The tongue is the only tool that gets sharper with use.
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One day last year, Slate Star Codex blogger Scott Alexander “woke up” to discover that “they had politicized Ebola.”
How?
It was, he explains, more than just a series of partisan cheap shots. Though there were plenty of those. It was something more startling, and in its own perverse way impressive. Everybody seemed awfully certain about what should be done, immediately, and along ideological lines, red and blue:
How did both major political tribes decide, within a month of the virus becoming widely known in the States, not only exactly what their position should be but what insults they should call the other tribe for not agreeing with their position?
The answer to the question?
Each tribe has its myths, er, “narratives,” and members of each concentrate on those stories that seem to demonstrate the truth of their . . . narratives. How you cover Ebola depends on other beliefs you already hold.
“Ideas are forces,” 19th century writer G. H. Lewes put it. “Our acceptance of one determines our reception of others.”
The result of sticking to one’s in-group mythos can have negative consequences, however. You can end up in Silly Putty Country, “saying ISIS is not as bad as Fox News, or donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to the officer who shot Michael Brown.”
Conservative journalists see everything through red-tinted glasses, liberal journalists refuse to look at the world through anything but blue-tinted one. And too many people follow their lead.
Occasionally, we could try on lenses of different colors.
But perhaps I speak so confidently because I come from another tribe. Green? Orange? Purple?
What color is liberty?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On January 15, 1777, New Connecticut (present day Vermont) declared its independence.
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Washington Irving
History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription moulders from the tablet: the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust?
Annette Bosworth is a medical doctor. She’s also a political neophyte, last year having sought the Republican Party nomination for the U.S. Senate in South Dakota.
She lost. Which is not surprising.
But the next day, she was arrested on twelve counts of election fraud and perjury. She awaits a Feb. 3 trial facing an incredible 24 years in the hoosegow — and, not insignificantly, the loss of her medical license if convicted.
Is Bosworth some sort of threat?
Here’s the story: She gathered ample signatures to earn a spot on the ballot, some at her medical office. During the petition drive, however, she went to the Philippines for two weeks to help victims of a typhoon.
According to dates on the petitions, 37 people signed when Dr. Bosworth was saving people and not in South Dakota. Yet, she signed as the circulator, stating she witnessed the signatures being affixed.
To the guillotine!
Bosworth had asked her campaign attorney if she needed to get those 37 folks — whom she knows, one being her sister — to re-sign. She was advised that she didn’t.
Attorney General Marty Jackley insists Bosworth’s crimes are “serious, deliberate and must be addressed in order to preserve the integrity of our elections.”
Calling such haphazard signature petitioning “commonplace” in South Dakota, former state senator Gordon Howie explains that “during the frenzy of political seasons, MANY (and I do mean MANY) South Dakota politicians circulate petitions and sign as circulators when they are not ‘in the room.’”
Let’s you and me ask* the AG to do the right thing: drop the felony charges.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Here is contact information for Attorney General Marty Jackley:
Ask him to do the right thing. Please drop all felony charges against Dr. Annette Bosworth.
Phone: (605) 773-3215
Email: atghelp@state.sd.us
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/MartyJackley
Official Contact page on AG’s website
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Jan 14 New Years Day
January 14 is New Year’s Day according to the old, Julian Calendar. On January 14, 1514, Pope Leo X issued a papal bull against slavery. On the same date in 1639, the first written constitution to create a government, the “Fundamental Orders,” was adopted in Connecticut.
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Paul Karl Feyerabend
At all times man approached his surroundings with wide open senses and a fertile intelligence, at all times he made incredible discoveries, at all times we can learn from his ideas.
Iraq War vet Daniel Gade is a lieutenant colonel, professor of public policy, and triathlon competitor with a message for fellow veterans: disability pay may be doing you more harm than good.
Having lost a leg in combat himself, he submits that he is a messenger somewhat harder to dismiss than some others would be.
Professor Gade criticizes how the government puts vets with relatively mild problems in the same category as those with true disabilities, and gives them incentives to stay out of the job market.
An example is the Individual Unemployability program, which treats veterans rated as at least 60 percent disabled as if they are 100 percent disabled as well as 100 percent long-term unemployable. Demonstrating that level of disability and unemployability to the satisfaction of the government means a bump in monthly benefits from $1,200 to $3,100.
“It’s a trap,” Gade insists.
He is working with private donors on a pilot program for vets. His idea is to give grants to develop employment skills rather than to maintain unemployment. Participants must forego any attempt to increase their disability pay by seeking a higher disability rating.
According to one soldier who gave the professor’s pitch a hearing, the government’s system to help vets “is just ‘Give me the money, who cares about anything else.’”
Gade’s proposal, on the other hand, “says go out and work, be productive, feel good about yourself. There is where we do well. If we don’t have a mission, we don’t do well.”
Accept the mission.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Paul Karl Feyerabend
The separation of state and church must be complemented by the separation of state and science, that most recent, most aggressive, and most dogmatic religious institution.
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Albert Camus
I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.