[FRIAM] Uncanny Valley was: Biden beats Trump

[Steve Smith]

Eric/Glen, et alia -

I have my own near stress-narcolepsy around extreme conspiracy theories,
perhaps for the reason you call out here:  to stretch to identify a
range of threats and then seem to put all of the energy into normalizing
them rather than picking the ones you might be able to address or
ameliorate or deflect or take some kind of action against.   I'm quite
capable of morbid fascination over extreme cases, as long as I leave
them out beyond some pale of my own belief.   I'm not against gaming out
worst-case scenarios on the off chance that I can cache the results for
a future time when in fact those scenarios start to loom close enough to
take seriously.

While my lily-white-male privileged ass continues to want to deny that
the raving egomaniacs we have deferred (conferred) power to (via our
current aberrant instance of representative democracy) are near some
verge of throwing off the illusions that they are doing what they do "in
our name", it is no longer an abstract speculation for me and feels
*real* enough to me to bring my to the near side of this "uncanny valley".

To be honest, I am more likely "hopping" back and forth between trying
to think through meaningful responses and trying to find indicators that
this is all show, that it is all the last throes of a melodramatic
villain flopping around on stage exhibiting his (their) spiraling
through the stages of grief. 

As a seeming tangent, I just watched a handful of documentary shorts on
Ernie Chambers from NE who was responsible for the splitting and keeping
their electoral votes split, but maybe more broadly importantly,
maintaining a powerful critical perspective on the conditions of African
Americans in the Industrial Midwest as a 6 term (1971-2009) State
Senator.   Possibly of interest is that he did all of this openly as an
Atheist.   His words and actions (especially early in his career)
carried a clear hopeful ideology about equality tempered by a hard-nosed
practicality.

zzzZZZZZzzzzz,

 - Steve


On 11/11/20 6:47 AM, David Eric Smith wrote:
> Yes, much agreed Glen.
>
> I am getting to the point where something combining tedium and stress-narcolepsy puts me to sleep, wading through more newspaper articles saying in (performative?) outrage: McConnell has just said this self-contradictory and hypocritical thing!  How could he!  How can his supporters not recognize this!  etc.
>
> Yes.  And Duterte and MBS have just had some more people killed, and Putin has poisoned somebody else.  They will cease to do this when they are stopped, and not before.  Their followers and collaborators too.  So what’s the plan?
>
> Will be interesting if trump is firing people at DOD, in the Pentagon, etc., because he wants, together with Pompeo and Barr, to try some military move against either the US public, or some other country to create some leverage situation against the US public.  My mind doesn’t work in a way that recognizes what might be appealing to them to try in that arena.  
>
> Best, so to speak, 
>
> Eric
>
>
>> On Nov 10, 2020, at 11:07 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Yep. The other thread talking about uniting us in the face of polarization seem to miss this point. One pundit expressed it well "You don't seek unity with your abuser." As Barr and a host of Republicans, including McConnell <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/us/politics/republicans-trump-concede-2020-election.html>, continue to hypocritically undermine the electoral process, any attempt to "unite" with them is akin to co-dependency with a narcissist spouse.
>>
>> *After* the dust settles, Biden has no choice but to wrangle and hog-tie the bad faith actors into productive behavior. But until then, everyone who continues making unsubstantiated claims of fraud should be seen as what they are. Skepticism is a good mistress, but a bad master.
>>
>> On 11/9/20 5:09 PM, David Eric Smith wrote:
>>> Those with access to Georgia TV stations can watch David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler make a pack and attack Raffensperger, or whatever his name is — the election commissioner — because he ran an actually remarkably competent and clean election, rather than stealing it for them.  Pretty transparent.
>>>
>>> I was impressed and thought he deserved a lot of credit.  Of course Stacey Abrams is a hero, but that’s another story.
>>
>> -- 
>> ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ
>>
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