phoenixvoice
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This article succinctly represents CRT’s strengths and flaws: https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/on-the-use-and-abuse-of-critical
Joel Fisher is incorrect. Trump wrote a book called “The America We Deserve” in 2000. I read it many years ago. In it, he was outlining platform for his own presidential bid. I read it because In was metamorposizing from conservatively liberal at the time. I don’t remember a lot of specifics, but I believe he was supporting some flavor of Medicare for All at the time.
I appreciate reference to the article growing-numbers-of-us-attorneys-general-are-out-to-undermine-the-law. I had heard the name Bill Ayers, but didn’t really know who he is. I looked him up. What a remarkable life, spent trying to improve the lot of others, full of personal setbacks and successes, and growth and dedication to pacifism and admirable ideals. The article is a perfect example of “right-baiting” — an article of fact nuggets woven together with confabulation designed to inflame the emotions of the reader against a particular group of people. There are those on the Left engaged in the exact same thing, engaging in left-baiting, screaming RussiaRussia and so forth.
I am all too familiar with the fallout that this type of writing causes. In my own life my ex’s attorney used these tactics two years ago, smearing me in legal pleadings, and attempting to remove our three children from me completely. There was no truth to the allegations, and with the help of friends, family, and unwitting credit card issuers I won the case.
Perhaps this is why I have a hard time reading this type of writing — long before there was any evidence that RussiaRussia was false, I didn’t believe a shred of it.
And so I find myself asking the question…to heal this fractured nations others need to calm their inflamed emotions and speak with those whom their media has branded as “the enemy”…and how may this happen?
I always wonder when folks rail against mail in ballots if these same folks have ever voted by mail in ballot and know how that system works. In Arizona I’ve been on the permanent mail in voter list for more than a decade…because as a work at home mother, going to the polls on a specific day just isn’t always feasible.
In AZ, mail in ballots are identical to the usual ballots, must be completed in black pen, are read optically and can be checked by a real person visually. The ballot is placed in a provided envelope, and on the back of the envelope is a place for the voter to sign. This way, the voter’s signature can be verified against the signature in the registry, but the ballot is not directly tied to the signature, just as would be with in-person voting.
Like any system, if we think about it long enough, we can come up with a way to corrupt it. I worked one year in AZ as a poll worker…and the in-person voting system also may be corrupted. Possibility of corruption doesn’t mean corruption is happening or not. There were stories of corruption around in-person voting locally around the 2016 election. Probably no system is incorruptible, but we can make our systems more difficult to corrupt — but we have to balance the desire for incorruptibility with the purpose of the system, which is to be broadly available to the public. Without easy access to all eligible voters, our system has failed in its purpose from the get-go. If our system is not perfect, we can erect checks to help test for corruption (such as exit polls), and that can trigger, for example, manual recounts, and ensure we have ballots that can actually be recounted (i.e. with no possibility of “dangling chads.”)
I live in Phoenix, AZ. I know six people personally who have been positively diagnosed with covid-19. I am aware of several others who tested positive that are known by people I know. My attorney is one if them — her illness delayed a deadline in my case for a month. Her entire office came down with it. She is in her 40s, healthy, and survived. She already survived cancer and told me that being sick with covid-19 was worse than cancer treatments.
I do not yet know anyone personally who has died from covid-19, but I have many friends who are the age of my parents and older, so I expect that to happen. I do know people personally who know people who have died.
My children live half-time with their father, his girlfriend, and her daughter who is immunocompromised. Myself, my partner, and my children are trying to minimize our risk of getting the virus so that we don’t pass it onto that girl (she gets hospitalized from colds and would be unlikely to survive covid-19.) It is very frustrating to go to the grocery or hardware store and be faced with people who wear masks carelessly or loosely, allowing their breath in every direction. I don’t want the girl to die; I don’t want my children to have to deal with the emotional fallout from bringing the virus to her.
As a people we need to face the fact that we actually know very little about this virus. Yes, most people will survive it — but we do not yet know at what cost — we do not know what the long-term effects may be. We do not know if antibodies to covid-19 can be maintained by the human body over a long period of time. We don’t like to have so many unknowns — as a people we are unaccustomed to having such large unknowns. We live in an age of science where computers aid us in perfect calculations and help us to assess risk, where disease causes and cures can be targeted with great accuracy, where a GPS helps guide us to an unfamiliar address. This virus defies our expectations, and places us back into a world with risks we cannot accurately measure. This is very uncomfortable.
We don’t like the discomfort, and so to dispel it we tend to jump into one camp or another: “This is terrifying! Stay home! See no one! Wait for a vaccine!” Or: “This is not materially different from the flu! Get over it already! Masks are for sissies!” We tend to fall into polarized camps, and send nasty thoughts to those in the opposite camps.
But reality is not black or white, and neither camp has a full picture of the truth…because we are like the blind men (humans) in the room with an elephant…is the elephant like a snake or like a tree? The seeing (hu)man knows that all of the assessments by the blind are true, but none of their assertions paint an accurate picture of reality. We are the blind when it comes to covid-19. We don’t even have full assessments yet to even begin drawing an accurate picture of covid-19. We accomplish nothing useful when we argue for one view or another of covid-19 based on one set of data while ignoring other sets of data. Seeming contradictions of data on the virus will eventually be collated and help us to better understand what we face. We honor each other as humans when we listen to each other, let the scientists and others do their jobs to collect and collate the data, and learn from our disparate assessments, rather than arguing. We can also respect each other’s fears and do what we can to accommodate these fears in an uncertain time — wearing a mask correctly, honoring quarantine, etc. We do not know what challenges others face — and we cannot measure the value of a grandparent to a grandchild, or the value of an immunocompromised teen to those who know and love her.
