Grab Bag of Irritation

Folks, I’m long overdue for a good old fashion rant. The past few weeks of the global pandemic has brought out some things that have really irritated me to no end. Here they are.

The Action-Adventure Story Teller 

Suddenly every media writer and every social media post is filled up with breathless stories of how they or someone they knew suffered through Covid-19. “My chest was caught in a vice grip” is a line I’ve seen over and over again. Or subheadings like “Day 5, The Worst.” It honestly reminds me of a paperback I’d read in the checkout line at the grocery. I guess trying to be an “influencer” extends to global pandemics too. Not only are these not helpful to people who experience anxiety, but they also incite panic AKA what we don’t need now. Social media is an awful place for something so private. Why do they feel the need to tell their illness stories? How does that help? It really, really doesn’t, assholes.

”We will never be the same again.”

This line has to go away forever. It’s so fucking played and not really special just for this occasion. Isn’t this true of ANY life experience? Or, perhaps, something positive that happens on a worldwide level? Where is the wall to wall coverage of rising life expectancy in the world that has made us “never the same again?”

Insanely Negative People

I had someone tell me the other day that my son won’t get to play baseball for the rest of the year. And that all sports everywhere is done for the year because of how awful this is going to be. First of all, thanks for the positivity, fucknut. Second, how the fuck do you know? No one really knows what’s going to happen so being dire, again, doesn’t help people (like me) who dread excessively. Far too many normally negative people are feeding on this. They love how miserable everyone is. Let’s not let them do that.

Insanely Positive People

Donald Trump is an example of this. This is not going to be done by Easter. It may be that parts of the country are going to shift back to normal but some may need longer amounts of time and testing.

The fucking toilet paper thing

Seriously, why? And I’m also tired of the psychological explanation that “people need to control something and feel comfort.” Barf. This is a great example of how dumb people can be. TP is what you need for this pandemic? Really?

Imperial Declarations of Certainty in Uncertain Times

I’ve seen this a lot from the overly positive and overly negative sides of the issue. Everyone is basically guessing right now how this will play out. You can’t look to Italy and say that it’s going to happen here. Our country is so different and more spread out. Some areas might be the same. I heard one of my favorite pundits say, “By the time this is over, every American will know someone who died from Covid 19.” Really? I don’t know anyone who has died from the flu. I know one person who died in a car accident. Many more fatalities from that over the years, even with the direst predictions.

Gleeful people who “saw this coming.”

I like the U’s, Mike Osterholm. He’s a much-needed epidemiologist that is largely helpful right now. But he seems a little too happy about this. So do some other health care professionals and analysts. So do doomsday preppers. This isn’t “cool,” guys, and you being right makes this a tragedy, not an accomplishment. Osterholm is fond of saying “Hope is not a strategy.” Ok, but can we work on strategies that give us hope?

The doom and gloom from the media

Why aren’t we seeing recoveries listed along with deaths? They are showing this in Minnesota, thankfully, but I don’t see it anywhere else. Many people are recovering. Let’s fucking celebrate that as well as mourn the deaths of those who we have lost.

As we move along through this, more rants could be in the future😎

Trump's Re-Election Bid Even Dimmer

Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer has released her latest model for the 2020 election and it looks even worse for Donald Trump in November. As Biden locks up the nomination (and promises to pick a woman for his VP), it's hard to see how Trump, who basically drew a straight flush and barely won in 2016, can win in the fall. Why?

As Bitecofer notes in her latest projection and her piece for the New Republic, the last three election cycles have shown that white, educated voters, especially those in the suburbs, have deserted the GOP. One wonders why they elected to ignore their 2008 election post mortem and simply shoot for short term goals by appealing to old, uneducated white voters. Our electorate is becoming more diverse and younger with around 80 million people under the age of 40 set to vote this fall. The one thing they all have in common?

They hate Trump and want him gone.

We know that Republicans always vote and do so at a clip of 83%. They are very reliable voters. But their numbers simply don't match liberals and lean left independents who are very afraid and angry about a second Trump term. Even in 2018 when Republicans turned out in higher numbers than ever to support their guy, the Democrats still claimed 42 seats in the House.

Turnout in primaries has been very high in the states that have gone thus far. The base is energized, despite a worldwide pandemic.

All of these facts seem lost on folks like Kevin Baker and his followers who don't really seem to be paying attention to what's coming. They live in a very strange reality where 2016 will somehow be repeated, there are secret Trump followers everywhere, the election of 2018 never happened, and Virginia (a great indicator of what's to come for them) didn't just turn entirely blue and pass a whole slew of new gun safety laws.

Perhaps they should pay more attention to the Doc...:)

Trump Kills Arizona Man

Well, Donald Trump's "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters" moment has arrived. Someone did what Trump suggested and died:

An Arizona man is dead and his wife was hospitalized after the couple ingested a form of chloroquine, a chemical that has been hailed recently by President Trump as a possible "game changer" in the fight against the novel coronavirus, according to the Phoenix hospital that treated the couple.

Banner Health hospital said in a statement that "the couple, both in their 60s, ingested chloroquine phosphate, an additive commonly used at aquariums to clean fish tanks." The aquarium additive the couple ingested is not the same as the medication that has been used to treat malaria.

Of course these people were idiots for listening to Trump. Anyone who believes a word he says is a sucker. Trump is a puerile moron who lies constantly and says whatever he thinks will make him look good. Of course any medical advice he gives will be terribly wrong: he thinks exercise is bad for you. He also said he didn't know people died from the flu, even though that's what killed his grandfather, and every flu season they tell us to get the flu shot because people die from the flu.

His chloroquine comments have sparked a shortage of the drug, which some people actually need to treat malaria, lupus and arthritis. Which means that even people who don't listen to his nonsensical blather will suffer and potentially die because of him.

Trump is clearly more worried about how the state of the economy will affect his reelection chances than the hundreds of thousands of Americans who will die or suffer permanent lung damage from COVID-19 if he gets his way and "restarts" the economy.

And, again, Trump's huge conflicts of interest prove how unfit he is for the presidency. On Sunday he tweeted "WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF". He just shut down six of his seven major clubs and hotels because of the virus. It's a tossup: is he more worried about getting reelected or his properties losing millions of dollars? Clearly he doesn't care if Americans die.

Estimates of the number of deaths if we follow Trump's "what me worry" strategy range from 200,000 to 1.1 million, and 2.4 million to 21 million could require hospitalization. And people who aren't infected will die because they can't get necessary treatment, such as heart transplants, because the hospitals are totally clogged with coronavirus patients.

Well, Trump, how much is a human life worth? The EPA estimates the value of an American life is $10 million. If a million people die from the coronavirus that's $10 trillion in lost lives. In addition, the cost of treating tens of millions of people for the disease will cost trillions more, and people who suffer permanent lung damage will require untold billions more for treatment every year.

Trump keeps making comparisons to the flu, which is totally wrong because no one has immunity to the coronavirus and there is no vaccine.

The only person in the entire Trump administration with any credibility is Anthony Fauci, and reports are that Trump is growing "impatient" with him. Yes, we all know how much Trump hates people who are smarter than he is, which is why he's fired so many aides and cabinet members. He hates being made to look stupid: if he would just shut up he would only look stupid, instead of opening his filthy gob and proving just how idiotic he really is.

Come on, Republicans! You've got know-nothing Trump and dunces like Rand Paul -- now tested positive for coronavirus -- who knew he had been exposed but still went to the Senate floor to vote and the gym to work out and swim while awaiting his results. And Paul is a doctor!

Apparently this is how Republicans think: money is more important than American lives. Getting reelected is more important than American lives. Getting a morning swim is more important than American lives. The greed and selfishness are appalling.

This is what happens when you put people who hate government in charge of it: sheer incompetence and malfeasance.

He IS That Fucking Bad

People criticize the president because he actually has been that fucking bad on this. Haul out the “orange man bad” troll at your own risk. People are dying because he failed in his job. Here is the evidence in his own words.



I am grateful, however, that he and the rest of the GOP admitted failure in their political and economic ideology and went (once again) to the successful and functional models of stimulus and government intervention.

You’re welcome....again. Maybe next time STFU with your petty, adolescent feelings about government.

COVID-19: The Best Argument for Going Vegan?

First, let us acknowledge how incredibly stupid Donald Trump is. Just yesterday, months into the broadening pandemic, this clown said:

Nobody knew there would be a pandemic or epidemic of this proportion. Nobody has ever seen anything like this before.

Oh, really? What about the Spanish flu from 1918? What about the bubonic plague? No one has ever seen anything like this before? What a moron.

And just last year Trump's own Department of Health and Human services ran a pandemic simulation called "Crimson Contagion" that showed how completely unprepared his administration was for this outbreak.

That was after Trump sacked the people in the National Security Council who track threats exactly like this.

The outbreak is the first real disaster that has hit Trump that was not of his own making, and he has done an absolutely abysmal job. I can't understand why anyone thinks this guy is any more useful than a doorstop.

So what can we learn from this?

The COVID-19 virus appears to have originated in bats and may have been transferred to humans through wild pangolins sold at a market in Wuhan. This article in USA Today shows that many of the epidemics in recent years have been caused by consuming bushmeat, including SARS, HIV and Ebola.

Other diseases have been caused by domesticated animals, included the Spanish flu (Kansas chickens), MERS (camels), Swine flu (hogs), etc.

Finally, repeated E. coli outbreaks from tainted spinach and lettuce are almost always caused by cattle manure spread on fields or E. coli-tainted water used in irrigation.

Conclusions:

In China people eat wild animals because they think they have some kind of mystical properties. This has got to stop.

In Africa people eat wild animals because they are poor. We need to help poor countries feed their own people better.

The USDA needs to clean up factory farms. Instead of just pumping more antibiotics into their animals, they need to give them more living space and keep their enclosures clean. They also need to destroy sick animals, rather than send them off to market anyway.

In the long run we need to encourage development of alternate sources of protein instead of slaughtering animals. And it's not just about disease: growing cattle for beef is ridiculously inefficient, in terms of the resources used and carbon dioxide emitted.

Meat substitutes like Beyond Meat and lab-grown meat are the wave of the future. In the meantime, if most Americans stopped eating Big Macs and Whoppers our collective life expectancy would go up five years through the reduction in obesity...

How To Test For Covid-19

Here is a great piece on how South Korea kicked our ass in Covid-19 testing. Essentially, they took it seriously (unlike our president), were proactive, and weren't hampered by bureaucracy.

During World War II, General Motors turned out a plane an hour 24/7 until we won. This is what we need right now. Every American needs to be tested, especially in the hotter spots. Those hotter spots need to shelter in place now. We must have a clearer picture of this and people need to change their behavior otherwise our hospitals will be overrun.

How Hysteria About The Deep State Has Murdered Americans

Back in 2018, when he took over as National Security Advisor, John Bolton and Donald Trump disbanded the pandemic response team headed by Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer. This was done because it was too "deep state-y" and cost too much money. Now that Covid-19 is spreading around the United States and likely going to adversely affect our nation for the next few months (at least), this decision was clearly a complete catastrophe.

Worse, it was all done because of that same, irrational ideology we've heard from the right for years. The federal government is evil and can't be trusted to do anything right. They are all plotting against ordinary Americans to take away their guns. Civil service employees are lazy and all bought off due to patronage.

Well, now that fucking insane bullshit is coming home to roost as we can clearly see the damage it has done to this country. Had that team been in place (along with these other programs he cut ), we would have fewer Americans die because of this virus. Instead, the blood (literally) of US citizens is being shed because a collection of adolescents has mommy and daddy issues.

These same idiots are still squawking about how Covid-19 is a hoax, perpetrated by the liberal media and other elites to bring this country down. I heard one such ass hat the other night when I was listening to Coast to Coast AM. If you want to get a good idea of how just cult-like these psychos are, listen to L.A. Marzulli's comment at the start of his segment.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

We are in a state of emergency, folks, and our "dear leader" has failed. Donald Trump has done a terrible job as president, this current health crisis being a great example. He's inept, out of his depth, confused and weak. He was exposed to COVID 19 on at least two occasions and still was shaking hands with people during his press conference yesterday. His ideological view of less government (or at least what he pretends it is) led us to a poor response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Trump supporters, rather than own up to his mistakes, are gaslighting, using the "orange man bad" deflection. Essentially, they are placing the blame for Trump's errors on his critics, pretending (in a very trollish way) that they are the problem, not Trump. This is also known as the "Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?" defense used by Groucho Marx.

It's really simple, folks. He IS that bad. No amount of pretending is going to make this less true. His presidency is over. It's failed. He should quit (along with Pence) and let Nancy Pelosi run the country until the fall election.

It would save lives.

Trump's Coronavirus Conflict of Interest

Even as Donald Trump's campaign has canceled a bus tour due to coronavirus concerns, and four Republican congressmen who attended CPAC are under quarantine, the entire country of Italy has been locked down, and dozens of senior Iranian political figures are sick and several have died, Trump himself is trying to downplay the outbreak. Crazily, he still plans to hold large campaign rallies, even as members of his own party have been exposed to the disease.

His CDC advisors advocated for telling the elderly to not to travel, but Trump refused to do so.

Why? Partly because he wants to pretend that everyone is just fine and life should go on as always so that the economy doesn't tank. The stock market is taking a huge dive, and Trump has been taking credit for the meteoric rise. Now that it's crashing Trump is blaming everyone else, but his lies and deceptions about the outbreak aren't fooling the market -- they're making it worse because this is a problem he can't brag or lie his way out of.

But, again, Trump has tremendous conflicts of interest. He owns or has stakes in many businesses involved in luxury tourism -- hotels, golf courses, etc. If everyone stays home for the spring break vacation season, Trump stands to lose a ton of money.

If Trump cancels his campaign rallies he'll miss out on boatloads of cash these events generate.

What if one of those mouthfoaming conservatives attending a Trump rally has the virus and gives it to everyone there? What if an infectious traveler -- a typhoid Mary that doesn't show any symptoms -- stays at a Trump hotel and all those rich Republicans trying to ingratiate themselves with Donnie are infected?

Trump's greed, selfishness and narcissism are going to get someone killed.

Hmm. Maybe that's why he put Pence in charge of the epidemic response. What do you want to bet that when it blows up in Trump's face, he'll blame it all on Pence, and kick the VP off the ticket?

Election 2020

Rachel Bitecofer was on Bill Maher last night and that made me very happy. Follow her on Twitter for all of her latest analyses. Her model is looking very good for Democrats with Biden as the nominee, especially given the massive turnout on Tuesday.

Of course, the Biden hand wringing has already begun but his deficits (gaffes, Burisma etc) don't really matter. Democrats fear Trump winning three times more than dying so they are going to vote in the fall for Biden. Black voters are going to vote for Biden. The suburban white voter is gone for Republicans and will vote for Biden. And the Bernie voters are going to go for Biden in greater numbers than in 2016 because we live in an age of hyper-partisanship.

The Senate also looks better now that Steve Bullock is in the race for that Montana Senate. Republicans can kiss Maine, Colorado, and Arizona goodbye. That puts us at 50-50. With the Alabama race now at a runoff for the GOP and black voters highly motivated in that state, Doug Jones keeps his state. North Carolina is looking more positive, Iowa is in play, and Mitch McConnell is even looking like he might not make it. Could the Dems flip and make it a 53-47 advantage?

Yes. Yes, they could.

The Fear Chart

Take a look at this chart.

It's fascinating from the standpoint of what drives voters to the polls in the age of hyperpartisanship. No doubt this is a good sign for the Democrats as they will be highly motivated to go to the polls in November.

A deeper analysis shows that conservatives are more concerned with terrorism and high medical bills than I thought. That tells me that Medicare For All might play more significantly with these voters.

Trump Has Made It to 80% Dictator

Back in 2016, Steven M Walt, a Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University, put up a post about how you can tell if your leader is a dictator. He recently updated this last week and Trump is "failing" his dictatorship test. By "failing," Walt means that he's only 80% of the way there. He ranks Trump as "Flashing Red Light" on 3 and "Checked" on 5.

Here is the one that bothers me the most.

3. Politicizing the civil service, military, National Guard, or domestic security agencies.

FLASHING RED LIGHT.

Trump has railed against the so-called Deep State ever since he became president, for one simple reason: He objects to any institution that might serve as a check on his own actions. That’s not how presidents behave; it’s what dictators do. Look what happened last year: Following well-established legal procedures, patriotic civil service members brought a case of questionable presidential conduct to light, beginning with the whistleblower’s report about Trump’s attempt to get the government of Ukraine to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden’s son. This revelation led to Trump’s impeachment, where we learned that he had relieved the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, because she objected to Trump’s politically motivated machinations in that country.

Since his acquittal by Senate Republicans, Trump has launched a vicious campaign of payback. He fired former U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland (whom Trump had appointed) because Sondland reluctantly gave damaging testimony to the House impeachment inquiry. He fired National Security Council staffer (and Purple Heart recipient) Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and then suggested Vindman ought to be disciplined further by the U.S. Army. In proper mafialike fashion, his vengeance also extended to Vindman’s twin brother (also a serving Army officer), even though the latter wasn’t involved in any of these machinations. And let’s not forget his personal interference in the military’s disciplinary proceedings against former Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher, who was accused of serious war crimes by numerous other SEALs and convicted by the military justice system for lesser offenses.

The unifying purpose behind all of these actions is obvious. What matters to Trump is not someone’s expertise, professionalism, loyalty to the country, or dedication to the Constitution. What matters to Trump is whether members of the foreign service, the civil service, or the military are personally loyal to him. That’s the demand he made of former FBI Director James Comey, and when he didn’t get it, Comey was fired, too. Right out of the dictator’s playbook.

Folks, there is no such thing as a “Deep State.” What we have is a president who is actively politicizing the civil service, the military and domestic security agencies and getting push back from it from people that know how wrong this is. We lost a president (Garfield) because of civil service corruption. We passed a law (the Pendleton Act) to prevent exactly what Trump is doing. People need to study this law and how our government actually works as opposed to having irrational and emotional feelings get the better of them. In short, Trump and his supporters are lying (again) about the government.

Don’t believe them.

Trump As A Vessel Of Their Hatred

As it looks increasingly likely that Bernie Sanders is going to get the nomination for the Democratic Ticket, conservatives are in full-on meltdown mode over the prospect of a democratic socialist for president. The problem is that their rage has got them so blinded as to what it all means that all they can see is gulags, re-education camps, and the end of all this holy about America. Holy crap, are they in need of some therapy!

The first thing they need to realize is their hate, anger, and fear at democratic socialism has nothing to do with what they erroneously believe is going to happen when Bernie wins. Like most emotional adolescents, they have worked with themselves up into such a lather that they actually believe that Bernie Sanders, a Jew, is going to start gulags and destroy us all with central planning. What they are actually upset about is being shown to be ideologically wrong and soon, coming to a theater near you, irrelevant. They REALLY hate losing arguments and this will, no doubt, be the ultimate loss.

Of course, even if they are shown to be ideologically wrong, the age of Trump has shown us that pretending to be right is their only answer. How did this come to pass? Well, Trump has become a vessel for all their hatred, anger and fear at all of the things and people they don't like, starting with liberals, elites and smart people trying to accomplish good things for the country. That last bit really sends them into a fit because they take their feelings of inadequacy, insecurity, and inferiority and somehow transform that into Hitler, Stalin and death camps.

I suppose it is a death in a way...a death of hysterical nonsense and a birth of actual solutions to real problems. Sanders won't get all of the things he wants when he is elected but at least someone will be in there to put together a government that is more representative of what the people of this nation want.

In the final analysis, it's their own fault. They threw their lot in with a mentally unstable criminal who was hilariously and easily able to con them into fervently believing cultish beliefs. They will blame everyone but themselves and Trump when they lose both the presidency and the Senate. So, now we are left with a good chunk of our population who simply will not accept facts and reality.

What are we going to do with them?

Blunting Troll Suppression

Hey Russian trolls and other right wing bloggers/commenters, the African American community is on to you. They get that you purposefully discouraged voter turnout in 2016 and they are ready for you this year. And they have the backing of local city councils, as the link notes.

Regardless of who the candidate is, black turnout is going to be at an all time high.

Happy President's Day

Mandatory Vasectomies

Alabama State Rep. Rolanda Hollis has come up with a wonderful way to blunt abortion bills: make the male body responsible too. If a woman's womb is going to be the ward of the state (see also: The Handmaid's Tale), then so should a man's testicles. Ms. Hollis has put forth a bill calling for men to get state sponsored vasectomies after their third child or their 50th birthday...whatever comes first. The howls of derision from the pro life crowd in the comments and tweets made me ROTFALMFAO.

Male reproductive rights must be protected at any cost!

But not female reproductive rights...

This whole kerfuffle has made me reflect, though. What if men were held as responsible as women for pregnancies? And why don't you ever hear anything about that from the pro life crowd?

Comments Are Fully Open

Given our plethora of new readers from Reddit, Quora, Twitter, and other locales, we have decided to open up comments without moderation. Too many people have complained that they don't like having to wait to see what they wrote published and that it takes too long to go through the filter.

I've also decided to allow comments of any kind as this is an election year and it's going to get ugly anyway. Anyone previously banned from posting here is welcome to post again. I challenge those individuals (mostly from Kevin Baker's blog) to make their assertions without personal attacks on me. If they do, so be it, but it pretty much proves that they have nothing of substance to offer and zero convictions.

We will delete any spammy things like product ads or sex stuff. Also, any sort of doxing is a big no-no. People have the right to privacy. My associates in the police department (two of which are fans of this blog and Trump supporters, go figure) regularly monitor my traffic and will be all over anyone who doxxes.

With that, comment away!

The Meme Heard 'Round The World

This morning, I posted this meme on Reddit.

And my karma points exploded. The best comment?

They know. These aren't stupid people, well I guess they are but you know what I'm saying. They would rather be on a sinking ship with an inept captain than admit that they were wrong.

Indeed. Hubris and ego are big problems with the right. I'm certain that some of them really believe that socialism in any form is evil. But most just want to "win" and be "right."

The cognitive dissonance that is going to occur if Bernie is the nominee and wins is going to cause some of these folks to go fucking batshit. They are going to whip themselves up into such a lather that we may have to hold them down as their lives improve. It sort of reminds me of a little kid who doesn't want to take his medicine.

Do these assholes honestly think that people don't travel outside of the country anymore?

The Chest Thumping, Insecure Nonsense of Kevin Baker and His Merry Band of Authoritarians

The Democrats are a near lock to win the electoral college in 2020. How do we know this? Look no further than Rachel "the Doc" Bitcofer.

A recent piece in Politico has elevated her to national recognition and I highly recommend following her on Twitter as well as examining her model for 2020. Bitecofer saw some basic facts in the election of 2016 and was able to correctly predict the outcome of the 2018 election down to the seat. She also predicted Virginia in 2019. Those facts say that for the first time in history, Republicans lost the white, male, college educated voted in 2016. Trump's path to the White House, as she puts it, "which was the political equivalent of getting dealt a Royal Flush in poker, is probably not replicable in 2020 with an agitated Democratic electorate."

There is no such thing as a "swing" voter anymore. Not in this age of hyper-partisan politics. It's all about turnout and any of the top candidates in the Democratic field are going to destroy Trump.

So, when I read the chest thumping, insecure nonsense of Kevin Baker, quoting a likely Russian trollbot, I just shook my head. Projection. Again. Some things never change.

Because the shock is going to be entirely on his side of the aisle when he can't seem to fathom, the day after the election, how Trump lost. And so badly. Likely, he, along with other Trump supporters, will blame the media and the elites and others they are all jealous of but in the final analysis, it's going to come down to the simple fact that there are more of us that are going to vote than there are Trump voters.

Bernie has a fucking army. Young people will turn out for him by the millions. Mayor Pete will turn out moderates and a whole new generation of voters. Amy Klobuchar will pull the Democrats who voted for Trump back into the fold. Bloomberg, even if he isn't the nominee, will spend billions to defeat Trump. Kevin, do you not understand what you are up against?

Kevin et al, I would suggest seeking therapy for your issues with people that are successful, intelligent, accomplished and do things to help people (i.e Democrats and the few Republicans left who aren't Trumpified). You guys have built an entire political ideology around petty insecurity, irrational jealousy, feelings of inferiority and inadequacies, and childish bullying. Your party is fucking done. You just don’t see it yet.

Moreover, your party has become an authoritarian cult and you are cheering it on. History has not been kind to leaders and supporters of such endeavors. I’d recommend changing your tune fairly quickly if you don’t want your life to be miserable.

And I'd recommend following the Doc on Twitter. I realize the cognitive dissonance might be too much for you but it will ease pain of what's coming. It will also help you remember that happened in 2018 and 2019.

What's the Real Reason Parasite Could Win?

There have been dozens of stories in the news about Parasite being the first non-English language film to win the best picture Oscar. Few believed it could win because of an insurmountable hurdle: it's in Korean with subtitles.

I haven't seen this movie, or any of the other nominees for that matter, so I can't comment on the artistic content. But I can address the issue of subtitles.

This prejudice against subtitles has always baffled me. People complain that subtitles and closed captions are bad because they take your eyes away from the action, or the surprise is "spoiled" because the text appears before the actor speaks the words.

I turn on closed captions in English language shows all the time. My hearing is slightly damaged, but I don't want to expose myself to loud sounds because they'll just damage my hearing further. So when there's a background noise, like the dishwasher running, I turn on captions.

And on the completely altruistic side, I turn them on when my wife is sleeping.

Then there are production problems in some shows: sometimes the music or sound effects drown out the dialog and it's impossible to tell what the actors are saying. Sometimes the actors have accents that are difficult to understand -- usually English actors with regional accents in BBC shows.

This prejudice against subtitles gets a little ridiculous. My dad has severe hearing loss but refuses to wear hearing aids. He watches TV with headphones turned up to 11, but won't turn on closed captioning. Which is required by the FCC for people just like him.

(I do have one complaint about closed captioning, however: it's often riddled with errors. They seem to use automatic voice recognition on a lot of shows, and the text produced is often missing words, or misunderstands what was actually said.)

Then there are shows that make creative use of subtitles. The first series I noticed doing this was Heroes, which featured long conversations between two Japanese characters. The subtitles were often deployed inventively in different locations around the screen, almost like speech bubbles in comic books.

In the case of non-English language films, some people say they prefer dubbing in English because subtitles are too "distracting." But for me, the mismatch between the words on the audio track and the actors' mouths is far more irritating (like the infamous Godzilla dubs). Frequently the intonation or emotional content of the English language track doesn't match the scene, or is over the top, or the voice actor they chose just doesn't fit the character. Sometimes the English dubbing or translation sounds so stupid that it completely ruins the scene.

In short, I would much rather see the film as the original writer, director, and actor intended it to be seen, without interference from another writer, another director, and another voice actor, all of whom were hired by the studio in what always seems to be a rush job.

There have been many suppositions as to why a film with subtitles was finally able to win an Oscar: it's the Netflix effect (they have a lot of popular non-English shows with subtitles), or the FCC's closed captioning mandate.

Admittedly, there is a downside to subtitles: they don't help slow readers, dyslexics or the illiterate. I wouldn't want to stigmatize people who don't like subtitles, but it's true that captions require a certain facility with the written word.

But I think a large part of it is that the voters in the Academy are like average Americans who are just getting older and harder of hearing, and like me are using closed captioning every day.

How Fascism Continues