Cops Beating Cops
A retired NYPD officer has been arrested for beating a DC officer with a flagpole during the Capitol invasion on January 6. This is a fascinating, since the cops, for the fifty years I have paid attention to these things, have always and everywhere had the reputation of being a gang which always protects each other, with silence and violence. The Epistemic Nightmare we are experiencing today is extremely grave, if it can result in a cop beating a cop.
Rush Limbaugh
In memoriam Rush: He was arrested in 2006 with a bottle of Viagra prescribed for someone else, as he arrived at a Florida airport returning from a vacation in the Dominican Republic with male friends. This very likely was a sex tour. Six years later, when a Georgetown student, Sandra Fluke, testified to Congress about the Catholic University's failure to provide birth control, Rush called her a prostitute. It is also noteworthy that Rush, married four times, never had a child. Just maybe he was sterile, or perhaps he used birth control. In any event, Rush Limbaugh was Iconically a morally empty suit.
Texas Electricity
I avoid the term "neoliberal", which I find rather confusing, and use "Late Capitalism" instead, which I think clearer. Given that we live in a society in which we are all commodified, treated like Krill, far beyond what I ever expected to see in my lifetime, I tend to be (Meta-)surprised that I can still be surprised. I confess that I am by the Texas electricity system, which, since it adheres to the fabled and fabulous free market, resulted in bills of more than $15,000 for some households after a mere week of blizzards. Particularly fascinating in an Epistemic sort of way (have you, dear Reader, figured out that is my Shiny New Word of the month?) is the sort of shrug of some Idiot Savant Libertarians: That is the way free markets work. I have quoted some words of Thoreau to distraction, but here they are again: " [W]hen the smoke is blown away and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are run over". All hail Late Capitalism!
Peace and Quiet
Living in Trump Universe for five years (I am including the campaign) was tantamount to residing in an occupied city in which one lives in fear every moment of nighttime alarms and excursions, thugs showing up with guns or clubs and rousting everyone, ransacking houses, committing an occasional killing. I am vastly enjoying the abstract but very comforting quiet of the Biden administration: imagine a President who never Tweets bigotry, insults and threats, who is not dog-whistling to rancid followers to attack his adversaries. I cherish every minute.