Surprise. Senate Refuses to Convict Trump.
As expected, the Senate has refused to convict Donald Trump. Seven Republicans voted to convict, short of the 17 that would have been needed. The evidence of Trump's impeachable offences was abundant and manifest but the hearing was a political farce from the outset. It's obvious that Trump is more feared within Republican ranks than anywhere else.
From the Guardian.
ReplyDeleteBut Washington is no Hollywood and the Senate – while it is predictable – doesn’t guarantee happy endings. The cold, hard fact of Trump’s second impeachment trial on Saturday was Trump’s second acquittal. His son, Eric, tweeted simply: “2-0.”...
Washington IS Hollywood east.
Stepping back a little it is easy to see that the most powerful nation on earth is little more than a military power enabling big business that is headquartered within the US, or is it the other way round?
Hollywood East, fake news, the US is pure theatre with muscle.
Buyer beware; beware of Sam Slick the American trader.
TB
The 'most powerful nation on Earth' is getting rapidly hollowed out, TB. It has great military prowess to be sure but it is culturally, socially and economically in tatters. It's the 'house divided' thing writ large.
Delete.. It seems 'we' all tumble through another portal Mound.. into another era ? Or just another mysterious Alice In Wonderland weird dreamscape.
ReplyDeleteThe USA has its own portals, we in Canada have our own.. plus a lot of theirs. To pretend our 'world', our lives, our society and culture are not captive in many, if not most ways, is laughable
We currently teeter and yaw wildly tempting politics to inflict Erin O'Toole in conjunction with Jagmeet Singh upon our already tenuous situations.. and I mean as a Nation, as Provinces & Territories, and at civic levels.
In truth, our situation is not as explosive as our shithole country neighbor to the south. They continue to pet and feed their leader of the lamprey eels, Donald Trump.. instead of stepping on his neck, lickedy split. They just somehow feel they 'can dangle' .. play with fire, contagion, incoherence..
That rant aside.. I now lean heavily on your recent post. The 'attention economy' .. It seems the freshest perspective I've seen in years.. Just two words that package up a diseased state of affairs, elequently & elegantly.. Kind of like Owen reminding us of the term 'better angels'
I'm a huge fan of 'codifying' complicated or confusing or conundrum type stuff that occupies or distracts society and culture. Red Herring is an old school example, so is 'bully pulpit'
McLuhan spoke of this stuff. So did Hunter S Thompson. So did Neville Shute Norway in the late 50's with 'On The Beach' - a novel set in Australia after some upwind nuking.. The citizenry gone wild.. the dismal end times nigh.
On the super plus side.. seems I gonna be a grandpa .. !
Yes.. the 'COVID Kid' enroute via stork or blue heron this summer
What was an abstract - 'future generations'
now hopefully comes with 10 toes on her or him
A wild genetic mix of Black Irish, Peruvian
renegade Scot with a bold dash of Thai
ie 'a Canadian' ..
Hey, Sal. I'm familiar with On the Beach. As a kid growing up within incineration range of Detroit's military plants (tanks, missiles, etc.) I devoured that book.
DeleteIn that post you mention there's a link to an article in Wired you may like to read.
I don't think we really grasp the perils of the Attention Economy. Look at smartphone users, and not just kids, who compulsively go for their phones on the sidewalks, strolling through the malls, in the aisles of grocery stores, when they get back in their cars before driving away, at the dinner table, in the can, even once they're in bed tucked in for the night.
We've been told for some years that this is re-wiring our brains. Small wonder that fewer of us gravitate to books when we have spare time to fill. Reading strains our truncated attention spans. We're constantly flipping channels in our minds. At one time this was considered an attribute, proof of an ability to multi-task, but now we realize its really an inability to focus, digest, even perceive.
I have a smartphone that I bought when the previous phone was no longer supported. My kids tell me I can do many things with it. In reality I use it as a mobile GPS in my car (when I can find it). No texting, no instant messaging, just an inexpensive GPS that I might use a handful of times a year.
Books, however, I have aplenty, scattered around my home in a pattern that would render Marie Kondo apoplectic. As a rule I don't move them from room to room. I consign those I've read but don't need for reference either to the public library or into storage in my crawl space where they'll become my executor's problem. The others remain on shelves but those on active duty are on my coffee table, my dining table, my breakfast table, my end table, or the vanity of my bathroom. When I was practicing I would read while I shaved each morning. I shed a bit of blood for the cause back then. Today, wherever I wind up I choose a book from that zone and read at least a chapter if time permits. A chapter I've found restores continuity.
Who knew that reading would become prophylactic, a way to fend off brain modification? It's also a convenient excuse for not having to keep up with the latest and greatest technology, something seniors generally abhor.
It troubles me that my kids, albeit well-educated, are caught in the throes of the attention economy, their phones an extension of their central nervous system.
Here's Part II of my rambling response:
DeleteBut let's look on the bright side. A grandchild. Oh, what you can do with a young one. See if you can get to her or him before someone Gorilla Glues a tablet into their hands and steer them clear of the attention economy mind shackles. Read to them, engage their minds.
When I was elevated from radio to TV news, I got my first taste of attention deficit broadcasting. Radio was a marvelous medium for those who had some flair for writing and a voice that could lift words off the page. Done well, it directly engaged the listener's mind feeding often vivid images as their minds interpreted them. Then I was "promoted" to TV news only to find that the focus wasn't on writing or delivery but on the pictures to the point that the film would tend to dictate the editorial content. The writer didn't engage the viewer's mind, the images did that. The audience zoned out, content with snapshots of information that rarely gave an accurate depiction and almost never required them to engage and take meaning in.
I was disillusioned and it didn't take much to steer me into law school. Today if I'm going to electronic news it's invariably radio - BBC, PBS, CBC. I shun television news because it is quite deliberately misinformative. I round that out with selective podcasts. Online it's mainly English language newspapers and news magazines.
There are ways to defy the Attention Economy although I'm less confident it's possible to defeat it. Restoring our neural circuits would require a deliberate and sustained campaign to fight back. It would be a fight because there is immense wealth at stake for those who can condition us to thinking, to the extent that thinking is necessary at all, in ways that best suit their bottom lines.
It must be an age thing Mound, I refuse to listen to podcasts - if it's not written I ignore, of course except for the DIY youtubes.
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Thank you all for reading,
God bless"