Working-age rural Americans (25-54) are dying at a much higher rate, particularly in Red states, than men and women their age in Blue states, and this is happening in part because Red states have not expanded Medicaid. And yet, those same people are the core voters of the TCP/Republican Party. How can these rural men and women not realiz…
Working-age rural Americans (25-54) are dying at a much higher rate, particularly in Red states, than men and women their age in Blue states, and this is happening in part because Red states have not expanded Medicaid. And yet, those same people are the core voters of the TCP/Republican Party. How can these rural men and women not realize what is happening to them by just looking around their own world? .... Author, Remote Viewer. Former Spec. Assist. to the CNO
Biden's goodness and Trump's evilness do not matter as much as "hate the libs". Hate the libs is of paramount importance over their own welfare and the welfare of their sisters, brothers, mothers, father's. I know, I have hate the libs relatives.
Wendyl, I’m sorry that you have hating relatives. I think that it’s more than “hate the libs”; I think that it’s “hate people different from me (the others) and anyone who supports them “.
Yeah, I agree that one of the reasons they hate the libs is because we tend to embrace "other" and find community with multi-colored, multi-gendered, multi-cultural "others." Biden's goodness is wanting to support all the "others". God forbid!
". . . by just looking around their own world," yes, Sam?
Might you be suggesting that some schools in America might use humanities as to how to look at our "own world"?
The novels, films, songs, photographs, memoirs, and other arts are there. Good ones. Great ones. Wonderful ones. Might students learn from their better teachers how to use them to see the detailed complexities of people as individuals in complex situations?
There is a lot of nuance in most of these "detailed complexities" for sure. Simplistic answers which become political slogans usually just rev up polarization. The border "crisis" is one great example.
Yes, Robin, the bad qualities you mention grow like weeds all the more with humanities absent.
And another Yes, to how the imposition of standardized testing (in the U.S. and allied countries as well) both further helped kill humanities and further put on steroids all the numbers-gaming, commodification, and other packaging vulgarities of the billionaire classes.
Another commenter on Heather's site, Jude Ellen, told me of a book on this by a Canadian, Max Wyman. I couldn't get a copy anywhere in Japan, where I live, but my son in Big Sur got one for me, and just sent it. I'll try to report on it after it arrives and I've had a chance to peruse.
Phil, how I wish that education provided greater opportunities for students to learn from exposure to the humanities. Much of my reading of late has been on the subject of consciousness itself, how we receive and process information, and how or whether we act on what we are exposed to. I’m inclined to think that it’s actually possible for some to be incapable of evaluating, let alone analyzing material or of foreseeing consequences. . The MAGA mind set. Lest anyone think I am claiming that there is a superior kind of individual who can engage in analysis etc. ,I’m not. I think only that it is likely that evolution has left us in this predicament.
Standardized tests seem to leave their victims without the necessary skill sets to evaluate material, even if they have the capability of doing so. The whole experiment has been such a waste. Let us hope we learn from it.
It's been a huge economic boon to the billionaire classes, Jean.
They invested early in the commodifying, numbering, packaging of all life -- and the killing of humanities that did otherwise.
It started in the U.S., then spread to the world. Almost everywhere now teachers teach to the test -- which are machine gradable, so there's zero human about any of it.
Worse, tests have devolved to neuter anything local, regional, or otherwise human in language. See Diane Ravitch, "The Language Police" (2003) and Minae Mizumura "The Fall of Language in the Age of English" (English edition Columbia University Press, 2016).
But the profit-taking from the standardized testing death industry has been just as great as that from the billionaires spreading hate and divisiveness -- around the world -- from social media algorithms.
Sorry to communicate in this round about way. My comments get returned. I have the feeling you and I are somehow talking past each other. Don’t know how to respond to your last.
Don't forget the anti-vax movement and of course what all this has had on covid mortality. On rural American mortality, don't forget suicide, this tops the list among that demographic. Incidentally, far more than mass shootings.
I’m going to hop on my Covid bandwagon for a minute.
The world wants to think that the pandemic is over. It isn’t. Last week was the first week in many many months that the US suffered fewer than 1,000 Covid deaths. Per week. And that’s with little testing, and without attribution of deaths from the sequelae of Covid. Excess mortality is the only metric we still have that might accurately reflect the continuing impact of the pandemic. Vaccine uptake remains abysmal, particularly in the demographic you are referencing.
I, too, wish that Covid were over. I’d love to be back to “normal” but I’m immunocompromised from cancer treatment, so I’m not. While I’m not worried about acute Covid since I’m well vaccinated, I am very concerned about Long Covid. We don’t know, we *can’t* know, what the long term effects of having this virus might be. My own cancer was caused by a virus I likely caught 40 or so years ago, without even knowing I had it. What will populations look like 40 years from now?
We are failing our children. In the four years of this pandemic, we have not done the things that we know how to do to protect people from airborne illness. Proper Covid mitigation needs to be layered, and it needs especially to include ventilation and filtration in schools, which remain a driver of infections in our communities. But also in other public spaces. Mitigation still needs to include filtration and ventilation indoors, vaccination, testing and isolation when sick, and masking when community levels are high. We are doing none of those things, and now we are threatened anew by measles and avian flu outbreaks. We need to do better.
I hear you, KR. I lost my "novid" status 6 weeks age after a trip to the coast that included eating in a very crowded restaurant one evening. For me, it was nothing worse than a bad cold (which I thought I had picked up from our housemate) and only tested myself because I wanted to go to band rehearsal...
My wife (no surprise) also caught it, and her symptoms were both very different and more severe (albeit still quite mild compared to earlier cases in friends of ours).
I’m sorry you got it, Ally, but damn well done for avoiding it so long. I’ve had it twice, both times brought home by my husband. I adore him, but he’s just not careful. The third time he got it I made him go to a B&B, because he won’t stay isolated in the house. That worked. I get that it’s awful to wear a mask all day, especially when you’re a professor and lecturing. It’s much easier for me, since I only need to wear one intermittently as I don’t have a job. The two times we both had it, I was sick for far longer than he was. He cleared the infection in less than a week, while I continued to test positive for almost three weeks. That’s the effect of my compromised immune system, and it makes me worried about what all that virus is doing in me for so long. Is it damaging organs? Is it mutating? Who knows.
There are things I think are worth risking Covid for, but going to the grocery store isn’t one of them! So I wear my high quality N95 and ignore the looks. We’ve traveled to Italy twice, and diligent masking while traveling has worked for that. No clue what my husband does when he’s traveling without me. He doesn’t like to be the only one masking. I couldn’t care less myself. I make him test serially after he travels, since it seems the only way to stay safe myself. And in fact, that worked for his third infection, at least to keep it away from me. He’s coming home this evening from a conference, and will be met at the door by masked me offering him a test 😅
You cannot be too careful. I still mask at the grocery store, hardware store, and I won't eat at a "dine in" restaurant unless I can sit outside. I will put a mask on when I go through a drive through (usually coffee) when the cashier is wearing a mask.
That’s basically what I do too. With our long winters, it’s a lot of months without going out! My husband does go out, especially to a bar weekly for his jazz jam sessions. That makes me so nervous. But it’s his joy, and I just try to keep my anxiety at a simmer. Not worth losing my happy marriage over it.
I wonder how we would feel-react if a couple 747’s flew into the Rocky Mountains every week, covid ie the plague has been doing that for years now, while the insipid bastard didn’t start the plague, he with his unique worldview did almost nothing to stop it.
Beyond doing nothing to stop it, he weaponized the mitigations we do have. It’s his fault that masking was rejected here. It’s his fault that the CDC is a shadow of its former glory.
He is so foolish. If he had done even a halfway adequate job on Covid, I’m fairly sure he would have won reelection.
KR, your “bandwagon” needs a national, or make that an international, tour!!! Keep bangin’ that drum!!!! Mitigation efforts need to be strengthened & improved not only for today, but also for what else might be coming down the pike.
Thanks 🙏 this is absolutely horrendous news and yet it’s difficult, isn’t it, to find the charitable fibre to help those who don’t want any. Can you venture an informed guess about what is that rate ? -> « dying (!!!!) at a much higher rate…. »
« … The results show that the gap in overall death rates between Democratic and Republican counties increased more than sixfold from 2001 to 2019, especially for white populations, and was driven mainly by deaths due to heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, unintentional injuries, and suicide. »…
They don’t know what is happening in Blue states. They aren’t aware of what they are being denied. The propaganda they receive has been 100% effective. The few that try to bring the message have their voices eliminated.
Working-age rural Americans (25-54) are dying at a much higher rate, particularly in Red states, than men and women their age in Blue states, and this is happening in part because Red states have not expanded Medicaid. And yet, those same people are the core voters of the TCP/Republican Party. How can these rural men and women not realize what is happening to them by just looking around their own world? .... Author, Remote Viewer. Former Spec. Assist. to the CNO
Stephan A. Schwartz
Biden's goodness and Trump's evilness do not matter as much as "hate the libs". Hate the libs is of paramount importance over their own welfare and the welfare of their sisters, brothers, mothers, father's. I know, I have hate the libs relatives.
Wendyl, I’m sorry that you have hating relatives. I think that it’s more than “hate the libs”; I think that it’s “hate people different from me (the others) and anyone who supports them “.
Yeah, I agree that one of the reasons they hate the libs is because we tend to embrace "other" and find community with multi-colored, multi-gendered, multi-cultural "others." Biden's goodness is wanting to support all the "others". God forbid!
Divide and conquer.
They hate it that you don't share their stupidity.
Thankfully, no relatives, but a boatload of friends.
". . . by just looking around their own world," yes, Sam?
Might you be suggesting that some schools in America might use humanities as to how to look at our "own world"?
The novels, films, songs, photographs, memoirs, and other arts are there. Good ones. Great ones. Wonderful ones. Might students learn from their better teachers how to use them to see the detailed complexities of people as individuals in complex situations?
There is a lot of nuance in most of these "detailed complexities" for sure. Simplistic answers which become political slogans usually just rev up polarization. The border "crisis" is one great example.
Phil, if you wish to you can look at my Substack post for yesterday the 16th on the subject...
Thank you, Robin.
Went to your site, to which I've appended this:
Yes, Robin, the bad qualities you mention grow like weeds all the more with humanities absent.
And another Yes, to how the imposition of standardized testing (in the U.S. and allied countries as well) both further helped kill humanities and further put on steroids all the numbers-gaming, commodification, and other packaging vulgarities of the billionaire classes.
Another commenter on Heather's site, Jude Ellen, told me of a book on this by a Canadian, Max Wyman. I couldn't get a copy anywhere in Japan, where I live, but my son in Big Sur got one for me, and just sent it. I'll try to report on it after it arrives and I've had a chance to peruse.
Phil, how I wish that education provided greater opportunities for students to learn from exposure to the humanities. Much of my reading of late has been on the subject of consciousness itself, how we receive and process information, and how or whether we act on what we are exposed to. I’m inclined to think that it’s actually possible for some to be incapable of evaluating, let alone analyzing material or of foreseeing consequences. . The MAGA mind set. Lest anyone think I am claiming that there is a superior kind of individual who can engage in analysis etc. ,I’m not. I think only that it is likely that evolution has left us in this predicament.
Standardized tests seem to leave their victims without the necessary skill sets to evaluate material, even if they have the capability of doing so. The whole experiment has been such a waste. Let us hope we learn from it.
It's been a huge economic boon to the billionaire classes, Jean.
They invested early in the commodifying, numbering, packaging of all life -- and the killing of humanities that did otherwise.
It started in the U.S., then spread to the world. Almost everywhere now teachers teach to the test -- which are machine gradable, so there's zero human about any of it.
Worse, tests have devolved to neuter anything local, regional, or otherwise human in language. See Diane Ravitch, "The Language Police" (2003) and Minae Mizumura "The Fall of Language in the Age of English" (English edition Columbia University Press, 2016).
But the profit-taking from the standardized testing death industry has been just as great as that from the billionaires spreading hate and divisiveness -- around the world -- from social media algorithms.
Sorry to communicate in this round about way. My comments get returned. I have the feeling you and I are somehow talking past each other. Don’t know how to respond to your last.
No need to respond, Jean -- except to anticipate next opportunity.
Good for Heather that she keeps these opportunities rife for all of us.
Don't forget the anti-vax movement and of course what all this has had on covid mortality. On rural American mortality, don't forget suicide, this tops the list among that demographic. Incidentally, far more than mass shootings.
I’m going to hop on my Covid bandwagon for a minute.
The world wants to think that the pandemic is over. It isn’t. Last week was the first week in many many months that the US suffered fewer than 1,000 Covid deaths. Per week. And that’s with little testing, and without attribution of deaths from the sequelae of Covid. Excess mortality is the only metric we still have that might accurately reflect the continuing impact of the pandemic. Vaccine uptake remains abysmal, particularly in the demographic you are referencing.
I, too, wish that Covid were over. I’d love to be back to “normal” but I’m immunocompromised from cancer treatment, so I’m not. While I’m not worried about acute Covid since I’m well vaccinated, I am very concerned about Long Covid. We don’t know, we *can’t* know, what the long term effects of having this virus might be. My own cancer was caused by a virus I likely caught 40 or so years ago, without even knowing I had it. What will populations look like 40 years from now?
We are failing our children. In the four years of this pandemic, we have not done the things that we know how to do to protect people from airborne illness. Proper Covid mitigation needs to be layered, and it needs especially to include ventilation and filtration in schools, which remain a driver of infections in our communities. But also in other public spaces. Mitigation still needs to include filtration and ventilation indoors, vaccination, testing and isolation when sick, and masking when community levels are high. We are doing none of those things, and now we are threatened anew by measles and avian flu outbreaks. We need to do better.
Ok, off my bandwagon now.
I hear you, KR. I lost my "novid" status 6 weeks age after a trip to the coast that included eating in a very crowded restaurant one evening. For me, it was nothing worse than a bad cold (which I thought I had picked up from our housemate) and only tested myself because I wanted to go to band rehearsal...
My wife (no surprise) also caught it, and her symptoms were both very different and more severe (albeit still quite mild compared to earlier cases in friends of ours).
I’m sorry you got it, Ally, but damn well done for avoiding it so long. I’ve had it twice, both times brought home by my husband. I adore him, but he’s just not careful. The third time he got it I made him go to a B&B, because he won’t stay isolated in the house. That worked. I get that it’s awful to wear a mask all day, especially when you’re a professor and lecturing. It’s much easier for me, since I only need to wear one intermittently as I don’t have a job. The two times we both had it, I was sick for far longer than he was. He cleared the infection in less than a week, while I continued to test positive for almost three weeks. That’s the effect of my compromised immune system, and it makes me worried about what all that virus is doing in me for so long. Is it damaging organs? Is it mutating? Who knows.
There are things I think are worth risking Covid for, but going to the grocery store isn’t one of them! So I wear my high quality N95 and ignore the looks. We’ve traveled to Italy twice, and diligent masking while traveling has worked for that. No clue what my husband does when he’s traveling without me. He doesn’t like to be the only one masking. I couldn’t care less myself. I make him test serially after he travels, since it seems the only way to stay safe myself. And in fact, that worked for his third infection, at least to keep it away from me. He’s coming home this evening from a conference, and will be met at the door by masked me offering him a test 😅
You cannot be too careful. I still mask at the grocery store, hardware store, and I won't eat at a "dine in" restaurant unless I can sit outside. I will put a mask on when I go through a drive through (usually coffee) when the cashier is wearing a mask.
That’s basically what I do too. With our long winters, it’s a lot of months without going out! My husband does go out, especially to a bar weekly for his jazz jam sessions. That makes me so nervous. But it’s his joy, and I just try to keep my anxiety at a simmer. Not worth losing my happy marriage over it.
I wonder how we would feel-react if a couple 747’s flew into the Rocky Mountains every week, covid ie the plague has been doing that for years now, while the insipid bastard didn’t start the plague, he with his unique worldview did almost nothing to stop it.
That’s a vivid analogy!
Beyond doing nothing to stop it, he weaponized the mitigations we do have. It’s his fault that masking was rejected here. It’s his fault that the CDC is a shadow of its former glory.
He is so foolish. If he had done even a halfway adequate job on Covid, I’m fairly sure he would have won reelection.
KR, your “bandwagon” needs a national, or make that an international, tour!!! Keep bangin’ that drum!!!! Mitigation efforts need to be strengthened & improved not only for today, but also for what else might be coming down the pike.
Thank you for saying that, Barbara. It can be a lonely place to be sometimes, and having support really helps.
Thanks 🙏 this is absolutely horrendous news and yet it’s difficult, isn’t it, to find the charitable fibre to help those who don’t want any. Can you venture an informed guess about what is that rate ? -> « dying (!!!!) at a much higher rate…. »
BMJ is a global "healthcare knowledge provider". This is an interesting read.
https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/study-finds-widening-gap-in-death-rates-between-us-areas-that-vote-for-democratic-rather-than-republican-party/
SIXFOLD !!!!
Thanks for the link🙏 wow
« … The results show that the gap in overall death rates between Democratic and Republican counties increased more than sixfold from 2001 to 2019, especially for white populations, and was driven mainly by deaths due to heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, unintentional injuries, and suicide. »…
That was interesting! I imagine the effects are even greater now, what with Covid vaccine rejection in red areas.
Wow, how sad.
Thanks for the link, Ally!!
They don’t know what is happening in Blue states. They aren’t aware of what they are being denied. The propaganda they receive has been 100% effective. The few that try to bring the message have their voices eliminated.