Doug's Darkworld

2020, the gift that just keeps giving. The ad above (left) was run by the “Trump Make America Great Again Committee,” run by both the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign. There’s a few problems with it that I helpfully labelled. The photographer was Russian too, and pretty amused by it all when contacted. The RNC had no comment. 

So a hundred or so thousand years ago, for the very first time, a human or proto human, an ancestor whose DNA story still lives, crumpled or assembled something together into a spherical shape for no particular reason. The first ball. He or she tossed it around. Do apes toss things at each other? (Sort of.) At some point one of them tried to catch the ball, but fumbled it and dropped it. Yes, there was a first time a human dropped the ball. 

And we’ve been dropping it since. This is the sort of stuff I think about. So yeah, terrible fires continue in California. Trump said trees explode causing wildfires. Except he didn’t. He literally said they did, but he was trying to say deadwood is an explosive fire danger, and if it had been cleared out, they wouldn’t be having this problem. Trump’s right, if a hundred years plus of overgrowth and deadwood was cleared away, the fires wouldn’t be this bad. This would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, it’s not a realistic option. Trump also promised cooler weather would fix the problem. He’s a magic man.

Talking to a Covid-19 denier the other day, it once again got to me that a lot of people don’t understand that “the map is not the territory.” How to explain this? It’s why I write. The virtue of the human brain is we have a mental map of reality. “You are here” is a huge advantage over reacting to everything by instinct. When something new shows up, it’s essential to expand the map, not shoehorn the new thing into the map. Thinking covid-19 is “just a flu” is an example of the latter type of thinking. Not helping.

Election stuff keeps going on. Certain amount of MSN attention to “Russians, Iranians, etc. are hacking our election!” True enough, hackers the world over no doubt target everything in the US. So? It’s not like the US is above hacking anything they can. My point here is that if Biden loses the election, no problem: OMG, the Russians/Iranians/Chinese are to blame! Yeah, anything but examine what a travesty the American election system has turned into. Democracy theater, any resemblance to real democracy is a coincidence. Oh, turns out there’s no actual evidence for Russian bounties on US troops in Afghanistan, not that that matters. 

This pissed me off: Violent memes and messages surging on far-left social media, a new report finds. That’s the actual Washington Post headline. And it’s true, but …  in the article: “The report acknowledges that left-wing political actors, including those who embrace the antifa movement, have been responsible for far less violence than white supremacists and other right-wing ones — a finding consistent with the conclusions of law enforcement and other threat analysts.” In other words, right wing violence is still the problem. Nonetheless no doubt Trump and company will seize on this as evidence that if Trump doesn’t get reelected, a wave of left wing violence will destroy the country. 

Gonna be a fun election. So, in Indonesia: Anti-maskers forced to dig graves for COVID-19 victims in Indonesia. They were short grave diggers, anti-maskers had committed a crime, problem solved. Jesus, maybe Covid-19 will usher in Asia as the world leader. Cooperation is the only way to fight Covid-19, enforced or voluntary. A trait Americans seem to have lost. 

And in nightmare news I am still processing, do we have an American Dr. Mengele?: ‘Like an Experimental Concentration Camp’: Whistleblower Complaint Alleges Mass Hysterectomies at ICE Detention Center. I can only hope it’s not as bad as it sounds. Still, humans are capable of terrible evil. Especially towards people not in the tribe. 

So stay safe gentle reader. 2020 continues. Shares, comments, donations appreciated. #StaytheFHome #WearaDamnMask #InsanusTempora

Copyright © 2020 Doug Stych. All rights reserved. 

(Image: A meme I made. Credit: Copyright © 2020 Doug Stych. All rights reserved.)