Campaign 2020: Let's Never Do This Again

It's not hope or change. It's not making anything great. It's just about making in through. 

image from article:
Early voting at the Hialeah John F. Kennedy Library in Hialeah, Fla.

By Matt Flegenheimer Photographs by Todd Heisler 
Oct. 31, 2020, 5:03 a.m. ET
[jb: original article contains remarkable photos]

Excerpt: 

In the course of human events that should probably be taking place virtually this year, in a house so divided that talk of jailing opponents registers as typical fare, in a country asking not what can be done, exactly, but whether anything can at this point, an election is happening on Tuesday. 

It is not a hope-and-change kind of year. It is not a moment for being made great again. 

Instead, a tour of these final, furious campaign days makes clear that the abiding theme of 2020 is something like survival: getting to 2021 in one piece, individually and collectively. ... 

[C]ampaign snapshots can double as a sort of rolling testament to national contradiction, rendered often in dizzying succession: the swagger and the nihilism, the faith and the faithlessness (“Jesus 2020: Our Only Hope” is a popular sign choice), the blithe invocation of outright fracture. ... 

There is the virus to outlive, the opponent to outlast, the threats that must be outrun, many say — eroding liberties, police violence, institutional rot — if the whole enterprise is to endure in recognizable form.

“Guillotine 2020,” read another sign displayed on a West Philadelphia porch recently, among the wind chimes and planters. “No More Presidents.” ...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Full List of Companies That Have Stayed in Russia – And The Ones That Decided to Leave [Updated Weekly]

Image
  Full List of Companies That Have Stayed in Russia – And The Ones That Decided to Leave [Updated Weekly] from Read, websiteplanet , via ame liabrunolh@gmail.com With this in mind, how are companies responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? We’ve compiled the internet’s most extensive list of multinational companies and their responses to the invasion. While some companies have been praised for their efforts, others have been justifiably accused of not doing enough. This article covers those companies that have left or partially left Russia, and those that have stayed. We’ll provide regular updates to keep the information accurate and relevant, so make sure to check back in! Disclaimer Our report can only reflect companies for which data is available from independent sources, or that have publicly stated their response to the war in Ukraine. A full investigation of all companies operating in Russia, or not, isn’t possible at this time, due to a lack of transparency. Countries with mo
Read more

Social Breakdown Starts With Skipping a Stop Sign

Image
Even with fewer cars on the road in 2020, traffic fatalities were up. Blame receding law enforcement. Image from article: Heavy traffic in New York, June 4   PHOTO:  NIYI FOTE/ZUMA PRESS By Warren Kozak , The Wall Street Journal , July 25, 2021 4:31 pm ET New York You’ve probably never heard of Henry Hale Bliss, but he holds a dubious distinction in American history. On the evening of Sept. 13, 1899, Bliss, a 69-year-old real-estate developer, stepped off the Eighth Avenue trolley at 74th Street and Central Park West in Manhattan. As he reached back to assist a female rider off the trolley, he was hit by an electric taxi driven by Arthur Smith. Bliss was taken to Roosevelt Hospital, where he died the next morning, thus becoming the first recorded automobile fatality in the U.S.   Bliss image from Wikipedia The accident made headlines in New York papers. Today, unless the victim is a celebrity, traffic deaths are rarely considered newsworthy. That might be because there have been rough
Read more

[updated 12/17] Plastic Water Bottles Collection/Eradication in Cleveland Park, Washington DC

Image
For the previous entry to this blog [11/30],  see ; scroll down for 12/17 Due to a number of factors, your scribbler has been unable during the past several weeks to keep up his blog on his minor, personal efforts to pick up (and dispose of, in public waste receptacles) plastic water bottles (PWBs) and other trash, ranging from left-over plastic gloves to used prophylactics, in his Cleveland Park neighborhood in the NW Quadrant of Washington, DC: Today, your blogger, in better shape, " Afoot and light-hearted ," returned to his near-daily account of his neighborhood PWBs/other trash excursion, which covers the following area of Cleveland Park: --Tilden Street, at its intersections with Connecticut Avenue and Spring of Freedom Road; --Spring of Freedom Road with its intersection at Rock Creek Park;  --Porter Street at its intersection with Connecticut Avenue; --Connecticut Avenue at its intersection with the University of the District of Columbia (UDC)
Read more