Winners and Losers
Jul. 23rd, 2024 07:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootI am a terrible sportswoman. More often than not sport bores me; I am almost never invested, but if I am, even to the tiniest degree, I am in it to win it. If I care at all I care too much. Watching the Grand Prix at the weekend, the emotional blackmail dripping through the radio messages made me grit my teeth. Ick and Yeesh to the awful half-threatening half-wheedling tone of someone trying to 'manage' the situation, nothing would be more guaranteed to see me put pedal to the metal. And yes, Oscar Piastri winning was the deal made within the team, but what's being ignored is that Piastri made a mistake which cost him time, irrespective of pit stop arrangements. Not important anyway, just a reminder that if I ever do take R to a grand prix, it'll be the Azerbaijan one so I can wander off and look at antiquities rather than fume over stuff I barely understand.
And speaking of stuff I barely understand, time for an interlude around another country's politics...
Biden won't be running again. While I have a soft spot for anyone who quotes Seamus Heaney, surely he has made the right choice. No-one is going to be swayed away from claims of cognitive decline by a president confusing Putin with Zelensky or Trump with Harris; OK, it's just words, but words matter when you want to reassure people. I feel for him if there's truth in the rumour about Hillary R Clinton being given his first shot at the presidency, but right now he has shown more clarity than his party did back then. I can't know much about life in America and who is being influenced by what policy, but suspect history will be generous to this man.
Re Kamala Harris, I have heard that she was unpopular and many looked upon her with baleful eyes for lack of competence, but that's the extent of my knowledge and I can't vouch for the veracity of any of it. What's weird is the take of the internet goblins. Of all the reasons they might present against Harris, the fact that she is childless is the one I am seeing on repeat. The other is that she is not eligible to be president because of her parentage. It's about what she is rather than what she has done/not done. Of course, these are not official party lines (I hope) but one imagines that both sides manipulate social media. As an aside, if I was some party politico, I would look at how to use any opposition's policy of all-out ad hominem as a way to drain their resources. There must be something brutally satisfying in watching foes spend time and god knows how much money attacking maybe/maybe not nominees. One doesn't even need to provide a stalking horse; they'll shoot at whatever's moving, then complain about lack of bullets.*
Having said all that, the craziest political person I have recently 'met' online has been an Ohio Democrat. He asked if we could be FB friends and because he's an artist with strong views on formalism, I agreed. I thought I would learn about Art. Big mistake. Apart from the whole world doing Ahht wrong, he only had one other subject and that was the evil of Republicans. In his head they veered between evangelical Christianity (he hates Christianity, but if hated Republicans are going to follow hated Christianity, they should at least follow his version of it) and KKK style racism. When I asked about the economic issues that voters might be facing, he dismissed them as nothing at all. Eventually he told me that I was like the evangelical Christians and the Republicans, and two things occurred to me: one was that if Ohio votes Republican, this man will have earned it, and the other was a suspicion that alcohol might be playing its part in his spleen. We are no longer FB friends. But that's OK, because at least I understand more about formalism than I could ever wish, and fair play to him, our FB conversations certainly felt like literal representations of Pollock's Number 30. Not sure I needed to go through this when Google is my friend.
* This sentence probably doesn't need any more metaphors.
And speaking of stuff I barely understand, time for an interlude around another country's politics...
Biden won't be running again. While I have a soft spot for anyone who quotes Seamus Heaney, surely he has made the right choice. No-one is going to be swayed away from claims of cognitive decline by a president confusing Putin with Zelensky or Trump with Harris; OK, it's just words, but words matter when you want to reassure people. I feel for him if there's truth in the rumour about Hillary R Clinton being given his first shot at the presidency, but right now he has shown more clarity than his party did back then. I can't know much about life in America and who is being influenced by what policy, but suspect history will be generous to this man.
Re Kamala Harris, I have heard that she was unpopular and many looked upon her with baleful eyes for lack of competence, but that's the extent of my knowledge and I can't vouch for the veracity of any of it. What's weird is the take of the internet goblins. Of all the reasons they might present against Harris, the fact that she is childless is the one I am seeing on repeat. The other is that she is not eligible to be president because of her parentage. It's about what she is rather than what she has done/not done. Of course, these are not official party lines (I hope) but one imagines that both sides manipulate social media. As an aside, if I was some party politico, I would look at how to use any opposition's policy of all-out ad hominem as a way to drain their resources. There must be something brutally satisfying in watching foes spend time and god knows how much money attacking maybe/maybe not nominees. One doesn't even need to provide a stalking horse; they'll shoot at whatever's moving, then complain about lack of bullets.*
Having said all that, the craziest political person I have recently 'met' online has been an Ohio Democrat. He asked if we could be FB friends and because he's an artist with strong views on formalism, I agreed. I thought I would learn about Art. Big mistake. Apart from the whole world doing Ahht wrong, he only had one other subject and that was the evil of Republicans. In his head they veered between evangelical Christianity (he hates Christianity, but if hated Republicans are going to follow hated Christianity, they should at least follow his version of it) and KKK style racism. When I asked about the economic issues that voters might be facing, he dismissed them as nothing at all. Eventually he told me that I was like the evangelical Christians and the Republicans, and two things occurred to me: one was that if Ohio votes Republican, this man will have earned it, and the other was a suspicion that alcohol might be playing its part in his spleen. We are no longer FB friends. But that's OK, because at least I understand more about formalism than I could ever wish, and fair play to him, our FB conversations certainly felt like literal representations of Pollock's Number 30. Not sure I needed to go through this when Google is my friend.
* This sentence probably doesn't need any more metaphors.
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no subject
Date: 2024-07-23 12:04 pm (UTC)I have just seen Vance's commentary regarding “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives.”
There are many reasons why I would not be a great leader. Being childless isn't one of them, neither is owning cats.
It is very hard to understand why Trump selected this man.
no subject
Date: 2024-07-23 12:18 pm (UTC)