Here’s a first, updating while listening to a Met game. They are beating the Cardinals 5-2 in the third. You read that right, the Mets have five runs in three innings. It helps that they scored runs on a bases loaded hit-by-pitch and bases loaded walk. I didn’t leave the house today, that’s two days in a row after my expeditions on Friday and Saturday. On Sunday I did laundry, today I had no excuse. Tomorrow I will take a donut walk and go shopping. It’s important to maintain the routine.
Two weeks ago, we noticed that the apartment doorbell was broken and reported it to the Super. He said he’d send someone to fix it tomorrow. He said the same thing when I reported it again a week later. I reported it again this weekend, he said it would be fixed today. Of course, it wasn’t. When I made the second call I told him something more urgent had come up, the garbage chute wouldn’t open. He said he couldn’t fix it but would call someone in to fix it tomorrow. Do I have to tell you that it hasn’t been fixed? On Friday, my apartment outside doorknob fell off. So, this weekend I told him we need the doorbell fix, the trash chute fixed, and the doorknob fixed. He said someone would come on Monday. Guess what. Nothing was done. To top it all off the Cards tied the game up at 5-5. The Mets are losing 6-5.
The mainstream media is often said to have a liberal bias. As they are for the most part owned by billionaires and corporations why would that be true? It’s often viewed as a flaw in the system, But is it? For as long as I’ve been keeping up with polls they have shown that the better informed you are, the more liberal you tend to be. Despite the fact that Republican policies favor the rich, the more educated a person is the more likely they are to vote Democratic. Education does not guarantee being well informed, but it’s a good proxy for it. Journalists tend to be liberal because they are well informed. But why are well-informed people more liberal? Because the facts have a well-known liberal bias. That’s not because of any inherent “rightness” of the left. It is because Republicans, starting with Reagan, began rejecting facts that argued against their agenda, whether it be evolution, global warming, or the ineffectiveness of trickle-down economics. The problem is not that the facts have a liberal bias, but the population has a conservative bias. If the left were as doctrinaire as the right we’d talk of the facts having a well-known conservative bias. Paul Krugman once put it as the facts having a well-known center-left bias. I know plenty on the left who gladly ignore truths they find inconvenient. The difference is that they are exceptions on the left, while the median of the rightwing spectrum.
This all became clear during the contemptuous of facts Trump administration. At first journalists avoided calling Trump a liar. They continued to avoid it until it became too obvious to ignore. There are plenty of Republican who have had the courage to repudiate Trump and accept the truth. It takes courage because rightwing political correctness is even harsher than that of the left. For a politician to say something as simple as Biden fairly won the election will lead to censure by the GOP. When I talk to friends on the left in private they will admit to positions that they are loath to say in public because they are afraid of backlash. It is worse on the right. I have a friend who was afraid to say that it’s wrong for a cop to kill someone and leave the body and make believe he wasn’t there. He knows cops shouldn’t commit felonies, but to say so is to lose the respect of his peers. McConnell tried breaking with Trump after the Capitol Insurrection. There was such a backlash that he soon retreated. Props to Liz Cheney for standing her ground.
The best hope I can see for the future is that the economic rebound that’s coming is so huge that their self-interest will outweigh their tribalism and change the country’s political alignment. Then the median well-informed person’s positions will match the general population’s and the facts will no longer have a liberal but a centrist bias. Isn’t that how a well-functioning democracy work? The political median will be at the truth and the wisdom of the masses will be a reliable guide.
That’s been percolating for a while. I have another idea percolating at the same time. Maybe I’ll remember it tomorrow.
Wise Madness 