The Contradictory Feelings Thread

[Linguoboy]

I know what “overlook” means, Travis, and I stand by what I said. Yes, there is a lot of selective ignorance. But there are also lots of people who actively celebrate Manifest Destiny, anti-Communist purges, and other events in our history that Good Liberals have come to be ashamed of (in some cases because Good Liberals have come to be ashamed of them). That’s why I’ll never have unmixed feelings about the display of the American flag or other forms of nationalistic fervour.

[MacAnDàil]

To be completely honest, I think much of the American nationalist shtick is completely over the top,

Not over the top enough - some states ban the public sale of fireworks! What are people supposed to celebrate with? Sparklers?

People can celebrate with flags, cakes, songs, banners, chants, meetings, snacks etc

[Travis B.]

To be completely honest, I think much of the American nationalist shtick is completely over the top,

Not over the top enough - some states ban the public sale of fireworks! What are people supposed to celebrate with? Sparklers?

People can celebrate with flags, cakes, songs, banners, chants, meetings, snacks etc

In the US the Fourth is a major excuse for fireworks (and for grilling), and it should be noted at even where private fireworks are banned or restricted (much of the US) there normally are public fireworks (except in fire-prone areas, e.g. ones experiencing drought).

[Ares Land]

Fireworks and firecrackers get banned because there's always a stupid kid that manages to get hurt. Or hurt other. Or generally be as a nuisance (the kids in my neighborhood are extremely enthusiastic about fireworks. It sounds like there's a civil war going on and frankly that gets old very fast.)

I believe that prohibition is about the worst way to adress any problem. But it's more a case of 'That's why we can't have nice things ' than of an un-American plan against patriotism.

[alynnidalar]

Or over to Indiana.

Why, I drove by Krazy Kaplan’s just the day before the fourth. They appeared to be doing a very brisk business.

In the end, what is more American than driving to another state to circumvent laws limiting what kinds of personal explosives you can set off in your backyard? Or in random parks? Or anywhere else that suits your fancy, thus terrorizing neighborhood pets for days to come?

This message has been brought to you by your local association of “I didn’t even know my cat fit under the couch”.

[Gryphonic]

Or anywhere else that suits your fancy, thus terrorizing neighborhood pets for days to come?

Not just pets. In addition to the usual signs about fines and starting fires, I saw a few saying "Veterans live in this neighborhood. Please be considerate."

Spoiler: The family behind me isn't.

[doctor shark]

Or over to Indiana.

Why, I drove by Krazy Kaplan’s just the day before the fourth. They appeared to be doing a very brisk business.

In the end, what is more American than driving to another state to circumvent laws limiting what kinds of personal explosives you can set off in your backyard? Or in random parks? Or anywhere else that suits your fancy, thus terrorizing neighborhood pets for days to come?

This message has been brought to you by your local association of “I didn’t even know my cat fit under the couch”.

Oh, when I lived in Tex-ass, normally the fireworks shops would set up right outside the city limits: fireworks weren't legal within the city, but they were legal outside of it. And in Ohio, you just had to go a few exits up the turnpike to get things to blow up.

Granted, here, there's a bit of cross-border traffic because the Netherlands, compared to Belgium or Germany, has somewhat more relaxed fireworks laws (and there are generally no border checks), but the fireworks are normally just for New Year's. But that's a pretty typical things: you have lots of cross-border traffic when there's some incentive, whether that be price or availability. Luxembourg–Germany was a very popular route: groceries in Germany; petrol, cigarettes, and coffee in Luxembourg. Similarly in the Netherlands with any of its neighbors, especially for petrol: €1.50/liter in Germany, compared to €1.80 here!


Minor on-thread thing: I'm finally getting a large number of papers submitted from my old work (where I'm second author). This is a big plus for me (it could've come sooner with some grant applications, but beggars can't be choosers) and for the one co-author, who's supposed to be defending his Ph.D. in three months' time... but, as you can see, the papers are being submitted because of the Ph.D. defense on the horizon, which means that there's a lot of stress. And I also have my own paper to write on research here, which is going well (though with some ups and downs), but that needs a considerable amount of attention as well to make the internal deadline of beginning of September (to be used for my current boss's grant application!). Yay...

[Linguoboy]

My sister's father-in-law has always been something of a contrarian but apparently the pandemic pushed him into full-blown conspiracy theory. He became a maskhole, bragging about being turfed out of one establishment after another for disregarding their masking policies.

Well, guess who's now hospitalised with a case of COVID-19?

On the one hand, it's not an illness I would wish upon anyone I didn't hate (and I don't hate this guy, who's always been decent to me despite his awful politics), but on the other, it's really hard not to take some satisfaction in this kind of poetic justice. It sucks because my sister is about to leave for her first out-of-state vacation in nearly two years and now she doesn't know what to do. And, of course, her kids have recently lost one grandfather and may end up losing another

[Travis B.]

I presume he didn't get vaccinated either. TBH, for me, anyone who gets infected who had the opportunity to get vaccinated and did not got what was coming to them. Too bad they might end up infecting other people, either people who can't get vaccinated, people for whom the vaccination did not take, or people too foolish to get vaccinated themselves.

[Linguoboy]

I presume he didn't get vaccinated either. TBH, for me, anyone who gets infected who had the opportunity to get vaccinated and did not got what was coming to them. Too bad they might end up infecting other people, either people who can't get vaccinated, people for whom the vaccinate did not take, or people too foolish to get vaccinated themselves.

That's what really bothers me. If it were simply a decision which affected only you, then fine--play stupid games, win stupid prizes. But it never is. How's my brother-in-law supposed to enjoy his vacation now, knowing that he might have to fly home at a moment's notice to attend his father's deathbed? What about his poor wife (who I suspect disdained masks more out of loyalty to him than actual conviction), who also got infected? And my sister--whose youngest child still can't be vaccinated--is now worrying that they July 4th party they attended could turn out to be a "superspreader event".

It really strikes me as the epitome of a certain kind of white male entitlement I see in my father's generation: I'm gonna live by my convictions no matter who it hurts and how bad the consequences could be. IIRC, he doesn't even have a will, since he's in complete denial about impending mortality despite being 82. So if he kicks off, he's really leaving his widow in a terrible spot.

[Ares Land]

I second that observation about aging dudes. It seems at some point the idea that they might be wrong doesn't compute anymore (assuming it ever did.)
I hope everything will be OK for him anyway.

[Travis B.]

That's what really bothers me. If it were simply a decision which affected only you, then fine--play stupid games, win stupid prizes. But it never is. How's my brother-in-law supposed to enjoy his vacation now, knowing that he might have to fly home at a moment's notice to attend his father's deathbed? What about his poor wife (who I suspect disdained masks more out of loyalty to him than actual conviction), who also got infected? And my sister--whose youngest child still can't be vaccinated--is now worrying that they July 4th party they attended could turn out to be a "superspreader event".

It really strikes me as the epitome of a certain kind of white male entitlement I see in my father's generation: I'm gonna live by my convictions no matter who it hurts and how bad the consequences could be. IIRC, he doesn't even have a will, since he's in complete denial about impending mortality despite being 82. So if he kicks off, he's really leaving his widow in a terrible spot.

The whole antivaxxer/antimasker thing really seems to me to require a certain sort of selfishness here, because people claim that it is their choice to make, as if other people who might be affected did not matter one bit. Such people never care about other people, and when they claim they do it is only to get them to join their herd of lemmings. If it only affected that individual alone, it could be put down as mere recklessness, but such things never are that way.

[Linguoboy]

When you put it that way, it makes me wonder if, for some people at least, it isn't a way of asserting their authority in the face of a society where it's been greatly eroded. Like you may not be able to tell your kids what to do any more but you can browbeat some poor teenager into being forced to serve you anyway even if you won't pull up a tiny piece of cloth over your nose for five minutes. Too bad viruses don't respond to intimidation.

[Travis B.]

If we could only dissuade teh virus by sheer force of will...

[Ares Land]

I noticed lots of people are actually really afraid of the vaccine. It's not something I really understand(*) but, hey, we all got our irrational fears. So I'm not as mad at antivaxxers as I used to be.

(* well, I understand it a little. We all read a few horror stories in the news. I don't know how it is where you live, but for a while here if some British dude snuffed it in a freak gardening accident it would be blamed on AstraZeneca.)

(Oh, no excuses for not wearing masks in stores though. It's horribly rude.)

[Ares Land]

Oh, contradictory feelings that are relevant to the current discussion too.
Macron gave us a stern national talking-to yesterday, along the lines of 'we believe in science in this country so what the fuck are you waiting for?'. Also, we get vaccine passports. And mandatory vaccines for health professionals.

So I generally dislike Macron, authoritarianism and I'm not even entirely sold on the idea of a vaccine passports... But, you know, it looks like a good stern collective chewing out works.

(Oh, according to Twitter, vacccine passports is apparently worse than anything Stalin and all the Kims might have come up with. I think I'm mostly in favor of vaccine passports because they make stupid people mad.)

[Travis B.]

I noticed lots of people are actually really afraid of the vaccine. It's not something I really understand(*) but, hey, we all got our irrational fears. So I'm not as mad at antivaxxers as I used to be.

(* well, I understand it a little. We all read a few horror stories in the news. I don't know how it is where you live, but for a while here if some British dude snuffed it in a freak gardening accident it would be blamed on AstraZeneca.)

The problem with the news is that it does not emphasize enough that one is infinitely more likely to die or have lasting complications from the coronavirus than from the vaccine, where the actual severe side effects are extremely rare. As a result, stupid people get it in their heads that the vaccine means severe side effects, while not understanding the reality of the situation, and the antivaxxers prey on this.

What they should do IMHO is make it so that drug companies can take antivaxxers to court for libel en masse, like lawsuits related to the voting machine libel but on a much bigger scale.

[hwhatting]

What they should do IMHO is make it so that drug companies can take antivaxxers to court for libel en masse, like lawsuits related to the voting machine libel but on a much bigger scale.

While I think anti-vaxxers are irrational and certainly would like there to be less people spreading their stupidity around, giving more power to drug companies than they have already doesn't look like a good idea to me...

[Travis B.]

What they should do IMHO is make it so that drug companies can take antivaxxers to court for libel en masse, like lawsuits related to the voting machine libel but on a much bigger scale.

While I think anti-vaxxers are irrational and certainly would like there to be less people spreading their stupidity around, giving more power to drug companies than they have already doesn't look like a good idea to me...

To me, the antivaxxers here are a danger to society; while drug companies have done questionable stuff at times, we really need to crack down hard on the antivaxxers. They literally have people's blood on their hands, every last one of them.

[Raphael]

It's been fairly hot here for most of the past six weeks, with some interruptions. Now it's been consistently hot for a while - but, also for a while, there have been consistent predictions that we'll get heavy rain any moment. I spent some time wondering where that rain was.

Today, I learn from the news that in the West of the country, where the rain did come, there's been heavy flooding, widespread destruction, and dozens of people are dead or missing.

So now I wonder whether I should keep hoping for rain.