How Everybody Lives

Published by

Clarissa

March 13, 2018

I’m sure by now everybody has read the hilarious piece in the NYTimes about the rich guy who has consumed no news for a year. The funny thing in the article is the idiot reporter who seems completely unaware that this is how most people live. And good for them.

The protagonist of the article is an idiot because he’s a huge drama queen and is making a nuisance of himself to others. But there are many folks I know who have zero interest in the media ridiculousness, and I think they are right. I have quit watching TV news, and I’m skipping on online news more and more because there’s rarely anything but dumb, pompous posturing.

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5 responses to “How Everybody Lives”

Shakti

March 13, 2018

Nope. I barely read news now, just saw a tweet and did not click.

Anyways, on this episode of The Kremlin Turns, Tillerson got fired by a tweet. I’m not sure why but apparently he didn’t suck up to Putin enough despite having a “Order of Friendship” medal?

If you want a laugh, here’s Gin and Tacos’ take:

Of course the USSR years gave generations of Russians practice shrugging, eye-rolling, and honing black humor in response to their one-party political system. After some brief flirtations with the pretense of democratic institutions in the 1990s Russian politics seem to have fallen comfortably back into that routine. Everyone knows. Everyone knows that the elections are not real, that the rule of law is nonexistent, that aggressive journalists or political opponents end up dying of mysterious causes, and that an enormous pile of oil, gas, and dirty banking money is the only thing that influences the direction of what passes for governance. The government and political process (such as it is) are so corrupt that eventually people give up on even trying to change it. For Russians already used to going through the motions of the Soviet system it didn’t take long.

This, I think, is the real endgame of Trumpism and the reason (well, one reason) for Trump’s obsequious affinity for Putin. Rather than taking a Russian-style brute force approach, though, Trump better understands the American affinity for being entertained. He’s putting on a show for his idiot followers while running an administration so spectacularly inept, clownish, and corrupt that your average American who is not terribly interested in politics and already inclined toward cynicism can conclude once and for all that all of it is a joke. Of course the activists Trumpers take such delight in riling up will try to strike back, but the right understands that getting people to participate in this process is already the left’s biggest challenge. The more that can be done to convince non-voters to stay that way, the longer the GOP can overcome unfavorable demographic trends….

That is the real long-term goal here – not to win, but to convince such a large part of the population to give up on the process, declare it hopeless, and get back to scrambling around trying to make a living that a small, wealthy minority will be able to hold onto power longer than it otherwise could….

…Let me put it this way: if their goal wasn’t to make all of politics and governing a joke that most people will eventually ignore altogether, they couldn’t have come up with a plan that would accomplish it any more effectively.

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1. Clarissa
  
  March 13, 2018
  
  It was as much of a circus with the previous administration. But the other side was where the clowns were, so it didn’t hurt as much. What I blame Trump the most for is giving me an opportunity to find out that my side is filled with exactly the same kind of folks that I always ridiculed as unhinged Fox News voters. I honestly had no idea this was the case.
  
  As for the rest, Trump has already punished Russia more than Obama ever did, and I can’t be unhappy about that.
  
  So yeah, I’m probably one of those people who will start abstaining from voting. Bit it won’t be because of Trump. Trump never enchanted me, so I can’t get disappointed in him.
  
  God,I wish I had gone completely off the news right after this elections. God, I wish I could still be wide-eyed and idealistic like I used to be.
  
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Fie upon this quiet life

March 14, 2018

LOL! I thought the same thing. There are millions of people in this country that pay zero attention to the news. The only thing remarkable about that guy was that he was rich enough not to pay attention and have zero consequences. (So far.)

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Crystallizing chaos

March 14, 2018

Yes, that and the fact that such articles have been done to death. Wired did a similar story a while ago. So not only is it daft, it’s also utterly unoriginal.

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Hazel Catkins

March 14, 2018

Not only is it unremarkable, not only is it daft, not only is it unoriginal… turns out he didn’t even actually unplug at all.

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/farhad-manjoo-nyt-unplug.php

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