Howdy,
Somehow these weeks seem to be flying by at lightning speed, but at the same time, the first events of the week feel like they took place months ago. I hope you're doing well.
College COVID Recap
This might be the last of these for a while. Things are going better than I expected. We finally passed that 1000 number I had so feared, but we've done it so slowly that about 800 of them have already recovered. Of course, this could all go bad fast, but so far it hasn't gotten totally out of hand. I'll bring this section back if it does. This isn't exactly related, but did you hear about the otherwise healthy App State basketball player who died of COVID last week?
Election Recap
Welp. This week is the story of the White House getting Coronavirus. It all starts with the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court. As I predicted in my last message, I was dead wrong about her. I still think it's odd she wasn't on that list, but it is what it is. I've read a bit more of her writing, and I'm not unsatisfied with the pick, though I have a lot more to read. With how quickly they're trying to confirm her, I don't know if I'll have the time to study her in full before she takes up the ninth seat. Her nomination was also quite possibly ground zero for the recent White House COVID breakout. Just look at this behavior at the event. Judge Barrett couldn't get it since she's already had it. But we'll get to all that later. As far as I can tell, she's got a very clean record. I've seen two strange attacks on her. The first is against her Catholic Charismatic religious group, the People of Praise. I've seen a lot of people who are very disturbed by this affiliation. Though I disagree with it, I can understand some of this fear. Members of the People of Praise must submit themselves to the church covenant and be subject to the organization's discipline and spiritual direction. I get how these words can sound very scary to those who aren't familiar with religious communities! David French wrote a great article about this issue which I highly recommend. But I see this fear manifesting as a sort of sick religious bigotry which secular people think they can get away with. There's a myth going around that the novel The Handmaid's Tale and the Hulu adaptation of it are based off of this community—a claim with no basis in reality. Liberals just really like that show. People call it a cult and suggest that Judge Barrett is unqualified to sit on the Supreme Court because she's a crazy Christian who's pledged allegiance to a cult. I think some of this reaction is just rooted in “Charismatism weird.” Bill Maher was particularly shameless about this. On his show, he suggested she was unqualified for believing in speaking in tongues, a bog-standard Charismatic belief but one that's usually held by Protestant Charismatics, not Catholics like the majority of the People of Praise. Not only do these people have no understanding of religion, they do not even try to understand. While I certainly wouldn't want to be a Person of Praise myself, this kind of anti-religious fear-mongering pisses me off. The other insult relates to her black adopted children. I shit thee not, some folks have called the Judge racist for this. The funniest part is that Richard Spencer—who still has a Twitter account somehow—agrees wholeheartedly.
Then came the tax scandal. Headlines stated that President Trump paid only $750 annually in federal income tax in 2016 and 2017. Ten of the last fifteen years, he paid nothing. Understandably, people were pissed. It felt like this was the big secret the President was trying to hide all along by not disclosing his tax returns. Unfortunately, a lot of folks were pissed at the wrong people. The correct response to hearing that school teachers are taxed less than billionaires is to say that school teachers should be taxed far less, not to rage at the billionaires. The IRS is not a charity—though they do accept donations. Of course President Trump is going to pay as little in taxes as possible, as he should. Tax avoidance is one of the few cool things about President Donald Trump. It's appropriate to be angry at the President for not being transparent about his tax returns or for not doing enough to fix our federal budget and tax policy which allows the very wealthy to make everything they do look like a net loss, but it is ridiculous to be angry at him for paying as little tax as possible as a private individual. When President Trump manages to deduct $70,000 in hair styling expenses, I'm not angry; I'm impressed. Of course, he still paid a positive shitton in business taxes and property taxes as well as social security, medicare, etc. Many of the comparisons people are making aren't apples to apples. The bigger problem in this leak is the President's failing businesses, something which doesn't surprise me, but doesn't look great for his “businessman in the White House” pitch. The whole Times story is worth reading for all the details. Biden supporters celebrating being robbed by the Federal government as a mark of pride are embarrassing.
There was a debate! It was terrible! President Trump managed to dominate the event, which was clearly part of his plan, but he failed to do anything to save his ass. He tried to do what's worked for him in the past. He tried to make Joe Biden get in the mud with him, and Biden didn't fall for it. Sure he called the President a clown and told him to shut up, but otherwise he stayed on message and did a good job at communicating the kind of exasperation a lot of America is currently feeling. Also, as we already discussed, President Trump lost hard on race. Your average President Trump supporter isn't half as racist as the coastal liberals believe them to be, and they're deeply uncomfortable with President Trump on race. Anytime race is mentioned to a general, non-partisan audience, even if it includes rhetoric attacking rioters and looters, President Trump loses and Joe Biden wins. I saw a lot of folks point out that President Trump straw-manned Biden as a Socialist with some saying that it looked as if President Trump wanted to be debating Senator Sanders. I think that those pointing this out are missing one of the more successful parts of the President's debate strategy. He wanted to get Biden to disavow highly popular left-wing ideas such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, and alienate the leftmost side of the Democratic party which isn't sure whether they want to vote for him. I don't think that it was enough to make a meaningful difference, but Biden took the bait here. If this sounds like 4D-chess bullshit to you, I think that these two tweets from the President make it a bit more obvious.
By far the most disturbing part of the debate was President Trump declining to disavow white supremacists, instead saying, “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.” I've seen some idiots on the right asking whether it matters that the President of the United States refused to disavow white supremacy since it should be obvious. But, like, that's seriously in doubt right now! If I were asked in seriousness whether I would disavow murder by someone who honestly wasn't sure whether I was against it, of course I would disavow murder! And this kind of rhetoric does have a real-world effect. I saw Richard Spencer celebrating immediately after the debate. The Proud Boys have been bolstered. These are the people President Trump is enabling. I highly recommend watching this timely video interviewing many members to get a sense for the vibe of the group. Of course, a lot of other things were said during the debate, including Joe Biden making up total lies about US manufacturing, but you watched it, too, so I'll leave that here. Honestly, the most important detail from the debate is that President Trump didn't infect Joe Biden.
And that leads us to the biggest happening of the week. Yes, somehow I've talked about a Supreme Court nomination, a tax scandal, a Presidential debate in which a President refuses to denounce white supremacy, and I haven't even gotten to the biggest story: The President is in the hospital as I type this, reportedly having been on oxygen. And he's not the only one who's gotten sick. Take another look at this image from the Supreme Court nomination. How many more red circles do you think we'll get? How far has it spread? So far, we have the President and the First Lady—but notably not Baron—Bill Stepian, Hope Hicks, Kellyanne Conway (more on her in a bit), Chris Christie, Senator Mike Lee (lol remember this video?), Senator Thom Tillis, Senator Ron Johnson, Ronna McDaniel, John Jenkins, and at least eleven staff from the first debate. It's a full-scale breakout. It seems like the D.C. Republicans have been outright irresponsible. Hope Hicks tested positive on Thursday morning, but it didn't stop the President from going mask-less to a fundraiser in New Jersey that same day. This stupid, conspiratorial tweet from Congressional candidate DeAnna Lorraine is hilarious. Of course, many people on all sides are coming up with outlandish conspiracies about the infection. Also, many are celebrating the President's illness and praying for his death. You already know how I feel about this, so I won't waste keystrokes here. At his age and with his health, he has about a 94% chance of survival, which is wild for this stage in a Presidential election, but let's not dig the grave quite yet. We don't know much about the President's status, and Twitter has been arguing all day about HIPAA (or “HIPPA,” as they tend to call it) which no one on the site remotely understands but on which everyone considers themself an expert. The video President Trump posted last evening was strange to watch. He really wasn't looking great. I've never seen him look like this.
A Washington Post bot tweeted this at an inopportune time.
Alright, as a final, lighter bit of election-related news, I want to talk about how we learned that Kellyanne Conway caught COVID. Most people found out when she tweeted about it, however, the news first broke on TikTok. (By the way, if TikTok does get banned, I'll talk about it, but I've been holding off). Kellyanne Conway has an odd family life. Her husband George Conway is one of the founders of the Lincoln Project, a conservative anti-Trump organization that's gained some traction. Her 15-year-old daughter Claudia is also vocally anti-Trump (and anti-Kellyanne for that matter), has accused her parents of abuse, and is trying to get emancipated to live on her own. Claudia Conway posted this highly irreverent TikTok (sound on) to share the news. Honestly, her whole TikTok is wild. She posted another immediately after which says, “im furious. wear your masks. dont listen to our idiot fucking president piece of shit.” I feel bad for this girl. I can't imagine being in her shoes.
Everything Else
Steve's in Smash. That's pretty weird. I like it. Also Minecraft is getting the cave update. I remember people asking for that when I was playing the game in middle school.
Cream of Wheat is removing the black chef from their packaging for no reason.
Hillary Clinton was more oppressed than President Obama because she was called “bitch” whereas Obama was rarely ever called “nigger.” There's some real white, liberal feminism going on here. I don't know how some of these people have stayed so online and yet so detached.
Terrible online magazine Queerty published this unbelievably cringy article calling Dr. Jill Biden a gay icon—you know, despite being married to Joe Biden. This article is absurd. It deserves a read. Why is every gay magazine like this?
After the President's Proud Boy shenanigan, some trans men started (or possibly continued, I'm not sure) using the term to refer to themselves just to fuck with the Proud Boys. George Takei apparently had a different idea: “I wonder if the BTS and TikTok kids can help LGBTs with this. What if gay guys took pictures of themselves making out with each other or doing very gay things, then tagged themselves with #ProudBoys. I bet it would mess them up real bad. #ReclaimingMyShine.” He's literally begging teenagers to produce softcore with a hashtag he can easily search for under the guise of owning the Orange Man. Every time I look at this guy's twitter, he's saying something super cursed. And there are a number of replies basically saying, “Haha, I'm totally straight, but we we should make out on camera to own Drumpf lol.”
Finally, here's a spectacular hour-long deep dive into a facet of the authorship of the infamously terrible 2006 Harry Potter fan-fiction My Immortal. I share this because it reminds me quite a lot of a movie I've wanted to write for some time now featuring a character who for no straightforward motive makes dozens of online accounts pretending to be different people who all talk to each other. I'm fascinated by this kind of internet history.
Thanks,
Jacob Morris
