Every element of American society seems so contentious, but for what real reason?

On social media, we learn that vegans, regardless of the rationale that lies at the core of their eating habits, are under attack from meat-eaters.  Why?  What’s the matter with letting people choose their lifestyles, especially when they’re not forcing themselves on you?

We see posts providing ideas from the clergy instructing the devout on how to counter atheists. Why? What’s the imperative to argue with other people who just happen to see the world differently?

The meme here speaks to the us-versus-them “logic” that the fossil fuels proponents uses against the environmentalists, and, more to the point, against the entire auto industry as it phases out gas and diesel.

Why are we so appealing about argument for its own sake?

 

 

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Below is the front page of a Florida newspaper from a couple of weeks ago.

You will try in vain to find anything remotely like this stupidity, greed, and cruelty anywhere else on this planet.

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Here’s an exciting development (not) in solar PV, which claims (falsely) that it delivers 18 times more power from sunlight than traditional technologies.

Let’s do some quick math, to see just how important (fraudulent) this breakthrough (scam) is.  Say today’s standard solar panel are 25% efficient.  18 times that is an efficiency of no less than 450%.  4.5 times as much energy is released than was incident on it in the first place!

I really don’t think there’s anyone in junior high school so ignorant as to accept this.

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Where will the energy come from that will make this building spin?

Strangely, they don’t say.

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(AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

Per this article, Fox News has discontinued the ad campaign of Mike Lindell (the MyPillow Guy) on the basis that he, as he admits, has become financially insolvent.

One wonders how he faltered, given that he had amassed such a fortune selling high-margin bedwear to Fox News viewers and other Trump supporters over a period of many years.

My theory: Fox is anxious to find an excuse to cut ties with Lindell, due to his position on the Big Lie.  Fox doesn’t need another close-to-billion-dollar settlement stemming for civil litigation, and Lindell still claims adamantly that he has ironclad evidence that the U.S. 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Of course, he can’t reveal what that evidence might be, but that’s not a problem for people who don’t concern themselves with facts and truth in the first place.

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Here’s an article I won’t be reading, because the answer to the question is so obvious: her voting base loves her racism.

It’s the chicken-and-the-egg principle at work in politics.  MTG can hardly be called the cause of the ignorance and hatred in rural Georgia, but she certainly makes it socially acceptable for these folks to speak and act like they’re living in the 1920s, and they can’t get enough of it.

Demand creates its own supply.

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Assuming that Trump is ultimately unsuccessful in overthrowing the U.S. federal government, there will be an ongoing conversation about the content of the meme here.

We will never stop wondering how it was possible that a man who was roundly regarded as a deranged moron by so many intelligent and highly accomplished public servants who worked directly with him over a period of many years, came to rise, through a free and fair election, to become the most powerful person on Earth?

Of course, the reason this is on so many people’s minds is that it appears that there is a good chance that he’ll be re-elected.

Things that would be inconceivable anywhere else in the developed nations of Earth make perfect sense here in America.

 

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Here, Socrates reminds us of the problems associated with being what is essentially a tribal species.  We tend to look for differences between us, rather than similarities.  Then we use these perceived differences as motivation for hatred and, often, violence.

In my email signature I quote explorer and writer Freya Stark: “Few are the giants of the soul who actually feel that the human race is their family circle.”  Socrates was certainly among them.

One wonders if some global event, e.g., environmental collapse, could change all this.  It’s definitely a possibility.

 

 

 

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As I told my mom on the phone last night:

I’m ashamed and embarrassed to call myself an American.

This didn’t need to happen.

When I was a small boy, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower was president.  He was a principled and honorable human being, who acted on behalf of all the people, and made us proud to be U.S. citizens.

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In response to the meme here, an appropriate response might be: says who?

This is what the Christian right, i.e., the followers of the Republican Jesus, does every day of the week.

 

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