Politics | David's Blog

Once you’ve been bamboozled ….

Once you’ve been bamboozled, it is almost impossible to become un-bamboozled.

This was from an AskReddit question about “What was the best quote or life changing saying or most profound advice people had heard?” Something like that; but my search did not find the exact entry to cite. One of the answers was this one. It’s great. I mentioned this to a friend of mine; he thought Carl Sagan had said it. Well, essentially yes, but not exactly. Carl Sagan’s quote goes like this:

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/85171-one-of-the-saddest-lessons-of-history-is-this-if

This is well said, but also really wordy, plus throws in a ten dollar word: charlatan. I like the short and sweet version.

It seems to me that the almost the entire USA has been bamboozled about politics.

The Left has been bamboozled that Donald Trump Is A Bad Man.

The Right has been bamboozled that Donald Trump Is A Good Man.

I remember seeing a cartoon not that long ago (within a year or two) that had a King on a balcony with an advisor, overlooking an angry mob. Here it is (I linked to the original source, so you can get to that web page – credit where credit is due):

The advisor was saying to the King: “Oh, You don’t need to fight them – you just need to convince the pitchfork people that the torch people want to take away their pitchforks.”

When I went looking, Google search failed to find this cartoon. I mentioned it to a friend, and he saw it on Facebook. I asked him to forward it to me. From there, I was able upload it to Google Image Search, and then finally find the original publisher. The ~~conspiracy theorist~~ spoiler alerter in me thinks the search engines of the day have de-ranked or removed this image in search results because it spoils the narrative.

The idea here is an intersection between the two old sayings A house divided against itself cannot stand and The People restrain themselves and anxiously hope for just two things: bread and circuses.

The Left is thoroughly convinced that The Right has been bamboozled. The Right is thoroughly convinced that The Left has been bamboozled.

I am convinced both have been bamboozled by the deep state and it’s unholy alliance with mass media. When I say mass media, I’m also looking at you: Facebook and Google and Twitter.

Here’s the thing about Donald Trump: he was never supposed to be President.

The deep state mass media planned to get Hillary Clinton. They thought they earned Hillary Clinton. By knocking out every good opposing candidate, there was no way that Hillary could lose. There was no way that Hillary Clinton could lose against Donald Fucking Trump. Knock out every other candidate, and the election was a done deal.

This was perfect for the deep state, because Bill and Hillary Clinton were already players. They’d played ball before, and were happy to play again. As insiders, their keepers had leverage on them, and as players, they knew their keepers would be comforted with them as lackeys. It was a win-win situation.

But (“oh by the way”) Hillary Clinton was the worst possible candidate for President.

Which is proven out, because she lost to Donald Fucking Trump, dontcha know. Fair and square, she was simply that BAD of a candidate. And to be fair, Donald was actually a very good campaigner, and a master of Twitter trolling. His campaign speeches were super entertaining. The deep state completely underestimated how well Donald would perform.

Donald was an outsider. This was a disaster for the deep state.

Chuck Schumer delivering the deep state warning to Donald Trump to play ball or else (after election but before inauguration).

Donald bristled at being told to take his role of lackey. Now the deep state is on his shit list.
If Donald made it to a second term, there was no remaining leverage to keep him from ravaging the deep state.

Does it appear to you that Donald rolled over and became a lackey?

The only choice the deep state had was to backstab the sitting President every chance they could get.

Wow did they ever.

The Commander In Chief: that is who the deep state is supposed to obey. Instead, they did everything they could to subvert CIC/POTUS. They became traitors to the rule of law.

And you, dear reader, got taken in by the charlatans that Donald Trump Is A <‽> Man.

What are the fools at Facebook thinking?

Banning Doctor Ron Paul? Don’t these idiots know he is one of the few good politicians in Congress?

Doctor Paul is famous for having a sign on the edge of his desk in his Congressional office, designed to stop lobbyists in their tracks: “Don’t steal. The government hates competition”. Any time a lobbyist asks for a meeting and offers to donate to Doctor Paul’s re-election campaign in exchange for a yes vote on some piece of legislation, Ron points to the sign and says “If it was a good piece of legislation, you wouldn’t need to come in here with this bribe. Sorry for wasting your time. Goodbye.” And then he informs his secretary to never book a meeting with that lobbyist ever again.

Ron Paul is famous for voting no on every piece of legislation that wastes your and my tax money. As such, he has gotten the nickname “Doctor No”.

A signature joke by Jay Leno waits until the beginning of the congressional summer break. Then on that day, Jay says “Congress has begun their summer recess. The realm is safe, once again.” Ron Paul is working this problem from the inside.

Ron Paul quote number one: “War is not popular. It may seem popular in the short run, when there appears to be an immediate victory and everyone is gloating but war is not popular. War is not popular. People get killed, and body bags end up coming back. War is very unpopular, and it is not the politically smart thing to do.”

Sure, the congresscritters getting lobbyist money from the military industrial complex will tell you that war is great. Well, it’s great for funneling money into the pockets of the people in the military industrial machine. Quote: “War is never economically beneficial except for those in position to profit from war expenditures.”

Ron Paul also understands the basic truth of all government. Quote: “Values in a free society are accepted voluntarily, not through coercion, and certainly not by law… every time we write a law to control private behavior, we imply that somebody has to arrive with a gun, because if you desecrate the flag, you have to punish that person. So how do you do that? You send an agent of the government, perhaps an employee of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Flags, to arrest him. This is in many ways patriotism with a gun – if your actions do not fit the official definition of a “patriot,” we will send somebody to arrest you.”

And, we use tax money to pay for that agent. Regarding intervention in Sudan, the quote was “… I have no right – no moral right or constitutional right – to come with a gun and tax the people and say: “I will take money because I want to do good”.”

Quote: “The most important element of a free society, where individual rights are held in the highest esteem, is the rejection of the initiation of violence. All initiation of force is a violation of someone else’s rights, whether initiated by an individual or the state, for the benefit of an individual or group of individuals, even if it’s supposed to be for the benefit of another individual or group of individuals. Legitimate use of violence can only be that which is required in self-defense.”

This is true for all government action. Government has been described as a bunch of do-gooders, doing good with other people’s money. You can do good with your own money. And then, you aren’t guilty of robbing me of mine.

Here’s another quote about government power: “What we give up on is a tyrannical approach to solving a social and medical problem, and we endorse the idea of voluntarism, self-responsibility, family, friends, and churches to solve problems, rather than saying that some monolithic government is going to make you take care of yourself and be a better person. It’s a preposterous notion, it never worked, it never will. The government can’t make you a better person. It can’t make you follow good habits. Why don’t they put you on a diet? You’re a little overweight, and I think you need government help!” (pointing out the absurdity of the ideas of some about government power).

Quote: “The theory of the IRS is rather repugnant to me because the assumption is made that I, the government, owns 100% of your income and I permit you to keep 5%, 10% or 20%. You’re vulnerable, you’ve sold out. The government can take 80% if they want, which they did at one time.”

I like to make a joke that in a year, working 40 hours a week for 52 weeks a year computes to 2080 hours. Is it coincidence that the IRS form is the 1040 ? (fifty percent)

Quote: “Freedom is not defined by safety. Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference. Government cannot create a world without risks, nor would we really wish to live in such a fictional place. Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives. Liberty has meaning only if we still believe in it when terrible things happen and a false government security blanket beckons.”

Doctor Paul voted against the PATRIOT Act because he was only given one hour to read it before the vote, and it was a 400 page bill. That shows he has integrity, even in the face of taking unpopular action.

And the fools at Facebook banned him.

I can only believe that they’ve turned off their brains, and are listening only to the pro-government-growth scare mongers and empire building lobbyists and bureaucrats.

What do they know about Ron Paul? Nothing. But their “friends” say he is a bad man. So they practice a principle which cannot fail to keep them in everlasting ignorance: that principle is contempt prior to investigation.

Shame on you Facebook.

Why I would like to see the U.S. Postal Service privatized

I could pay to have junk mail thrown in the trash at the source
The USPS often gets used for corruption
Being government employees, bad apples last forever

No more junk mail

The number one reason I would love to have the USPS privatized is that it would become possible for me to pay a fee (to whomever takes their place) to trash any junk mail that gets put in the queue to be sent to me.

At work, we spend a rather large amount of dollars to combat email spam. Everyone’s life is better for it^*. But that’s not an option with physical snail mail. Why the heck not? Because the USPS is a government agency. They are very specifically not allowed to “censor” mail by just throwing it in the trash.

If they tried, they would get sued, because if you’re a scumbag with a lawyer, you want to sue the really big organization with the large checking account.

But with a private company, I could buy in to a Friend of the Environment subscription plan, where I pay the delivery company a small monthly fee, and they chuck the junk mail into the recycling bin. They don’t want to spend the money on fuel to transport it. They would have a financial incentive to do the right thing early on in the process.

Indeed, it would take almost no time for the people who pay for snail mail spam to ask the privatized company “How many of these should we print? How many are actually going to get delivered?” The end result would be less trash generated; less trash to be wrangled. It’s a win-win-lose for me, the mail carrier, and then the spammer, er advertiser.

One problem of course, would be predatory advertisers implementing junk delivery, as a protection racket (to collect the fee to not deliver it). They’d hire an Uber or Lyft driver to put trash in your mailbox, along with a flyer that suggests you pay them for no more trash.

I’m going to have to puzzle out what antidotes there might be to a pristine mailbox protection racket. If you have any ideas, please feel free to make a SQRL identity, and login and post.

USPS as a political corruption tool

This is not the USPS fault. But, because they are a government agency, they are the tail on the dog that is Congress and their buddies. Congresscritters love to commission a new post office building to line the pockets of their buddy who has some land for sale. Whether that buddy then kicks back some of the overpriced payment back to the critter is an exercise for the reader.

Back during the Reagan and (first) Bush era, every post office building had a Novell NetWare server in it. When Bill Clinton got elected, every one of those NetWare servers were replaced with Microsoft Windows servers. It was a gift to Microsoft, at the expense of Novell.

Because email started replacing some snail mail, the overall volume dropped. Suddenly we didn’t need so many post office buildings. And magically, Senator Dianne Feinstein’s husband’s company was awarded the contract to broker the sales of 60 USPS facilities (one report says 600 were on the list to be considered for sale).

The problem is, that as a Federal agency, if there is corruption there, there is no incentive to get rid of it as long as it doesn’t become embarrassing. Did the CIO of USPS get a kickback from Microsoft? Nobody has incentive to rat the guy out, and, they do have incentive to keep their jobs by keeping their mouths shut. Did someone at USPS get a kickback from Richard Blum (Feinstein’s husband)? Nobody has incentive to rat the guy out, and, they do have incentive to avoid retaliatory employment decisions.

My local postmaster

So, my dad was a member of the California Young Republicans back in the 1960’s and 70’s. I would learn that the postmaster in town was on the Democratic Central Committee. I remember my dad suddenly going in to a rage one day; I had followed him out to the mailbox. “Do you see this‽ Do you see this‽”

The post office was reading our mail.

Of course, in school I was educated that one’s mail was sacrosanct, and the Post Office never read one’s mail. That turned out to be total bullshit.

What my dad was shaking in front of me was an envelope with a return address stamp of CYR California Young Republicans. The top of the envelope had been sliced open (all the way across the top, and not gently, either), and then lots of cellophane tape had been used to close it again. There was a rubber stamp on it: Damaged During Handling.

My dad would later go to the post office and speak with the postmaster, telling him that someone in the post office was reading his mail. The postmaster feigned an apology, but the mail reading did not stop. It was the postmaster himself who had ordered that all the CYR mail get routed to his desk first.

When I was younger, pretty much the very beginning of mass-shootings in America was in Post Offices. A new term entered the vernacular: “Going Postal”. What was happening was that guys were in line for promotion in every post office, and (some of) their bosses were real assholes. They would torment an underling for decades, and the underling couldn’t do anything about it, because his hopes for advancement would then be destroyed. 20 years later, it’s finally time to get the promotion to Postmaster of the Office, and the outgoing asshole gives the promotion to a junior bootlicker. The next day, the spurned postal worker would come in and shoot up the place. Institutional assholism works in government, because one cannot go to other bosses and say “This asshole is losing us money”. It’s a government agency. It’s not supposed to make money. If it’s making money, then it’s competing with the private sector who could probably do the job more efficiently anyway.

In my dad’s case of systematic invasion of privacy for political gain, there was nothing to do but to hide. The mail from CYR started using a fake return address. It was some sort of charity / orphanage, if I recall correctly.

That doesn’t mean that the California Young Republicans never sent another envelope with the old CYR rubber stamp. Indeed, one went out with “Remember that the big all-state dinner meeting will be held at the Black Oak Restaurant in Paso Robles at 7:00 PM on (whatever date)”. Our copy was opened and read and taped shut and rubber stamped with fuck-you-we’re-reading-your-mail as per usual. In the envelope with the charity return address, the letter said the meeting was still in Paso Robles, but it had been moved to a different restaurant. Someone from CYR did go hang out in the lobby at the Black Oak, and sure enough a total stranger walked up to the hostess and asked to be seated with the California Young Republicans group. Confusion ensued for the hostess and spy, although the CYR member got the chuckle he was expecting.

My bigger point is that management assholes exist in larger organizations, but, when that organization is private sector, the organization suffers enough for it that there is financial incentive to change (not always, due to monopoly power). But in public sector organizations, it is almost impossible to remove bad apples. There is no real incentive to change. The person who reports is asking for a target on their back and henceforth will never get another promotion, ever.

If Congress couldn’t manipulate USPS (because now they are UPS or Fedex or whatever), that would be a good thing. If bad apples didn’t have the career public sector employment worth suing over (for wrongful termination), that would be a good thing. And if I could pay to auto-trash junk mail, I would love that, and it would be the best thing.

^*I would even argue that the spammer’s life is better for it: if you are a spammer, you are a loser who thinks there is a easy / low effort / low quality way to get rich. The quicker we clobber your delusion, the better for you.

Donald Trump was better when Steve Bannon was whispering in his ear

In one of the books in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series the character Zaphod Beeblebrox is elected President of the Galaxy. The description (from Wikipedia):

He was briefly the President of the Galaxy (a role that involves no power whatsoever, and merely requires the incumbent to attract attention so no one wonders who’s really in charge, a role for which Zaphod was perfectly suited).
source

Donald Trump was made for the USA Presidency.

Now, there’s a whole other argument regarding Hillary Clinton as a truly terrible candidate. The mainstream media dearly wanted The Donald to be Hillary’s final opponent, because there was no way that Hillary could lose against Donald effing Trump. That’s worthy of a whole other post. Putting this aside, what else caused Donald Trump to win?

I think it was because Donald Trump knew that his role would involve no power whatsoever, and merely require him to attract attention so no one wonders who’s really in charge. And Donald (or Steve) saw that Twitter was a new form of communication. One so new, so significant, and so free of gatekeeping that they could wield it masterfully before any of the old guard caught on.

I think Donald Trump has been in business long enough to know to surround himself with super competent people. Steve Bannon was that expert in this new field (to Donald) of running a presidential election campaign. Trump listened to him, and the results were great.

Hillary was the weasel government insider, so Steve Bannon and Donald Trump cast Donald as the opposite.

Do government weasels make promises? No. Therefore, Donald would make 100 promises to be carried out in the first 100 days. And immediately after the inauguration, he tried really hard to make those come true. That was while Steve Bannon was still whispering in Donald’s ear.

Do government weasels sell out to corporate interests, and thus become the lackeys of big money? Yes. So Steve and Donald tweeted to high heaven that The Donald is financially independent and beholden to no-one.

Did this particular government weasel happen to be married to the guy who backstabbed all of the Midwest by signing legislation to ship their jobs and careers to Mexico, Canada, and China? Yes. So Steve and Donald tweeted “Let’s Make America Great Again”. Hillary (late in the campaign) had said that by electing Hillary, you’d get Bill, too (she would put him in charge of the economy). So first, Bill outsourced the manufacturing jobs; what was left to outsource? Engineering and tech services? “Make America Great Again” was a good foil to it’s opposite.

Did this particular government weasel call off the rescue team trying to save the Americans in the Benghazi attack? Someone decided that the rescue team should be grounded. That all the weasels involved dodged as many questions as possible was grist for the Trump Campaign mill. Particularly damning was the administration’s blame that the attack was due to a Youtube video. Anyone with a calendar and a brain could identify September 11 as a significant date.

Emailgate was another opportunity for Steve and Donald to highlight the reality that Hillary is a weasel. And they did so.

After Donald Trump was elected and inaugurated, he and Steve Bannon went to work to keep those campaign promises he had made. I remember being in a management meeting where it was announced that the Trump Administration would no longer fund employees who aren’t there. Turns out that some departments have positions to fill, haven’t filled them, but bill for the funding money anyway – and the previous administrations paid it. These unfilled positions became a sort of a slush fund; and some departments had up to 20% of their positions unfilled.

Then there was the new executive order that every new regulation can only be adopted when two other regulations are removed. To me, this is a clever way to trim back some of the cruft that has accumulated over the years. It is neither drastic nor urgent; and, it allows the regulators to figure out on their own how to clean up the worst of the trash still on the books.

One of the themes of the Donald Trump campaign was that Donald was elected to “drain the swamp of corruption” that is Washington, D.C. This was a great message, and one I’m sure Steve and Donald agreed would work well.

And then, someone figured out how to drive a wedge between Steve Bannon and Donald Trump. Steve left. With Steve no longer whispering in Donald’s ear, a power vacuum developed. Who filled it?

The Republicans.

The very alligators Donald was supposed to get rid of.

And the reformation by way of electing an outsider, is dead.

At least Donald is still (somewhat) aware that his role involves almost no power, and merely requires him to wield Twitter to attract attention so no one wonders who’s really in charge; a role for which Zaphod, er, The Donald, is perfectly suited.

April 2020 “May you live in interesting times”

Apocryphally there is an ancient Chinese curse that says “May you live in interesting times”. The idea is that it’s a curse (thus bad for you), and that the bad thing that is happening is that everything around you is uncertain, in turmoil, rapidly changing, and otherwise so off-balancing that one must pay close attention to avoid a fall into danger.

Well, April of 2020 is definitely interesting times. Reality is that much of commerce is shut down due to shelter-in-place orders by government. There is zero chance that many of people will be unhurt.

A few questions that surround the COVID-19 pandemic are:

Is it a real danger, or exaggerated for particular gain?
Is it both?
If it’s exaggerated for particular gain, what are those gains?
What evidence contradicts the real danger argument?

The first question, “Is it real?” Well, yes, 23,000+ dead in Italy seems like an obvious problem. Spain and France death totals are climbing, and New York City is up to 14,000+ dead. But is that more than the normal count of dead who expire during flu season? And here we have uncertain / in turmoil data.

Certainly, I don’t want my mom to die; and she is in her early 80’s. If the influenza virus, or the COVID-19 virus were to kill her, and I didn’t do all I could to reduce it’s spread, I would feel remorse.

But if the flu kills one half of a million people every year: is the 2020 death-by-influenza-like-virus count really going to be all that greater than the 2019 count? That count could be lower, actually; which would be due to the shut down of commerce.

But the second second part of the first question is perhaps re-written as “Is the declared pandemic due to COVID-19 exaggerated for particular gain?”

It’s not obvious to me that the the answer is no. I would like to be able to say that “The declared pandemic due to COVID-19 is not exaggerated by the media and government bureaucrats who use the media for manipulation.” I do not think that’s true, though.

The second question, “Is it both?” I’m inclined to say yes.

The third question, “If it’s exaggerated for particular gain, what are those gains?” Well wow, there are a lot.

Old school mass media is dying; good riddance. But the Oh-My-God-A-Pandemic!!! keeps the mass media on life support for a little bit longer.
There is a bureaucratic axiom: Never let a good crisis go to waste. Certainly this pandemic has given bureaucratic bullies ample opportunity to exert additional authority.
Social / technological progress: companies which would never before have considered a remote workforce are implementing it. And the air is cleaner for it.
A majority of old school mass media is still butt-hurt that Donald Trump got elected President. He’s going to win again, unless something can be created to discredit him. A ruined economy might do the trick.
Other topics that the mass media should be focusing on go by the wayside while the Oh-My-God-A-Pandemic!!! story stays top center. By the way, Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself.
- Joe Biden is running for President, which is an automatic loss unless the plan is to use him as a false front. If the plan is that Joe will die / be medically retired shortly after election, then the selection of Vice President becomes crucial. I’ve heard Kamala Harris floated as the candidate. I think it would be very difficult to find a candidate with worse “insider” attributes. She is a protege of Willie Brown, and Willie Brown’s picture ought to be in the dictionary next to the phrase Corrupt Politician. The point is: it’s to the Democratic National Committee’s benefit for people to not be looking at their candidate for VP too closely or for very long. The more time spent looking at their candidate, the more time to find something wrong. If they had a good candidate, we would have seen it by now.
- Senators saw the pandemic coming, and profited: Richard Burr, Kelly Loeffler, Dianne Feinstein, and Jim Inhofe. These people should be prosecuted and jailed.
- The EARN-IT Act, designed to break privacy of all Internet users.
- The Hong Kong protests, as people there want independence from communist China, and Hong Kong is a bright jewel of capitalism. Just how much force should governments use against their citizens?
- Brexit / no- Brexit – the saga of a government doing stupid things continues.
- Equifax breach. Not only did they fuck up their data security, they made a profit off it. And government prosecuted no-one (really).
- A local issue for me is the California High Speed Rail debacle; $77 billion of waste and no politician with the integrity to kill it. $2,000 per man, woman, and child in California (tax dollars) right into the shitter. Stop it!
The point of all the above sub-bullet points is that government at the grand scale is often incompetent or malevolent (perhaps accidentally, but not always), and if we weren’t looking at the pandemic, the media couldn’t help but look at government. But the mass media likes government; it holds their leash, and they provide content to wrap the ads around.
Government spending: every politician loves to be the hero, spending your money to rescue somebody from a problem. A pandemic is a wonderful excuse to spend money with little or no oversight. All these government workers working from home: you didn’t expect them to use their personal cell phones, did you? And from a legal discovery point of view: you don’t want personal and government business mixed on the same device. That wasn’t a concern when their contact phone number was the office phone number; but now we need call-back numbers and they sure as heck should not be the personal home phone number of the case worker. Other spending opportunities: schools with Chromebooks, Zoom teleconferencing, webcams, SAAS in The Cloud. All of these are excuses to buy stuff we could have done without (and kept expenses lower) but; now is a great excuse to spend, spend, spend. We’re stimulating the economy!
Congressional spending: the funding bills had all sorts of pork / unrelated administrative bullshit attached. Many of the ideas would never have flown, had they been reviewed on their own merits alone. Never let a good crisis go to waste.
Putting people in their place, by removing the government service of the public school system. Some of you did not appreciate what a little rat-asshole your little angel is, until the little angel was sent home to live with you for a couple months. You should fix your kid. Fixing your kid has always been your job; never the teacher’s. Long term, it would be best for your kid, too. Sending your kid home to you confronts the issue in a way your kid’s teacher (or even school district) never could.
Conditioning people to be even more dependent on government services. If you understand that every dollar the government spends comes out of your wallet, you’d rather they spend less. But if the government bails you out, you are the welfare recipient now. It will be that much more difficult for you to complain about excessive government spending when you were one of the recipients. Hypocrisy much? No – you have more integrity than that; unless (pandemix).
Unifying disaster: the pandemic. It’s no secret that there has been an increasing divide between people who earn their self-worth, and people who feel entitled. This divide became wider during the Donald Trump versus Hilary Clinton presidential campaign. The pandemic resets expectations. Trivial childishness is seen for what it is. What about the barber, shut down, who can no longer feed his family of four? That’s important.

The fourth question is “What evidence contradicts the real danger argument?”

I think another way of asking this is “If this danger is so real, what orders are examples of actual safety, and what orders are bullshit to make the bureaucrats feel powerful?” The orders are Shelter In Place also known as Stay Home and Keep Socially Distant.

I see the value in keeping everyone separate. If the transmission process is an infected person exhales, and a non-infected person inhales (which is the typical infection path for influenza-like viruses), then Shelter In Place / Stay Home and Keep Socially Distant makes a lot of sense. And in the first week, a ton of people did it.

We’re putting up with the destruction of commerce for the little guy because it’s all about keeping people from an early death. Right?

And then a week later, the ice cream shops were suddenly essential services and open for take-out. What the hell?

I’m still getting junk mail. A printer at the junk mail printer could be coughing all sorts of germs all over the crap that gets delivered to me. What is so essential about me getting sales crap to tell me to buy shit I don’t need, and which is obviously immediately going into the trash.

Are the politicians going to barbers / hair dressers? Is a barber / hair dresser suddenly an essential service when it’s a bureaucrat who needs a hair cut?

Let’s cut to the chase: is looking good an essential service?

Are politicians and/or bureaucrats to be excused from breaking Shelter In Place / Stay Home and Keep Socially Distant if they get that essential service of looking good? Because it’s all about keeping people looking good on TV, right?

Your grandparent or parent or cousin may have died, and you are prevented from going to the funeral because a large gathering of people might increase the pandemic; but Gavin Newsom needs to look good, right? He needs to be able to go onsite for the television appearance, because his speech means more, if the background is out in public, right? You have to Shelter In Place, but the governor, well he’s not a peon that ought to follow the peon rules.

Which makes me wonder about the validity of the rules at all.

Perhaps the rules are good, and good decent people are doing Shelter In Place. Maybe it’s only the politicians and bureaucrats holding press conferences who aren’t many weeks past that last haircut who are the hypocrites. But nothing about that causes me to gain respect for them. And if I don’t respect them, then I do question their motives.

May you live in interesting times, indeed.