Updates
- Originally published, October 26, 2020, 11:33 pm.
- October 27, 2020, 9:49 am:
- Landlords are finding ways around the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eviction ban as renters are unlikely to be able to catch up on the rent. Meanwhile, it’s a real good time to be selling a home,[] as fortunes diverge widely between the well-off and the poor in a “K-shaped recovery.”[] That latter point strikes me as crucial: Sure, landlords can evict those they see as “deadbeats,” even get a gig economy company to help with those evictions,[] but I don’t know where they hope to get replacement tenants from when millions are being evicted[] because they already don’t have the money to pay rent and therefore can’t come up with move-in deposits.[] All they’re accomplishing is an increase in suffering both from the evictions themselves and from the pandemic as the evicted move in with friends and family and live in closer quarters,[] while the housing remains empty.
- October 27, 2020, 9:31 pm:
- If you’re wondering how to bridge the gap between “liberals” and conservatives, there are a few points I should bring to your attention:
- You’re far, very far, from alone. A lot of folks treat this as a doable thing.
- You’re also likely with the Democratic Party and their neoliberal project which, being utterly discredited intellectually,[] can reasonably exist only as an outreach to Republicans.
- There’s a pretty good chance you’re up against neuroscience, which according to Scientific American, is suggesting that conservative and “liberal” brains really are different, though we really don’t know the causal relationship: Do political differences exist because of brain differences or do brain differences develop from political differences?[] That last question touches on the question of nature versus nurture, where the social science bias is very strongly toward nurture as explaining most character or behavioral traits, which is probably one reason why I’m skeptical that brain differences are causative. Another is that I don’t actually see myself in the examples offered in this article, which I guess shouldn’t be too terribly surprising, but, not having actually dug into the research, leads me to suspect something else might be up.
- October 28, 2020, 6:59 am:
- October 28, 2020, 9:30 am:
- “When you come to a scene where somebody is in a mental crisis, and the only tool you have to deal with it is a gun… where are the proper tools for the job?”[] Police have shot and killed yet another Black man, this time in Philadelphia. Walter Wallace, Jr., apparently was armed with a knife, but was in the company of his mother, and was likely experiencing a mental health issue. Police didn’t bother with deescalation.[] People there are furious, they are rioting and looting.[] This isn’t getting much mainstream attention; I actually first caught wind that anything at all might be up via the National Review where the headline was all about the looting (their story itself is a little better).[] The National Review is mostly neoconservative, but their headlines in the run-up to the election have sounded more authoritarian populist; they have been awful, sensational, and heavily slanted in favor of Donald Trump, which is not at all the way to get my eyes.
- October 28, 9:57 am:
Pandemic
It’s the very scenario the lockdown earlier this year was meant to avoid as hospitals face what is soon likely to be overwhelming numbers of patients:[]
New reported infections nationwide surpassed 80,000 for the first time ever Friday and again Saturday, as hospitalizations push past 40,000 and daily death tolls begin to climb. This new wave of infections, expected to intensify as winter draws closer, is spread wider than the spring surge that devastated East Coast states and the summer wave that slammed the South and the Southwest. And it comes as some Republican leaders are leery of renewed shutdowns, as Americans grow wearier of restrictions and as the Thanksgiving travel season threatens to supercharge the virus’s spread.
“We are set up for just a perfect storm — a conflagration,” said Megan Ranney, an emergency medicine professor at Brown University. “Right now, you can talk about there being lots of little burning fires across the country. And then Thanksgiving will be the wind that will whip this fire up into an absolute human disaster for our country.”[]
But you know, remember all those excuses for not wearing fucking masks.[] Oh, and how the security of the whole free world depends on going to bars.[] Remember! It’s your patriotic duty to spread the novel coronavirus and kill people.[]
Hannah Knowles and Jacqueline Dupree, “Full hospitals, talk of rationing care: New wave of coronavirus cases strains resources,” Washington Post, October 25, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/25/coronavirus-cases-hospitalizations-surge/
Donald Trump
George Conway[] is back with more.[] Because, god help us, somebody has to do it.
George T. Conway, III, “I believe in the president, now more than ever,” Washington Post, October 26, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/10/26/george-conway-i-believe-in-trump-more-than-ever/
Supreme Court
Just as the Democrats handed Donald Trump the presidency with their insistence on neoliberal dogma in 2016,[] they have now handed a 6-3 Supreme Court majority to conservatives in 2020.[] But by all means, blame the folks who want decent jobs, peace, and a better environment and who want to see actual progress towards these ends. Just like the Democrats always do.[]
Seung Min Kim, “Senate confirms Barrett to Supreme Court, cementing its conservative majority,” Washington Post, October 26, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/senate-court-barrett-trump/2020/10/26/df76c07e-1789-11eb-befb-8864259bd2d8_story.html
Housing
Will Parker, “Struggling Rental Market Could Usher in Next American Housing Crisis,” Wall Street Journal, October 27, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/struggling-rental-market-could-usher-in-next-american-housing-crisis-11603791000
Kyle Swenson, “Renters thought a CDC order protected them from eviction. Then landlords found loopholes,” Washington Post, October 27, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2020/10/27/trump-cdc-eviction-moratorium-loopholes/
Neuroscience
Lydia Denworth, “Conservative and Liberal Brains Might Have Some Real Differences,” Scientific American, October 26, 2020, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/conservative-and-liberal-brains-might-have-some-real-differences/
Walter Wallace, Jr.
Ximena Conde, “Disbelief and unanswered questions after fatal police shooting of Walter Wallace,” WHYY, October 27, 2020, https://whyy.org/articles/disbelief-and-unanswered-questions-after-fatal-police-shooting-of-walter-wallace/
Darryl C. Murphy, “Grieving Walter Wallace Jr. and seeking justice, West Philly wonders what’s next,” WHYY, October 27, 2020, https://whyy.org/articles/grieving-walter-wallace-jr-and-seeking-justice-west-philly-wonders-whats-next/
Brittany Bernstein, “Hundreds of Looters Ransack Philadelphia Businesses in Second Night of Unrest,” National Review, October 28, 2020, https://www.nationalreview.com/news/hundreds-of-looters-ransack-philadelphia-businesses-in-second-night-of-unrest/