Tony starts the show with a very important issue, very close to his heart. Then we try and figure out if politics is more evil than medicine (No spoilers!). Then a bit of movies, and a lot of lunch. Enjoy!
QUESTIONS:
Do/did you eat the same thing for lunch while home during Covid-19 isolation as you do on normal weekdays? Why or why not? –Beth
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Lost Peanut Despair, it seems to me, is emblematic of the despair of late stage capitalism. You work and work and work in the hope of that small shiny nugget of purpose, creating vast amounts of waste, only to find at the end that all you’re left with are empty shells.
I am genuinely shocked that this apparently is just my deal. I mean, in hindsight, I really do have a lot of specific and random anxiety issues, and food issues, so this should make sense.
This is like the “roaring in my ears when I yawn” thing. I spent my whole life assuming everyone had this..
Oh no, I think lots of people experience despair associated with late stage capitalism. 😉
Actually my version of this would be when you have to struggle to open a pistachio shell that’s barely open and then what’s inside is dried out or has that weird bitter flavor.
Word.
Wait, wait, wait. If people don’t hear a roaring in their ears when they yawn, what do they hear?
I think nothing.
So you’re like me? Finally, someone! I honestly had no idea this is a thing… I was always surprised that people didn’t automatically realize I wouldn’t be able to hear them while I was yawning, and frequently had to ask them to repeat the part they said while that roaring was going on.
I’d be interested in what y’all think about some of these examples of false information that I’ve been reading this week.
These first ones I’m actually pretty sure I know the intent of. There are a lot of false narratives and labels being applied to protests. The false narrative promotes the idea that the majority of them are violent and that the protesters are terrorists. This kind of propaganda is being used to justify violence against protesters. And I think the purpose is to have some group of people believe it, to play on their fear.
Then there’s the false narrative that says that the other side is lying. I read an opinion piece by Tucker Carlson yesterday that I was curious about because the title said that all the civil unrest is based on a lie and I wanted to find out what he was claiming was a lie. Pretty predictably what he claimed was a lie was that black people are more subject to police brutality.
In the same piece there was a much less predictable claim to me. The claim was that police who are taking a knee in solidarity with the protesters, are actually being forced to show subjugation to the “terrorists.” This seemed so demonstrably false to me, but it does fit in with the whole toxic masculinity story of a lot of Trump supporters (and with Trump’s need to “dominate” the protesters). I toyed with the idea of writing a comment but wondered whether it would be a completely useless exercise and still haven’t made up my mind.
Then there’s the willful misinterpretation of “Black Lives Matter.” I went to a local protest yesterday, and a guy stopped by and screamed at protesters that we were the racists because everyone matters. In the coverage of the event in the local press, a lot of comments came on saying similar things. I’ve answered some of these claims with analogies which I think explain what the phrase means, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. It’s like this has become the knee jerk rallying cry of those who don’t want to listen?
I also had this experience responding to an old family friend on facebook. He served in the Marines and in talking about the suspension of civil rights in order to quell protests with military force, he said that as a Marine he was used to the idea of temporarily giving up some rights in order to achieve a necessary goal (in this case, safety). I responded to him, arguing that by giving up those rights one would become less safe and he seemed to hear that. Some of his friends responded in some pretty scary ways though. One said that the so-called “peaceful protesters” are just a smoke-screen for violence and that all the protesters should have water-cannons turned on them, but water-cannons filled with chemicals that would burn them. This would bring about peace. Another said that while there was some truth to the argument that it’s wrong to give up one’s rights, in this case it was necessary, and added that a case in which there had been government overreach was in response to covid which is just a “bad flu.” And when someone else posted what Gen’l Mattis said, someone who said he had worked for Mattis was completely full of praise for him but then ignored everything he said about Pres. Trump and asserted at the end that the country was founded on Christian values and everyone should reelect Trump for that reason. (He also said something about the fact that we live in a republic not a democracy–I wasn’t clear if that was used as an argument for people to vote for Republicans rather than Democrats or not).
Most of this, while insightful and, I think, accurate, makes me sad and angry. So I’m only going to respond to the Black vs All Lives thing. And with that, I’m going to once again reference Michael Che.
(Paraphrasing)
“Saying All Lives Matter instead of Black Lives Matter is like if you girlfriend asked ‘Do you love me?’ and your response was, ‘Baby, I love everybody!'”
The through line I see in all of those examples is, everything has to be evaluated as fitting into one of only two worldviews. Which is not just how a huge amount of media treats events, it has become how many citizens and groups of citizens in the US treat events. So, event X happens, and nearly all media and a significantly large number of citizens *demand* that X be seen as scoring a point for either “us” or “them, and only “us” or “them”. The facts of X do not matter. It might even be openly admitted that they don’t care about the facts of X. The important thing is deciding who — among only two choices — gets the point, and one side — and only one side — MUST get a point, no matter how one has to twist reality to make everything fit.
I do agree that this process of dichotomizing everything includes the intention to deceive. And surely there is a certain number of people who are being deceived. But I still wonder if that number is very large, or even significantly large. The physician I referenced gave an example of a Trump supporter he talked to who all but admitted that they knew the excuses they made for Trump were bogus and they just wanted never-Trumpers to shut up and let them keep deluding themselves so that they didn’t feel quite so guilty when they defended him/voted for him. It seems to me that this group of people, who are not being deceived by anyone other than their own selves, is the much larger and much more significant group (in every sense) than the ranks of the sincerely ignorant.
I neglected to note that the physician also mentioned that doctors are instructed on how to deal with mutual pretense, how to keep a family duly informed without upsetting them with direct challenges to the pretense, and he suggested that what works for patients and their families might work for the politically self-deluded. The trick is to see how the pretense serves a specific hope that the pretender has, and to understand how challenging the factual error also, in the mind of the pretender, attacks the hope, which is the thing that the pretender truly cares about. So, what one would do is search for a greater or more profound hope and accentuate that. Rather than saying, “Person A is lying/factually wrong about X,” one could say, “I think it would be better if, rather than focusing on X, Person A addressed Y,” where Y is a thing that the pretender would agree is a more important/better argued position. Now, even if this works in a clinical situation, would it be a reliable strategy in political discussions? I have no idea, but I can appreciate arguments for or against.
(I feel that I should note… we’re talking about the delusional on the so-called “Right” here and in the podcast I, like the physician did, use examples that critique the “US Right”, but so-called “US Left” folks commit similar errors, though their delusional world doesn’t have a figure quite like Trump to orbit, which makes the “Right” examples not only easier to pick out, but also makes the “Right” examples measurably more disturbing, particularly now.)
I was just reading a post on a friend’s page that had an analysis about what it is that feeds into racism. And the analysis was very similar to what you said above about the guilt that a Trump supporter is trying to avoid. By believing that people “deserve” hatred/prejudice by something about them, then one’s guilt about that hatred/prejudice is relieved. I think that also plays into the us/them narrative.
Can you point to where you see that through line in the examples for clarification?
Sure…
Characterizing protests as “violent” and “riots”:
Event = protests
Dichotomy = US Right vs. US Left
Event is favored by = US Left
Result = Folks who identify as US Right must characterize protests as bad, even if this demands exaggeration or outright falsehoods. Folks who identify as US Left must characterize the protests as good, even if this demands denying negative aspects or performing rhetorical gymnastics to assert that the negative aspects are actually positive aspects.
Characterizing the other side as lying:
All of the above, plus both sides using the tactic of portraying the enemy as bad-faith actors who are willing to lie to push their “agenda”. This usually involves either side attacking straw men from the opposite side. In the example you cite, Carlson isn’t attacking a straw man, obviously, but I imagine he is manipulating semantics and cherry-picking statistics to support his claim, though it seems these days that grifters like Carlson don’t even need to put that much work into it.
Willful misrepresentation:
All of the above, plus each side uses the tactic of finding slogans, statements, etc. made by the enemy to take out of context and use against them. This is just classic straw man work, with the Black Lives Matter movement often targeted with the smug-yet-vapid “All Lives Matter”.
Advocating extreme measures and making logically baffling statements:
All of the above, plus both sides using the tactic of applying double-standards to evaluations of the enemy event. Both the US Right and the US Left demonstrate very predictable logical inconsistencies, where they hold themselves immune to the criticisms that they level at their enemies. For example, the people who were talking about turning hoses on protesters, etc…. did they feel the same about people who were protesting pandemic lockdowns a few weeks ago? I’d guess not. Although we can also observe many members of the US Left applying a similar double-standard to today’s protests, where a lack of mask wearing and failure to social distance is ignored today while it drew floods of righteous indignation when the protesters were perceived as being predominantly US Right.
Seeing faction leaders through rose-colored glasses:
All of the above, except using the tactic of blowing what is deemed as “good” among their faction leaders out of proportion, making them almost god-like, and diminishing what might be deemed “bad” into oblivion, or vice verse where the leader is of the opposite faction. We’ve all seen this happen on both the US Right and the US Left. The countable incidents are more numerous on the US Right in relation to Trump, I think. That said, Biden’s record on criminal justice is getting a bit of a papering over right now by some on the US Left (by too many on the US Left, in my opinion).
I would also be in for group participation on the podcast!
Noted. 🙂
https://www.bigbadtoystore.com/Product/VariationDetails/126680
This popped up just as you mentioned Cup Noodles, I don’t in my wildest imagination think it’s a buy but I, at least, felt you needed to know it existed.
And sorry to say but I don’t suffer from Lost Peanut Despair. I usually just swear and move on, and that’s from a fellow anxiety sufferers who hates to waste money and keep all my stuff in meticulous order.
I saw a thing on The Takeout about this!
I don’t think I’d want to buy it, but the Producer might be into watching a YouTube video of someone making it..
This is actually a reply to Will’s last post above ’cause I ran out of reply space.
I have one minor quibble with your double standards example which actually illustrates the main overall point. I think the us/them lens winds up having people equate the two most recent examples of protests such that you have people on the left say, hey weren’t you people out parading with guns? What about a show of force in response to that! And people on the right, saying weren’t you people going on and on about face masks? Where’s your concern for health now!
In fact, the two situations are not exactly comparable. Yes, people were out protesting the lockdowns carrying guns. However, there wasn’t rioting and looting following the protests. I’m not sure what the cause and effect here is between rioting/looting and the current protests, but there weren’t any with the lockdown protests (though there were some individual acts of violence). So, no, there wouldn’t have been arrests or other punitive responses–as there shouldn’t have been–to people exercising their right to protest.
In the current protests, first, every protest that I’ve been to, or friends have been to, has called for people to wear masks and to maintain social distance. But when I went to a vigil yesterday, I realized that the social distant thing is kind of impossible. Everyone was wearing a mask however. But the bigger point is the purpose of the protests. In the instance of the lockdown, I think the main and legitimate reason people were out protesting was loss of income from not being able to work. However, this economic threat was tied to the health threat, and if you have hospitals overcome by cases then the economy couldn’t come back. So this is a short term pain in order to achieve a long term gain. I think what is fueling the current protest is different in that it is a very, very long term oppression and if people stay home and don’t raise their voice at this moment, the evidence is pretty strong that it will be business as usual.
I wasn’t really speaking to whether or not the two situations were comparable. In fact, the point I’m making is that, to the “dichotomists”, it really doesn’t matter if they’re comparable or not. Dichotomists don’t experience cognitive dissonance when they assert double-standards. They don’t require your carefully thought-out reasoning to treat the two situations differently. In fact, they probably prefer not to have a thought-out reason. Their fanatical belief in the authority of their own superiority is enough.
I acknowledge that there are people who identify as “US Left” who are not dichotomists, just like there are people who identify as “US Right” who are not dichotomists. I’m not talking about them. They aren’t the ones who are messing up our public conversation in the US. They aren’t the ones the US media is pandering to.
The through line I was attempting to describe doesn’t involve reasonable people. Only fanatics. Of which the entire US political spectrum has plenty. I’ll leave it up to others to debate which side of that spectrum as more or fewer fanatics. As I’m sure everyone knows, both sides look pretty even to me, on that score specifically.
Sorry, I’m confused. I thought you were being critical of some on the left and right (the fanatics) for having double standards themselves, that is of criticizing in others the very thing that they do themselves: the fanatics on the right saying we should turn water hoses on the protesters when they wouldn’t have agreed to that when the protesters were on their own side. And the fanatics on the left ignoring lack of face masks and social-distancing.
That’s why I’m talking about whether they are comparable situations because I don’t think they are criticizing in others the very thing that they themselves are doing or have done.
Those were just examples. Perhaps poorly chosen ones.
I described a conclusion I had reached without completely going through my thought process. Maybe that will help show why I think those examples are actually useful for your overall point (or I thought so anyway). When the guy on facebook said water cannons should be turned on the protesters, I had the exact same thought that he wouldn’t have said that about people protesting the lockdown. But then I thought, the two protests are not exactly the same. That’s not to say that this guy is right, but rather that I understand the more moderate version of this kind of claim–that looters should be arrested for example. Coming from the perspective of us/them–well, your side was protesting, shouldn’t they have been arrested?–doesn’t make sense because the circumstances of the protests are different. But this kind of narrative in which everything is seen in some kind of game mechanic of win/loss leads one to equate the two–your side made this move, and our side made this move, and now your side is complaining about the exact same move? No fair! You guys are breaking the rules of the game! And really the whole politics through meme dynamic adds to the problem.
Wow, well, this conversation got deep. I was really just coming over to the blog to say that I (so far) have been listing, not watching, and that I don’t eat shelled nuts often enough to experience lost peanut despair.
William and Jas are having a very interesting discussion.
I don’t want to weigh in too much here, but will ask: if some protesters begin looting, or damaging personal or public property, then it’s not peaceful anymore, is it? i.e. one’s right to express themselves peacefully includes words, but does not extend to the right to damage property or injure others. right? I’m not a legal scholar, but that seems to be roughly where the line is drawn.
I believe in the right for people to protest social distancing. I also understand that to do so while wearing a mask undermines your message, but it also runs the risk of causing injury to others. I don’t think we’ve worked out legally or ethically quite how one might be responsible for the health of others relates to clear physical harm one person knowingly does to another.
Tony: I’d say your “audio experiment” was successful.
Peanuts: Why? The only worthwhile way to eat peanuts is to first have them made into CREAMY peanut butter (none of that chunky garbage). The only way I can see having lost peanut despair is if I was so lost I was forced to eat peanuts. If you’re going to have snacking nuts on hand, why not get something tasty like pistachios?
Mutual Pretense: Nope, that’s a new one to me too.
I know you were got to talking about politics and I tried to listen while working as you did so, but the part of my brain that was listening just went “Politics suck” and then tuned out.
Covid Lunches: Pre-Covid, I would slap together a quick lunch that I could toss in my lunch bag and take it with me (sandwich & chips, can of soup, etc.). Or sometimes I’d eat out, though I’d been doing that less at my current job than the one before. Now, I find myself frequently eating the same sort of things, but usually after staring at our fridge for several minutes contemplating (and frequently bemoaning) my options for lunch.
Guest appearances: I’d be happy to join for one. It’s much easier to schedule a specific event vs. setting aside time to listen/respond.