CSotD: Weighing Ducks at a Moment of Crisis
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Guido Kuehn leads off today with a massive dose of "Who cares?"
There was, at one point, a theory going around that Trump was some mastermind, purposely tweeting outrageous nonsense to distract us from the actual evil afoot.
It appears now that he's a lazy-but-aggressive imbecile who gets all his purported facts from Fox News (see yesterday's blog), though nobody has convinced me that Bannon or anyone else is, in fact, any sort of "mastermind."
Dick Cheney was a mastermind, which we knew from the moment he was asked to find W a vice-president, looked around and said, "It's me!" and then proceeded to lead us down the Iraq rat hole and to destroy the economy for his benefit and that of his cronies.
Trump seems more like one of those talented-but-foolish young athletes who gets a multimillion dollar contract and winds up with a huge house full of useless hangers-on who are happy to be his posse and to sponge off him until the well runs dry.
Not that they aren't positioned to do an awful lot of damage to the world, but I don't think there's an evil genius in the lot.
Fortunately for them, they may not be geniuses but they aren't the biggest fools in the room, in proof of which I submit the spectacle of people insisting that, by sitting on the couch with her legs tucked under her, Kellyanne Conway turned us all into newts and we aren't getting better.
Come on.
It's no fair laughing at Trump for only now figuring out that healthcare is complicated if you're still trying to figure out whether Kellyanne Conway weighs more than a duck.
Jumpin' Jesus on a pogo stick, people: Focus!
For instance
I do embrace ridicule as a tool, mind you, and Matt Lubchansky has a piece up at the Nib that addresses the real lever by which this fascist authoritarian nonsense can be overturned, and I'd encourage you to go read the rest of it.
It's important not to let up on Trump and his merry crew, but the executive branch has no power without a compliant Congress.
Getting Kellyanne Conway fired won't accomplish anything, but start picking off congressional representatives and senators — or simply making them fear you might — and we'll see change.
True, the House is gerrymandered to provide plenty of safe GOP seats.
But that's just an excuse for giving up and pardon me for being an Old Man, but goddammitall, if we could drive LBJ from office and end the war in Vietnam at a time when college students (and the bulk of guys being sent to war) weren't even allowed to vote, gerrymandering is a bullshit reason to do nothing.
And, as long as I'm ranting, stop staring into the rearview mirror and watch where you're going: Absorb the lessons of 2016, yes, but apply them to 2018 and 2020.
Listen to this guy.
Juxtaposition of the Future
(Mr. Fitz)
I often post Darrin Bell's work here, in part because he does two strips and an editorial cartoon and so counts as three different people, and in part because I usually agree with one of those three folks.
But Lemont is off-target today because it's not about knowing. It's about knowing how, and "My dad can Google better than your dad" is a great brag, particularly if Dad passes that knowledge along.
And Mr. Fitz is doing the best thing a teacher — at home or school — can possibly do, by instilling and encouraging curiosity and helping kids learn how to scratch that itch.
Badly designed curriculum isn't the only barrier to building bright, curious kids. They're surrounded by messages imploring them to be dumb and lazy.
That message, delivered commercially or socially, includes one that museums are boring and national parks are worse and that everyone should go to Six Flags or Disneyland or Universal Studios.
It paves the path to Idiocracy.
I was talking to someone the other day who has been to De Smet, South Dakota, where Laura Ingalls Wilder grew up, and we spoke about the Farmer Boy site near Malone, NY, and about Upper Canada Village, the best living history place I've ever been and only about 80 miles from where Almanzo grew up.
The latter two are just a few hours up the road from here, but his youngest is 13, so the question arises, is it too late?
I doubt it, in his case. Like a lot of parenting things, you set the directions early and he's done so.
Granted, if you wait until your kids are 13, meanwhile making every vacation involve nothing but candy and rollercoasters, suddenly switching to museums and national parks may not be greeted with enthusiasm, just as, if you raise them on Spaghetti-Os and chicken nuggets, it may be hard to get them to try saag bhaji as teens.
But there's one of my grandkids cheerfully eating it, and her older cousin, at the same age, used to beg mercilessly for the pickled ginger from her parents' sushi (being barred from raw fish until she was slightly older).
It's not magic, it's exposure: There are, Wikipedia tells me, 248,408,494 households in India, and I'm sure there are plenty of little kids there chowing down on saag bhaji on a regular basis.
Brains work more or less the same as tongues: If you offer kids a variety of stimulants, they'll grow up assuming that curiosity is normal.
And, by the way, I took my kids on rollercoasters, too. And now they take their kids on them.
As well as to museums and parks.
And here's why it matters: My generation was raised on Zorro and Robin Hood, and then, when we rose up against the evil commandante and the sheriff of Nottingham, we were told to shut up and respect authority.
But you can't un-install curiosity or the suspicion that life is made up of commas and not periods.
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