A bit of "view from 30,000 feet" on the multitude of maskless multitudes in brain-dead America this glorious fuck-the-war-dead-lets-party Memorial Day weekend.

2. Basically in America today virtually everyone lives in big cities where they can stay home, go to Walmart, go to Target, go to The Game, go to The Movie / Concert / Theater, or sit in traffic. That's about it.
So they got stir-crazy.
Bread, but no circuses.

3. It's an additional problem that about a third of America, geographically concentrated in a large number of sparsely populated states, does not live in the same reality as you do. As we do. The real one, but they don't know that.
Calling them stupid or Karen won't help.

4. They really, really don't know that.
Most of what we "know", we're actually taking the word of people we believe.
I don't have personal evidence that 100,000 Americans have died and that's only the ones we counted.
I believe Rachel. I believe you, dear reader.

5. This really, really matters. If you want to fix America this is the absolute foundation step after electing a real government. Joe Biden and his team plus Senate and House. If we don't do that, then just hide and wait for the inevitable. Death squads, "disappeared" people...

6. My friend Emily responds the believe everything Trump says. Yes, but it's worse than that. The believe Hannity. They believe the entire Murdoch / Mercer / Breitbart world.
They. Believe. That.
They're as sure as you are, of an entirely fictional world.

7. Think once again of this: almost none of what we "know" about events farther away than we can walk to is based on experienced knowledge. We are just taking somebody's word for it. It has to be that way.

8. We have a consistent world view, you and I. We may draw different conclusions but by and large we agree on numerous facts. Smoking causes lung cancer and carbon captures energy measurable as temperature and we're putting lots of it into the atmosphere. Facts.

9. We're just taking somebody's word for it.
Used to be, all the newspeople told the same empirical truth. Walter Cronkite told us what actually happened, and then we argued about what to do with that information.
But mostly we stood on the same facts.

10. Not ever completely. My God, the lies that have been told about tobacco. And the big guns went after climate change from the git-go. They knew what nobody anywhere on either side will admit: our high energy growth economy causes climate change.
They said, "That's our game."

11. Lewis F. Powell knew, back in 1974, that the hippies were outta hand and the rich had to get things back on track, and did they ever.
And it was always about information manipulation. https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/democracy/the-lewis-powell-memo-a-corporate-blueprint-to-dominate-democracy/

12. I don't think Powell saw quite as clearly as Rupert Murdoch the power of the actions he was advocating. People say Roger Ailes, but I say Murdoch. Murdoch did it everywhere and only had one Ailes.
But it's no joke.

13. You know that "consistent reality" I mentioned?
It includes, as it must now, our catalog of reliable sources.
Once again, we can't go experience the pandemic in New York City unless we live there. We believe Cuomo. We believe - your choice here. But we don't believe Hannity.

14. They're not pretending to believe. They believe in a consistent global pattern of events just like we do.
Except a different one.
Only at the very top are the people who create the fiction and know what is going on. The rest are, in the realest sense, brainwashed.

15. The people at the top fully understand and believe in all the relevant science. They know that if we've got jet commerce we've got climate change, if we've got container-ship commerce you've got climate change, if you've got 2 billion cars you've got climate change. The know.

16. They know that if government performs the basic functions outlined in the Preamble to the Constitution, they can't do what they are doing.
It's not because the white people are white people. Unless you believe that race determines traits, which I don't.
This is science.

17. Cambridge Analytics. Facebook.
Ad. Ver. Ti. Sing.
Have you noticed that the advertising industry owns the information industry lock, stock, and barrel?
Do you think that makes a difference?
Where did they get all that money?

18. Karen is a product. She is wildly profitable.

19. All those people at those games, beaches, swimming pools, bullshit bullshit bullshit - somebody convinced them, since they were in a diaper, that they had no other choice but to sit home and watch daytime TV.
And then took All The Land.
Suckers.

20. In essence, liberal discourse ignores the puppet masters and rages at the puppets.
Karen.
Did we ever decide the guy name, or did it turn out we the good guys could only think of a girl name to mean asshole?

21. Anyway... That's another thread.
I'm serious, y'all. Twitter ain't cuttin' it. We need some serious discourse. The fiction world will ultimately bring the fact one to an end.
It's got a good running start already.
--out