NY Assholes

As with many places, we have a love/hate relationship in the Berkshires with the second home owners and tourists.  The difference between here and, say, Lake Geneva and Chicago, is that so many of our invaders are what I call New York assholes. I know it may be worse in the Hamptons, but it can get pretty bad here as well.

I went to the little country store here in Egremont yesterday to pick up my mail.  A man entered the post office area while I was doing so and said "did you forget your mask?" I replied "actually, yes, I did forget."  He bellowed "you're a prick!"  My responses to him were not cordial.  I came very close to decking him.

He was driving a BMW with NY plates. Enough said.

National Whiny Radio

Like the NY Times, NPR can't seem to report anything without being negative about it.  (At least if the report is about the right or republicans).

This morning an NPR "reporter" named Hannah Allam did an interview about Moderna announcing its progress in creating a coronavirus vaccine.  Ms. Allam could have found countless credentialed experts to interview about this, but - perhaps because those experts would have been too positive - she found an obscure academic at the University of Vermont who could be bearish about it.  His name was Timothy Leahy or something like that. I didn't catch all of his announced CV, but he apparently is a professor of some sort of ethics.  Not impressive.

The professor bemoaned the lack of detail in the Moderna announcement. He then launched into the prospect of Moderna making money from this development.  She encouraged him. 

Apparently, neither Ms. Allam nor Mr. Leahy is aware of securities laws. Moderna was obligated to make its announcement, and  probably announced whatever details existed, sketchy or not. By admonishing Moderna about its announcement as being too early, they were actually suggesting that Moderna should break the law. 

NPR has long moved leftward in all its programming.  But one would hope that at a minimum it would get at least some of the facts right.  And recognize that there is much out there in the world that is outside its narrow focus.

Wisdom From Long Ago

From a 1972 book by C.S. Lewis:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated;
but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with
the approval of their own conscience."

Why Are Many Have-Nots Acting Irrationally

Polling on the coronavirus shows a clear divide between the "haves," defined for this purpose as the ones who can work from home and/or are still making money, and the "have-nots," who are suffering, often severely.  Yet a significant portion of the have-nots say the economy shouldn't be opened up until it's "safe" to do so.  How can this contradiction be explained?

The answer is fear. The media and politicians have convinced people that death from the "scourge" is always lurking around the corner.  The data and statistics clearly show that most people have nothing to fear, but people are always inclined to believe the worst.

If politicians wanted to be honest and informative, they'd be calmly explaining the realities, but most of them are totally invested in defending their actions (and never admitting mistakes) so they continue to mislead.

A friend who is a retired clinical psychologist tells me he and others in his profession are very concerned about the deleterious impact that fear of this "plague" is having on people.  It's very unhealthy.

The media should be ashamed. They focus on every outlier death of people under 50, no matter that they're comparatively rare.  The NYT seems unable to stop itself from casting a negative tone on every development.  This morning, for example, the front page has a story entitled "New Cases in U.S. Slow."  Good news, right?  No, the Times feels compelled to add to that headline "Posing Risk of Complacency."  They're really beyond redemption.   

Tyranny

Holman Jenkins wrote a thoughtful piece in the WSJ this week.  Here's how it ends:

"For some families, sheltering in place now appears to have increased their risk rather than reduced it. For most individuals, the danger was flu-like, which never before led to them being stripped of basic rights. Banning outdoor activities appears to have been absurd overkill. The notion that a vast testing and contact-tracing scheme is plausible and could halt the epidemic, much less is a requisite condition to resume most of our economic freedoms, would likely fall to sixth-grade math. Start with the challenge of identifying millions of asymptomatic carriers among millions of others whose symptoms are due to the common cold or flu. 

"That politicians took steps out of panic is understandable. That these steps were unjustified by the science that existed then much less now doesn’t mean their motives were bad. We can accept, especially in a panic, that the media will eschew complexity in favor of a story of an enemy who must be vanquished.

"Our country and our Constitution are finished, however, if the most sweeping, authoritarian and undemocratic restrictions on individual liberty ever contemplated are not subjected to legal challenge and accountability."

Mind Control

We have a Google group named "Egremont Neighbors" where people can post things like "can you recommend a plumber" or "the garden club will meet next Tuesday" or "is anyone going to Boston that could give me a ride."   It's very useful and can promote neighborliness.

Today someone posted a tsk-tsk that she was walking somewhere, and saw people not wearing masks, and how can we enforce mask wearing?

I could go on and on about why in the world people are sheepishly and unquestioningly doing what the governor and our town officials tell them to do.  If they said "jump up and down and chant the Lord's prayer," I suspect most of my  fellow Egremonters would comply.  That subject deserves serious and extensive analysis and commentary.

But for now I want to raise a corollary issue: The trend toward shaming and reporting neighbors.  There are many historical examples of how dangerous that is. Almost every tyrannical regime engages in the practice of encoraging the reporting of violations by others.  Reporting crimes like murder or burglary is beneficial in a society.  Reporting crimes against the state in the nature of disagreeing with the authorities is not.  Cambodia under the khmer rouge and Germany under the nazis are two examples.  There are many others.

Restrictions on the populace, even where they are resisted by a minority, are always justified as being in the best interest of everyone and the nation. That is the stated justification for the current mandatory shutdowns, social distancing and stay at home orders.   But it is all too easy to slide from that into restrictions on particular categories of the citizenry.  If the "data" show that slavs spread the virus more than others, why not restrictions applicable just to slavs?  You get the idea.

RESIST!

     

Unemployment

Wow!

I'm tired of the media saying the unemployment numbers were causred by coronavirus.  A virus can't cause unemployment.  Stupid politicians can - and have chosen to do so, not by accident but by design.   That includes republicans and democrats, starting with Trump.  I'm sure he's now kicking himself for slavishly following the advice of some scientists while not considering the contraty advice of others.  Medicine is not the only science.

Oh, sorry, Trump never kicks himself.  Among all the politicians, he is THE master at blaming others and taking no responsibilty.

It's interesting watching both the left-leaning and right-leaning media avoid criticism of the shutdowns themselves. Right-leaning media can't bear to say Trump made a mistake.  Same thing for left-leaning media regarding the governors.