"You touched me! You want to kill me! Touch can kill!... You coarse, clumsy, stupid FOOL!"

An old movie clip, blogged before — back in 2014, examining the subject of bodily integrity and the need to get consent before touching another person. The movie — "David and Lisa" (1962) — depicts a man with a severe mental disorder.

I thought it was interesting to look at that clip now, in our time of social distancing, as we think about how to get back to normal or — to put it more accurately — to move forward into a new normal.  I'm thinking the new normal will have us manifesting symptoms that once got us classified as mentally disordered.

I remember when Michelle Obama said: "Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual...." I'm thinking: Coronavirus will never allow us to go back to our lives as usual.

All these things we used to do: Eat together in restaurants, sit together in theaters, scramble about on playgrounds, hug our friends, get on an elevator with a stranger, shake hands, sing together, shoulder our way through a crowd. There will be a David living in our head, always on edge and ready to scream You touched me! You want to kill me! Touch can kill!

ADDED: I just noticed that Bill Maher said this on his last show (on Friday):

Things to have a sense of guilt around.

Variety asks Moby:

Your post-pandemic life is not all that different to your pre-pandemic life, is it?

Answer:

That is my guilty truth. I stay home and I drink smoothies and I work on music and I go hiking and I read books and I occasionally watch bad TV. It’s not all that different, but I have a sense of guilt around that and the only way I can assuage that guilt is by respecting and listening to what other people are going through.

He has such a raging conscientiousness that it seems jerky to needle him like this, but I've got to say that looking at other people's pain for the purpose of assuaging your own sense of guilt isn't empathy for them, nor is it helping them. It's comforting yourself. It's another smoothie.

(To be fair: He is giving money to charity.)

ALSO: He talks about reading comments in social media:

"He drew a circle that shut me out/Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout/But love and I had the wit to win/We drew a circle and took him In!"

So goes the popular old poem... but it's the government drawing the circles today and it's asking the people to step inside and separate themselves from each other and people are compliantly finding a pre-drawn circle and occupying it as expected:

They’ve made little round human parking spots in Domino Park in Brooklyn! (This park is often the poster child for social distancing fácil). pic.twitter.com/VJzZ0WAdeT

— Jennifer 8. Lee (@jenny8lee) May 15, 2020

Where's the love? No love. Distance. Or show love through distancing... with the help... and the insistence... of the government. The insistence on distance.

"National crises often lead to more centralized power. But everything about this one is unusual..."

"... including President Trump’s decision to let state and local authorities make nearly all decisions about daily life and business activity. Washington provides expert advice, policy guidance, backup supplies, emergency personnel, and massive funding. It has not issued national mandates. Trump has refused to shift more power to the central government.... Trump’s reliance on federalism... caught the left by surprise. When the crisis began, liberals voiced their long-standing criticism: Trump is a wannabe dictator who will use this crisis as an excuse to exercise authoritarian power. He hasn’t.... Government leaders [have generally tended to] suspend the rules so they can act swiftly and decisively... That’s why Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, Woodrow Wilson the First Amendment, and Franklin Roosevelt the basic rights of Japanese Americans.... State and local officials already face mounting public resistance... Federal courts are taking hard looks at restrictions on speech, worship, protest, and business operations. They are skeptical of executive orders that override statutory laws. Judges are unlikely to waive constitutional protections for any extended period, if that...."

Writes emeritus polisci prof Charles Lipson.

So the "government leaders" who are targets of complaints about authoritarian power are the state and local officials, not Trump. Trump relied on the American tradition of federalism — a high ideal — to locate the criticism away from himself. This forces the anti-Trumpsters — the left — to choose between criticizing him for not being enough of a dictator or to shift to criticize the state and local officials — many of whom are on the left — for excessive authoritarianism. Or they could just be incoherent on the subject of authoritarianism and — if Trump takes control — call him a despicable dictator and — if state and local officials exercise control — declare that it's just lovely to be so effectively and masterfully controlled — thank you, Governor, thank you, mayor, and curse you horrible fellow citizens who don't follow orders.

"In 2020, among political controversies, Elon Musk and several political figures, including Ivanka Trump made a reference to the red pill concept."

That's the last line of the Wikipedia article "Red pill and blue pill" — which is full of great stuff. In addition to explaining the original meaning in the movie "The Matrix," there's the earlier movie, "Total Recall," in which the Schwarzenegger character is offered a red pill and told "it's a symbol of your desire to return to reality." And:

The choice between taking a blue or red pill is a central metaphor in the 2011 Arte documentary film Marx Reloaded, in which philosophers including Slavoj Žižek and Nina Power explore solutions to the global economic and financial crisis of 2008–09. The film also contains an animated parody of the red/blue pill scene in The Matrix, with Leon Trotsky as Morpheus and Karl Marx as Neo.

Ha ha. I want to see that. Aha!



I love cartoons. Are they real life? Are they just fantasy?

Anyway, yesterday, Elon Musk tweeted: "Take the red pill." That's the whole tweet. What did he want to take the red pill about?

And Ivanka was right there:

Taken! https://t.co/Ng0S2OFC93

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) May 17, 2020

Does she know? I mean, there is no pill to take to get you exactly to reality. If you use the metaphor, you're simply insisting that YOU know where reality is and that other people are living in a fantasy world. It's just a pop-culture, cheeky way to assert that YOU know what is true and those other people are wrong. But Elon Musk's tweet doesn't specify the thing that is asserted to be true. And Ivanka is signaling that she's in on the truth and it's the same truth that Elon Musk is pushing.

You can look at his Twitter feed and try to get a sense of what he's talking about. My previous post is about another Elon Musk tweet — one that rages against the extenuation of the coronavirus lockdown — but this "red pill" tweet isn't close to that in the feed. The lockdown protest was back on May 14th and this "red pill" business was on the 17th.

Now, maybe he's just saying, Let's all look at what's really real. Turn away from the fantasy life that might make you feel good, but the truth is better.

That makes me think of the Jesus catchphrase: "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

ADDED: The director of "The Matrix" responds to Elon and Ivanka: "Fuck both of you."

Elon Musk rages about the "politicians & unelected bureaucrats who stole our liberty."

He's an opinion leader — I think — so it's important that he's saying this:

Well said! Please run for office. The politicians & unelected bureaucrats who stole our liberty should be tarred, feathered & thrown out of town!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 15, 2020

What does it mean that Elon Musk is in a particular position? Does it make it cool? Does it make it nerdy? Does it make it cool-nerdy and nerdy is cool?

How does Elon Musk affect the perception of the anti-lockdown position?

He makes it seem cool.

He makes it seem nerdy.

He makes it cool-nerdy — because he makes nerdy cool.

His opinion has no significant effect on me or, I presume, other people, other than people I'm not interested in.

He makes it seem more flaky and unrealistic.

It's less what dummies think. More what a super-intelligent person believes.

 

pollcode.com free polls

Whatever is happening, it must be bad... in Trumpworld, as seen by The Washington Post.

I'm reading "As coronavirus testing expands, a new problem arises: Not enough people to test."

Does everything have to be a problem? Answer: Yes.

Recently, the problem that was portrayed as the thing that was thwarting our hope of returning to normalcy was not enough tests! So more tests were provided, and can we not be happy about it? No! The next problem up is: People aren't showing up to take the tests.

At the Star-of-Bethlehem Café...

You can talk all night... with the social distancing of moderation. Don't expect the back-and-forth. Maybe something contemplative and solitary.....

The Star-of-Bethlehem is the Ornithogalum umbellatum. Above, you see its midday openness, but it looks like this at dawn:



All closed up. But the Café is open, in its way.

And please do remember to use the Althouse Portal to Amazon. The "portal" link is always there in the sidebar. So is the Paypal button, which lets you make a one-time donation to this blog or set up a monthly payment of any amount you like. I feel so encouraged by those who use that button, in essence, to subscribe to this blog. Earlier today, we talked about my problems moderating the comments section, and I received a generous Paypal donation from a reader who left me the message:

Whatever you decide to do with the blog, I appreciate the thought you're putting into it and your work on moderation in the meantime. I doubt the problem you're facing can be solved with money, but in case it can, here's a small contribution.

"Picture this. It’s early March 2020. You’re in a bar petting a dog you don’t know, drinking draft beers..."

Picture this. It’s early March 2020. You’re in a bar petting a dog you don’t know, drinking draft beers, then you follow it up by putting your fingers in some big dirty marbles, wearing used shoes and using a public bathroom pic.twitter.com/qRMnV6rUSc

— caitie delaney (@caitiedelaney) May 17, 2020

A free woman in Wisconsin.

Local and NATIONAL Media HOUND WI nurse who went to bar to help her sister reopen, harass her into apology. There is NO reason to apologize for behaving as a free woman in WI or anywhere else. https://t.co/9xQEGONeg3

— Vicki McKenna (@VickiMcKenna) May 17, 2020

"Then the shelter-in-place order forced us into co-consuming three squares daily. It was a disaster...."

"Worried about shortages, Charlie brought home dumplings, noodle concoctions, matzo ball soup, peanut butter, tuna salad, half pounds of cold cuts, rolls, pita bread — enough to feed a family of 12 in a bunker for months. We were two, one on a strict 1,200 calories a day. This felt like a jarring invasion, ruining the careful strategies that shielded me from my urges and had taken me years to cultivate.... When I found half a bag of chocolate-covered pretzels in his closet, I polished it off and accused him of flagrant insensitivity. 'Your mom sent me those last year,' he said in his own defense. 'I have one a month.'... But I’d wed someone who could eat just one chocolate-covered pretzel per month? We were clearly incompatible.... [M]y obsessive tendencies... gravitated toward food... For me, ceasing entire categories (candy, refined carbs and anything processed) proved easier than moderation. Meanwhile, Charlie maintained his greasy fried fetish, refusing exercise.... Two years ago, visiting my retired parents in Florida, I heard Mom ask Dad, 'What do you want for breakfast, honey?' — followed by lunch, snack, dinner, dessert. Their lives revolved around the dishes she fixed for him. 'Let’s never be like that,' I whispered to Charlie, who nodded in relief. We felt sure that our usual mealtime [eating separately] was sustainable. Then the [coronavirus lockdown] disintegrat[ed] our food boundaries.... ... I saw how blessed we were to (metaphorically) break bread daily. I felt grateful that we could feed each other. 'What do you want for breakfast, honey?' I asked him this morning, echoing my mother... ... I vowed self-control, respect, staying out of his space...."

From "I had a perfect marriage. Lockdown made us fight about food — constantly/It took years to manage my overeating. The pandemic wrecked all our careful routines," by Susan Shapiro (WaPo).

The highest-rated comment over there: "On a serious note - advice to all married people out there. I lost my wife - quite unexpectedly - to cancer 2 years ago. I can now remember EVERY argument we ever had - and I now realize how stupid they ALL were. The ordinary - IS the extraordinary. Never forget it - and Always remember it."

"Should Your Blog Be on Medium, WordPress, Substack, or Ghost?/A realistic comparison of 2020's top blogging platforms."

This is a question I have — right now, quite pressing — and the piece is on Medium, but okay.... it's on topic. I've been looking at WordPress. I've even signed up and paid, but I have the right to back out. I noticed — writing the last post — that Matt Taibbi is on Substack, and I looked at that site and it immediately popped out as much cleaner and more user-friendly than WordPress, so I'm eager to read this.

The author of this piece, Sah Kilic, doesn't present Medium as something that would work for me, so I can skip that. He calls WordPress "bloody slow," because of the reliance on "an extension for everything":

The themes are bulky and clunky, and the extensions have a lot of unnecessary fat to be trimmed. And the average user, not being a developer, tries to fix these issues by, wait for it… installing more extensions to speed-up load times....

I was overwhelmed with the complexity and messiness of the place and all the technical language. I was reading things out loud and whining "What does that mean?!" Ugh! I feel nauseated just remembering.

So, please, could Substack magically be what I want?

"Democrats Have Abandoned Civil Liberties/The Blue Party’s Trump-era Embrace of Authoritarianism Isn’t Just Wrong, it’s a Fatal Political Mistake."

Writes Matt Taibbi (at taibbi.substack.com):

Whatever one’s opinion of [Michael] Flynn, his relations with Turkey, his “Lock her up!” chants, his haircut, or anything, this case was never about much. There’s no longer pretense that prosecution would lead to the unspooling of a massive Trump-Russia conspiracy, as pundits once breathlessly expected. In fact, news that Flynn was cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller inspired many of the “Is this the beginning of the end for Trump?” stories that will someday fill whole chapters of Journalism Fucks Up 101 textbooks....

The Flynn case was built on surveillance gathered under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, a program that seems to have been abused on a massive scale by both Democratic and Republican administrations.... Anyone who bothers to look back will find hints at how this program might have been misused. In late 2015, Obama officials bragged to the Wall Street Journal they’d made use of FISA surveillance involving “Jewish-American groups” as well as “U.S. lawmakers” in congress, all because they wanted to more effectively “counter” Israeli opposition to Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran....

Democrats clearly believe constituents will forgive them for abandoning constitutional principles, so long as the targets of official inquiry are figures like Flynn or Paul Manafort or Trump himself. In the process, they’ve raised a generation of followers whose contempt for civil liberties is now genuine-to-permanent. Blue-staters have gone from dismissing constitutional concerns as Trumpian ruse to sneering at them, in the manner of French aristocrats, as evidence of proletarian mental defect.

Nowhere has this been more evident than in the response to the Covid-19 crisis, where the almost mandatory take of pundits is that any protest of lockdown measures is troglodyte death wish....

Much more at the link. Well done.

Democrats have "raised a generation of followers whose contempt for civil liberties is now genuine-to-permanent." Why does the new generation allow itself to be raised by a political party intent on expanding its power? What makes people grow up to be followers? That's not the way we Boomers experienced youth! And yet somehow we Boomers grew up to raise kids to follow and to feel contempt for the values that we thought were fueling our rebellion against our elders.

There's no crying in baseball, and now, there's no spitting in baseball.

Not anymore.

I'm seeing the front-page teaser at WaPo: "No more spitting in baseball? Safety proposals would bar many MLB staples." The article is "MLB proposes safety plan that covers everything from sunflower seeds to lineup card exchanges." Excerpt:

A baseball game with no spitting? Yes, and that includes sunflower seeds, a staple for many modern ballplayers.

Players and coaches “must make every effort to avoid touching their face with their hands (including to give signs), wiping away sweat with their hands, licking their fingers, whistling with their fingers, etc.” There would be no bat boys or bat girls, and balls that are put in play and touched by multiple players — a groundout, a relay throw — would be removed and exchanged for a new baseball.

And no spitballs!



From the comments at WaPo:

I need a guy to explain this to me. i work in an office with tons of guys, all ages, and I have never, ever seen one of them spit. At their desk, in a meeting, on the phone, walking to a customer meeting, never. Why, then is it required for sports people to spit? Can’t they just swallow it? Is it contaminated or something?

Ha ha. It's funny, the presumed gender difference. It's a man problem... or prerogative. This made me think of a post I wrote 16 years ago: "Freud and the counterculture girl":

The featured quote from Obama's graduation speech has Obama unwittingly complimenting Trump.

The NYT puts this gaffe in the headline, "Obama Says U.S. Lacks Leadership on Virus in Commencement Speeches/The virus has 'torn back the curtain on the idea that the folks in charge know what they’re doing,' the former president said...."

There's a problem with figures of speech: You might forget what they mean!

Here's Obama, looked to by the elite as a source of wisdom, and he's simply reading from a speech he had every opportunity to have edited by the most able wordsmiths, and he uses a cliché, and he doesn't notice that he's got it exactly wrong.

To tear back the curtain is to suddenly reveal what is really there! It was behind a curtain and you've torn — pulled —it back.

In Obama's botched figure of speech, the virus is tearing back the curtain — hard to picture that, but it's intended as a vivid image — and what is revealed — what had been hidden behind a curtain — is "the idea that the folks in charge know what they’re doing." So he's saying that it wasn't seen before, but now it's blatantly obvious: The folks in charge know what they’re doing!

I could say more about "folks," but I want to talk about "torn." The cliché is to pull back the curtain. Pull, not tear. But "torn back the curtain" is comprehensible, just as "ripped back the curtain" would be comprehensible. It's a more aggressive pulling. (You know how viruses are, so impetuous.)

But one reason "torn" might have suggested itself to the speechwriters is the Biblical phrase "tear the curtain." (That must be the source of the Hitchcock film title "Torn Curtain.") When I googled "tear back the curtain," I couldn't get to an answer because the page filled up with discussion of Matthew 27 — the death of Jesus:

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

I'm pretty sure Obama and his speechwriters had no intention of evoking that image. Anyway, I accept the use of the phrase "torn back the curtain." The problem is that when you pull or tear or rip back a curtain, you show what is really there. And it's just funny that he accidentally declared that we can all see clearly now that The folks in charge know what they’re doing.

IN THE COMMENTS: Ralph L finds the pop culture reference for pulling back the curtain. It's so apt for political discussions:



Do I presume to criticize the great Obama? So ungrateful! I should think myself lucky that I am permitted to hear his graduation oration!

Snake on the bike path.

Yesterday...



I got to talking with some little kids — who were doing this mountain bike path on strider bikes — and they had the idea of a snake on a bike. Their dad suggested a lizard. Yeah, a lizard on a bike makes sense... compared to a snake on a bike.

In the category of impossible things, some are more believable than others.

That makes me think of "Through the Looking Glass":

Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said. "One can't believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!"

Are you trying to believe impossible things?  Have you had a lot of practice? Are you keeping score? Are you up to 6? What are you eating for breakfast? For me, it's snake bacon. Snakon.