, but empirically speaking, the only thing Trump can take “credit” for is how we see his most ardent supporters (like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert) “interpreting” his views on the virus and vaccinations, although I have not yet heard Trump make the Nazi and Holocaust “analogies” that Greene and Boebert have been making.

Black goes on to claim that in regard to the current variants, they have “complicated Biden’s response to the pandemic. The administration has failed in its effort to have the entire population double-vaccinated, partly because of a substantial degree of suspicion of the vaccination process and its effectiveness…the administration has been reduced to the absurdity of speaking in various authoritative voices advocating contradictory courses of action.” Black naturally does not mention that it is Trumpist Republican governors and legislatures such as those in Florida, Texas, Louisiana and South Dakota which have fueled “suspicion” and failed in the their duty to protect their citizens. Black forgot to mention that it is Fox News personalities like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham who have been spreading vaccine and virus misinformation amongst the far-right faithful; interestingly, last week normally reliable Fox sycophant Alan Dershowitz angrily told a flustered Ingraham that the Constitution doesn’t give virus-deniers and anti-vaxxers the “freedom” to make other people sick or die. By the way, the Constitution doesn’t say anything about murder, either. If the virus is in advance in states with low vaccination rates, then that is on Republican governors, not Biden. They need to “own” their own inhumanity and ignorance.

All of that is from the “right” side of the political spectrum; while convicted felons with no credibility are claiming that “credibility” of Democrats is supposedly deteriorating—overlooking their slim “control” in Congress—commentators like Chris Cillizza at supposedly “liberal” CNN are asserting that Biden’s presidential “honeymoon” has “officially” ended. Why? Well, because of the same reasons the right is giving: Covid-19 cases are up, and missed the target date of at least 70 percent of the population with at least one vaccination shot. It doesn’t have a single message as “guidance.” Biden was blamed for allowing the expiration of the moratorium on evictions, after he claimed he didn’t have the “authority” to extend it. Nancy Pelosi had already punted the ball to him and after claiming she didn’t have time create a legislative “fix,” so party disagreements had “exposed a rare divide between” Biden and certain members of his party, leading to “veiled accusations of who was to blame.” The CDC eventually stepped in and extended the eviction moratorium until October.

Bad news about Covid-19 even preventing the “left” from engaging full throat in that old standby to complain about if there isn’t anything handy—immigration, since Hispanics have no voice in the national media, so there is no one to upset if they are offended by racist slander. “The number of unaccompanied minors picked up at the US southern border likely hit an all-time high in July,” says Cillizza. “‘The sharp increases from June were striking because crossings usually slow during stifling—and sometimes fatal—summer heat,’ wrote the Associated Press.” I’ve always said that the supposedly “liberal” media has always added to the promotion of a “crisis” on the border, and unlike for other groups, migrants are just so many anonymous points on a graph; nobody ever asks these people what they are escaping from in the first place. These people have no stories, so they are looked upon as nothing more than vermin or pests to be “eradicated.”

Cillizza even throws shade on the Senate’s bipartisan agreement on a ‘hard’ infrastructure bill, arguing  that “even assuming the legislation passes the Senate which it should, liberals in the House are already talking publicly and loudly about their dissatisfaction with some pieces of the Senate bill. ‘Good luck tanking your own party’s investment on child care, climate action, and infrastructure while presuming you’ll survive a 3 vote House margin—especially choosing to exclude members of color from negotiations and calling that a ‘bipartisan accomplishment,’ tweeted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”

And yet those are issues that most people will “forgive” Biden for that because neither migrants on the border nor the infrastructure bill will have any particular impact on their daily lives. But people are concerned about when they can get their lives back to pre-pandemic times—that does affect them at home. In June, a Gallup poll seemed to suggest that nearly 90 percent of respondents thought the situation was getting “better.” In the most recent poll, only 40 percent think things are getting better—a dramatic drop in the space of a month.

“Everything—I mean EVERYTHING—flows from the Covid news.” Cillizza asserts.  “And the truth is that Biden’s ability to change the current story on Covid-19 in this country is decidedly limited.” But the “narrative” can be changed if the focus is placed where it belongs: not on Biden, but on the continuing idiocy of people like DeSantis, who continues to play Russian roulette with the citizens of his state, even signing an executive order barring schools from mandating masks during the latest surge in Florida, which is seeing some of its highest positivity rates yet. And this is why people should not be seeking a “divorce” from Biden just yet, as Black would suggest; if Trumpists had their way, “natural law” would prevail, and all those vulnerable to the virus, whether because of age, access to health care or the dangerous behavior of their neighbors, would just die off because that is the way “nature” intended.

The ‘ridiculousness” of some anti-vaxxers was the subject of a recent Yahoo Sports article, which quoted this from Minnesota Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins: “If I get it (the virus), I’m just gonna ride it out. I’m gonna let nature do its course. Survival of the fittest kind of approach. And just say, if it knocks me out, it knocks me out, I’m going to be OK. You know, even if I die, I die, I die. I kind of have peace about that.”  When asked if he felt his "rights” outweighed that of the team, he could only say that “we can agree to disagree.” Vikings coach Mike Zimmer, angered that Cousins and two other quarterbacks are missing practice because of Covid protocols after one of them tested positive, expressed his frustration with the anti-vaxxers on the team: “These guys, some of them just won’t do it. I shouldn’t say it, but some of the things they read is just, whew, out there.”

What Biden can’t control and cannot be held responsible for is South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem allowing another motorcycle gang super-spreader event, like the one which was held last year which led to the massive surge of cases and deaths in that state and surrounding states, and Marjorie Taylor Greene praising Alabamans at a recent political event for having one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country (to great applause) and “suggesting” that Southern crackers will “greet” FEMA workers with guns locked and loaded if they dare come to their doors. We don’t just need a “divorce” from those people, but put a restraining order on them too.

With the Packers facing a $50 million brick wall next year, 2021 will be Aaron Rodgers year to put-up, or shut-up

 

Now that Aaron Rodgers is back in camp and “all-in” for this season he says, most national sports commentators who claimed that Rodgers was never going to play for the Packers again are knocking themselves out trying to wipe the egg off their collective faces; the current story line is that Rodgers’ cave-in to reality was really a “win” for him. But putting that all aside for now, one thing should be perfectly clear: 2021 is Rodgers’ put-up-or-shut-up year. Over the past several years management has been juggling the dollars to keep a Super Bowl contending team on the field so long as this supposedly “elite” quarterback remains upright. A truly “elite” quarterback should at least have made it to one Super Bowl over the past decade with the teams that Packer management—oh so maligned by the media and Rodgers—has put on the field; that just has not happened, and it is simply wrong to blame just coaching or management: players have to play—especially the team “leader.”

While Rodgers didn’t exactly return with his tail between his legs, he did because he had no other choice if he wanted to play anywhere this season. In order to “explain” himself, he had that press conference in which he tried in vague, subject-to-interpretation allusions to paint the team management in a bad light, mainly in regard to his personal sense of “security,” seeing how his buddies on the team were cut or let go. Rodgers wanted a “say” in the team’s personnel deliberations, but that betrayed a lack of understanding of how much money the Packers actually had to “play around” with. That lack of understanding and how to best use limited funds was shown when Rodgers insisted that they bring back Randall Cobb, whose best years are behind him, and who missed significant portions of two of the past three seasons from injury. The Packers picked Clemson’s highly-rated Amari Rodgers relatively high in the draft to play the same slot position as Cobb will be, and this is the kind of thing that tells you why some people should stay out of the personnel department.

The Packers were facing major salary cap issues this year, and next year it will be even worse, with potentially $50 million over the cap. In order for the Packers to get from under this year’s salary cap debit, they had to do that old “fix” of kicking the problem down the road, and at some point that can is going to reach a brick wall and just ricochet back into the team’s face, which it will likely happen in 2022 as things stand now. For example, offensive lineman David Bakhtiari’s roster bonus was to be almost $11.5 million this season, but it was renegotiated into a signing bonus, to be prorated over the next four seasons. A roster bonus is usually paid in full if a player is on the active roster by a certain date, while the signing bonus is usually prorated over the life of a contract; since a signing bonus is guaranteed, if there is any such money still to be owed by the team to the player after the contract ends, or is traded or cut, it is called “dead” money and still is counted against a team’s cap hit even if the player is no longer on its roster.

The Packers shaved over $8 million alone this year from the cap on the Bakhtiari restructure, and they also made a similar deal with Za’Darius Smith, shaving off another $7 million from the cap, but that creates problems sooner because Smith has only one additional year of “proration,” unless he is signed to an extension after the 2022 season. He will be owed $28 million in mostly delayed payments (his “base” pay is only $990,000 this season, but will balloon to over $14 million next season). Even if he is cut before the 2022 season, the Packers will still be hit with $12 million in dead money. It could be even worse with Bakhtiari, who signed a four-year, $92 million deal, most of it guaranteed; he suffered a knee injury last season and still isn’t 100 percent. The Packers are going to be in deep cap shit if Bakhtiari winds-up an injury bust.

As for Rodgers, some similarly “creative” numbers crunching shaved $9 million from the salary cap, but since the 2023 contract year was voided, that means that the Packers owe Rodgers more than $46 million if in fact he does play for the team in 2022. But even if he is traded, the Packers will still be hit with almost $27 million in dead money.

And these are just the “big” numbers players; there are others who had to take pay cuts with performance incentives, or were simply cut or not offered extensions. After all of this—or because of all the “restructuring” that was done to save this season—the Packers are still facing that cap hit of $50 million next season if this year’s team remains intact—and that isn’t even considering Davante Adams, who is a free agent after this season; if he has another great season the Packers can hardly afford to resign him to an extension.

Whether or not Packer management was actually “happy” to see Rodgers back this reason is moot point now, but what it does mean is that this team is Rodgers’ team for 2021, and this is probably his last chance to lead this team that was built to go to the Super Bowl to actually get there; the last four opportunities he failed to do that, including the past two seasons. After this season, the principle “restructuring” of this team will be in converting this from Rodgers’ team to one conceived in coach Matt LaFleur’s mind.  All those media commentators claiming that Rodgers’ has been “disrespected” by the organization are simply wrong; the “organization” built a Super Bowl-caliber team around him, and it was up to Rodgers to fulfill his part of the “deal.”  The Packers now find themselves in a position where the team simply cannot waste any more money on him after so many failures; the need to “rebuild” a new team around a new quarterback should be obvious.

As a long-time Packer fan, I am tired of national media types telling me how I am supposed to feel about Rodgers. It is one thing to put up regular season numbers like an “elite” player, but it is quite another to win the games that count that an “elite” player is supposed to win. If Rodgers can win those games this season after so many years of failure, then that will only be what should have been expected of him, media “darling” or not.