Moot

[degringolade]

Surrealism / Paul Nash/ Pillar and Moon

Moot: (adjective)  

of little or no practical value, meaning, or relevance; purely academic:

Polk; Fillmore; Pierce; Buchanan, Nixon.  History is littered with these.  These are ones that didn’t hold up to our current definitions of competence and/or propriety.  

We are currently in a state where the assignment of failure and the stigmata therewith are being aggressively assigned.  Washington and Jefferson are actively being pursued.  More recent officeholders are being queued up.

I really can’t say that this aspect of history is interesting to me any more.  I am not the judge of history.  I have watched the contest between the different branches of government play out for fifty years now and I can’t say that rational behavior is a hallmark of the sport.

We love assigning blame.  Punishment is our favorite sport. 

I really could care less if someone can count to 30,000.  What concerns me is that someone took the time.  Having lived in Portland for the past year, watching the drama of cosseted princesses on the other side of the country merely bores me.

I really like the latest video of a aerobics instructor in Myanmar dancing away as armored vehicles execute a coup.  Now those folks have read Luttwak.  We aren’t there yet.  

What happens in the rest of 2021 is what is important.  What happened in the old regime is not important.  Failures are failures and how things move on are what is important.  All the problems that haven’t been addressed for the past forty years are still there.  All the problems that brought about the shitshow we find ourselves in are not getting better.  

I refuse to talk about the past failures.  We aren’t learning from them because we haven’t dealt with the core issues that precipitated the problems.  Dwelling on the past administration just keeps the spotlight off the administration that perhaps has the wherewithal to solve the problems.

Let’s stop wasting time on losers.

Comments

We Missed Something

[mschmidt]

You call Biden an f*wad the first day he is president. Apparently the past matters. Not that Biden is not an f*wad. Now that he is president at least wait until you can point at what he just did that made him an F*wad. On the other hand, if you think his past makes him dangerous, why would you disregard it?
If I were reading your blog for the first time and I see you refer to Biden as "f*wad" on day one, I might ask you why you called a new president f*wad before he did anything.

F*wad is an earned title, so there must be a past. I agree with not wasting time on losers, but one man's loser is another man's political hero. The hard part is showing the other man why his hero is really a loser (con man). Like convincing a Nazi in 1936 of what the end result was going to be - and having the Nazi see it and stop. In terms of generating hate in two hours, I judge Trumps early campaign rallies to be worse than Hitler's - mainly because the standards were lower in every area of the show, but the people needed less.

Hitler was just another Chancellor, but if he was not fundamentally different, then we had better back up and redefine what we mean by "fundamentally"; because we missed something.

LIES

[mschmidt]

“We love assigning blame. Punishment is our favorite sport.
I really could care less if someone can count to 30,000.”

Details:
The count is the number of lies the president told the public (not counting repeats).
Thus, we should not care whether the president lies to the public 30,000 times, or 50 times, even if lies help a liar get reelected.
Also, we are administering unfair punishment, if we blame the president for doing something he did, which is lie to the public 30,000 times.


“What concerns me is that someone took the time.”

It was a running count.
Another concern is that the president took the time to tell the lies.

In other words

[mschmidt]

In other words, if the 30,000 number (lies) is beside the point, then there is no point. How could there be?

Is all planning for the future to be based on a standard that accepts 30,000 lies from the president?

A reasonable alternative view is the opposite - that the number should never be forgotten; because it is a reminder that somebody might do it again, and a reminder that it should never happen again. The reason is - look at the results.

A Possibility

[mschmidt]

The reason why a president lies 30,000 times, is that the public lets him do it; regardless of D or R.

When the nation is 50/50, one side points at the lie, and the other side a accepts the lie because it helps their cause.

Seems to me that a good next step (goal), is to get both sides to stop accepting lies from anywhere. What is the point of discussion, if one does not want to play the role of a character from Orwell's 1984?

So somebody should be counting Biden's lies. He does not get 30,000; he gets zero.

But, you may be correct in that this goal is a hopeless one, and the new norm is 30,000. I am not being a smart ass; if this is your position, you could be spot on.