PeteFree.comUltimately, it isnt our leaders' fault? — sardonic wisdom from blogger "jtree"
© 2020 Peter Free
16 July 2020
Today, I'll start with a bit of COVID news
Then, I'll point to (blogger) jtree's sardonic point about American culture.
From the state of Georgia . . .
. . . comes this tasty bit:
[O]n Wednesday night, [Georgia Governor] Kemp, despite taking steps that acknowledged the state is falling behind in its effort to contain the virus, banned cities and counties in the state from implementing mask requirements of their own.
The order “strongly encourages” mask use, but Kemp has called requiring face coverings in public “a bridge too far.”
Kemp’s order effectively negates more than a dozen local jurisdictions that have gone beyond state regulations to require masks in certain public settings.
© 2020 Elliot Hannon, Georgia’s Republican Governor Goes All-In, Bans Cities From Requiring Masks in Public, Slate (16 July 2020)
Does it get any more governmentally cross-purposed than this?
This unenviable bit of mixed signaling comes from a Governor who knows that:
my mask protects you,
but your absence of one
attacks me.
Another perverse aspect . . .
. . . to Governor Kemp's generous demonstration of Stupidity Riding a Wild Horse — is his anti-federalist stance.
From where does Governor Kemp think that he gets the moral and legal authority to override local health jurisdictions that are coping with local health crises?
Perhaps (though I doubt it), there is something clarity-granting in Georgia law.
I mentioned yesterday . . .
. . . that American federalism is under constant assault.
Supposedly, federalism is a system of checks and balances.
Additionally, again in theory, federalism's competing jurisdictions encourage experimentation via their varied societal approaches.
The nation, hypothetically, benefits. People have choices.
In Georgia, localities that mandated masks were competing with those that did not.
Down the road, maybe, rational people would have been able to evaluate which approach best balanced freedom with infection control.
Governor Kemp's Il Duce impression obliterated these potentially useful experiments.
With Governor Kemp's meddling thus noted . . .
Blogger "jtree" concluded (on the basis of similar evidence from elsewhere) that — here slightly edited for clarity:
I don't know much about Germany's governmental response to the pandemic.
But when I see a stat like that, and knowing much about America and Americans, I would only presume one thing:
German people are a lot smarter than Americans.
[A]mericans are just fucking too stupid to live, in comparison to Germans.
[I]n America, it isn't the peoples' fault for being fucking morons... it's the fault of Trump or the GA governor or the FL governor... because Americans need their elected oligarchs to tell us what to do (and what not to do) or we simply have no . . . clue...
America is America because Americans are dumber than shit.
If Americans were smarter, this would not be the latest election to be contested between corrupt/inept/evil parties and their worst ever candidates.
It need not be another election between pure evil . . . and insan[ity] . . . vs. pure corruption . . . and ineptitude . . .
Except in America, of course. Because Americans insist on it.
© 2020 jtree, In america, it's never "my fault" — it's always "their fault", Smirking Chimp (16 July 2020)
Smile-worthy and possibly accurate enough
Not too long ago, the US military sent my wife and me to a three year assignment in southern Germany.
During that time, I noticed that 'average' working class Germans are analytically more inclined, and more rationally adept, than 'average' Americans.
Way better educated. And far more knowledgeable about economics and international affairs.
One large cultural difference that I noticed at every facility tour was Germans' willingness to teach and learn.
No German batted an eye at very extended explanatory forays — by hosts, owners and tour guides — into history, science, or whatever other subject was implicitly at hand.
This may have been the most striking impression that I came away with regarding the difference between inquisitive German minds and our own (mostly vacuously opinionated) American ones.
Less violent nutsness over there, too
My wife and I also noticed how much less alert to danger one has to be in most of Germany, compared to almost anywhere in the United States.
Proportionately few Germans are out to shoot and rob people. Certainly not their Polizei. No matter what color one is.
After three years in Deutschland
I concluded that Germany does a very noticeably better job, as compared to the US, of trying to simulate a decently workable society.
The moral? — It is probably true that we Americans get the society that we deserve
This means that those of us trying to improve things in Barbarian-Baboon Land are whistling against a very sturdy gale.
Being a concerned patriot is a dark-humor-evoking task.