We have no choice but to root for COVID restrictions going away
COVID shots = Body Shots
We all have to hope the national wave of repealing COVID restrictions work, even if it kills us.
We simply don’t have a choice. State governments are out of moves. The national appetite for another COVID year is nonexistent and we don’t have a national metric we can all agree upon.
Variants, double masks, death plateaus will always be a part of the conversation for a certain part of the demographic. But I don’t know if it’s the majority anymore.
Vaccinations are the end point. Appointments for COVID shots mean the return of body shots, no matter how much it might terrify us.
Here’s why.
There are two ways you look at the role of government: Prescriptive and Reactive.
A Prescriptive way to handle a crisis like COVID-19 is to social engineer a solution. It is inherently distrustful of its citizens to do the right thing. A Reactive solution is to take the actions being asked by the citizens, even if the will of the people is frightening to a portion of it.
At the beginning of this crisis, one year ago, our tolerance for Prescriptive action was high. It was 15 Days To Slow The Spread. It might seem a bit weird… but if we all stay home this can be over quicker. Here in Oakland, it was a point of pride that we shut down very early and case counts were minimal. At least compared to global hotspots like Italy and domestic tragedies like New York City.
But 15 Days came and went and as I write this newsletter the business that are still open in Oakland will be lucky if they’re functioning 15 Months after our first lockdown. And so, our taste for Prescriptive government has waned and a hunger for Reactive government has returned.
A government that listens to the people reads great in a libertarian brochure but it quickly runs into a very vexing question: which people?
Do you listen to the business owners who are watching their life’s work be choked out? Do you listen to the teachers unions arguing for what they deem a safe work environment? Do you listen to the immunocompromised for whom COVID-19 could be a death sentence? Do you listen to the young, healthy masses who yearn to live their life?
This is the only context to understand our wave of reopening announcements this week. A year on, government is trying to be everything to everyone and because we are so at odds with each other on what has been a literal life and death issue… no one is happy.
Everything is bigger is Texas and so Gov. Greg Abbott got the ball rolling repealing a state-wide mask mandate and any capacity restrictions on March 10th. But while the noise engulfed the Lone Star State (drowning out any lingering echos from the energy disaster that just affected millions) they were not alone in deciding to radically repeal restrictions. Mississippi quickly joined along with Alabama and West Virginia. All took different steps but the trend is unmistakable. Even the blue states joined in. Connecticut, one of the hardest hit states through the first few months, announced an end to many restrictions this week. Even California announced the upcoming return of baseball attendance and Disneyland. This is extra hilarious because Gavin also wants the clout of dunking on Texas.
There is no perfect way to reopen. No pathway forward that everyone would be happy with. The patience of those that disagreed with lockdowns is nil and many who believed them necessary are starting to chafe at the lack of clear path forward to normalcy.
The vaccine is the end point. The elderly are the most vulnerable and they are getting it quickly.
If government can’t sell hope now, when can it?
With that comes less Prescriptions, no matter how you React to their elimination.
What the hell is going on?
Literally any speculation on this story is probably libelous. So I ask again… what the HELL IS GOING ON HERE?
Where’s My Check? Update: It’s on the way!
The Senate passed COVID relief. The House will make it final on Monday. Checks should start rolling out this month. As will the other $1.5 trillion that has nothing to do with checks or unemployment or vaccines. So… let’s do Winner and Losers!
Winners
Joe Biden
Considering he hasn’t gotten much else done and is moving at a historically slow pace for a president with both houses of congress, getting this past the post was a necessity. He did it.
Manchin and Sinema
The moderate power duo have moved center stage and made it clear that all Democratic legislation will run through them. Be it Joe Manchin further means testing relief checks or Kyrsten Sinema girl bossing a No vote on $15 minimum wage, these two are now the most famous votes in the Senate.
Losers
GOP
They had no say. They didn’t have a coherent message on why American should hate this bill until after the horse left the barn. No Senator even tried the populist route of counter proposing more direct money in a smaller bill. Isn’t this supposed to be the Dive Bar party now?
Bernie
Why does Manchin get his way and not Bernie? Because Manchin was a credible No vote. Bernie wasn’t. If he’s not going to stand up for $15 minimum wage at this stage, it’s hard to see him reversing course as things roll on. Not only did $15 fail there was also no movement on ANY minimum wage raise.
Progressives, this was the bargain made. Four to eight years of inaction of the causes you care about in exchange for getting rid of Trump.
Cuomo: “I won’t resign”
Andrew is past playing nice, now we get the real.
He is a Cuomo in New York. He isn’t going anywhere.
The biggest question is does a moderate step up to challenge Cuomo for the ‘22 election?
Why did the GOP outperform their polls again in 2020?
Very much enjoyed this article about why GOP candidates outperformed their polls again in 2020.
Both of the theories in the article involve conservatives not wanting to participate in polls but one of them I found fascinating.
Not only were many Republicans afraid to express their political opinions, but those with more education were also more likely than Democrats to saythey feared getting fired or missing out on job opportunities if their opinions became known. Interestingly, Republicans with a high school education or less (27 percent) were about as likely as their Democratic counterparts (23 percent) to fear their political views could harm them at work. But Republicans with college degrees (40 percent) and post-graduate degrees (60 percent) were far more concerned than Democrats with college degrees (24 percent) and post-graduate degrees (25 percent) in this regard.
I am guessing that there are a handful of college educated Republicans reading this right now. I would love to hear if you are afraid being honest about your politics would impact your career. Feel free to comment below or send me an anonymous email and we will compile them for the Wednesday newsletter.
Qanon and the origin of misinformation
I spoke with Rachel Greenspan of Insider this week on the podcast (interview is at the 50 minute mark) about Qanon. As someone who very much believes in the power of internet culture AND the ability for the media to myopically overhype something it is a pretty keen fascination for me.
Rachel’s argument is that no matter what you think of Q it is undeniable that “Q Influencers” on social media have affected political discourse. Larger trends like #StopTheSteal and #SaveTheChildren were cheered, if not outright created, by these influencers who speak to an audience that believes a mole in the deep state is broadcasting fantastical dispatches from the front lines of a hidden war.
While I am sympathetic to the idea that the internet spreads information in many ways I am also suspicious of the concept that these ideas are originating with Q influencers. My instinct is to say that in a bid to remain relevant in world where Hillary Clinton isn’t in jail and Anderson Cooper hasn’t eaten a baby on CNN, these influencers have found more mainstream causes to glom themselves on to.
Q didn’t invent GOP claims of Dem vote rigging. The 1960 election controversy did plenty to cement that.
Q didn’t invent panic over child trafficking. Non-political causes have existed for decades to address that issue.
In both cases, casting a conspiratorial hue on more “mainstream” issue brings relevancy to these influencers. While it may look like they are inventing these stories, they are only humming an old tune in a new way.
What is undeniable is that our world of infinite digital storage and instant global communication means almost any and everything we know can be challenged or destroyed if we see the right evidence. That can’t help but lead to a conspiratorial culture where we read tea leaves or guess what the next false truth will be.
I hope our next evolution is to become more sophisticated about these world-altering stories. The 2016 DNC leaked emails DO prove the party was hostile to Sanders. It DOESN’T prove that the Clinton campaign was peddling children to pedophiles. We DO know the emails were hacked from DNC servers. We DON’T know if they were turned over to Wikileaks by Seth Rich who was later killed for selling out the villainous conspiracy.
Being skeptical of conspiracies doesn’t mean fantastic information doesn’t exist and hunting for fanatic information does not prove the existence of a conspiracy.
No matter what Q tells you.
How to read the news: Spot a leaked story
Access Journalism is when your ability to do your job as a reporter is affected by your admittance into a place or ability to talk to a person. The body that decides your access is the subject you are covering.
In some industries this is common and understood. Sports for example. It’s hard to do a story where you are talking to a player immediately after a game if you can’t get in the locker room after the final whistle blows. The only way you can get in the locker room is if the team give you a pass.
To follow this analogy, if you (or maybe even someone else at your outlet) writes something that displeases the team… they can threaten to take away your pass. You now have no Access. You now have no Journalism. So you play nice and smooth things over.
While it’s tempting to say powerful entities and journalists are aligned because they share an ideology or went to the same college (and sometimes those are true) the vast majority of synergy comes from a mutual understanding that the entity wants to use the journalist’s credibility and the journalist wants to milk the entity for news.
These kinds of relationships are very common in fields where the subject holds power: including government.
Which brings us to this story.
A week ago, Biden got bad press for ordering a drone strike in Syria.
A week later, we get an anonymous source story saying that Biden is working behind the scenes to do less drone strikes.
I don’t know for sure that the second story is leaked to counteract the first and the reporters are running it to protect their relationship so they can report more stories like the first one in the future… but that would be my guess.
That’s it for this week!
Best comments and emails will be compiled into our Wednesday newsletter.
- Justin Robert Young