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State of the State
Jan. 8th, 2021 09:07 amThis has been a busy news week, as they say.
But it already became a kind of weird week for me, even before Wednesday. On Tuesday I had one of those things happen that's difficult to talk about on the internet, but I'll talk about it here, publicly, anyway, because street harassment needs to be talked about. On Tuesday, amidst everything, I was walking to a natural foods store on a road near my house when a man pulled over purportedly to ask for directions, but actually because he was a flasher. One of those things where as the victim I can't help still feeling residual anger over the period of time between when he pulled over and I realized what was going on and made it clear that he'd better stop, or else. I unfortunately did not have the presence of mind to deploy some of the better street harassment response tactics. There's a part of me that's just angry that I gave off enough of a look to be a mark, given that based on how I usually look, dress, and walk I think I'm at least reasonably good at giving off "don't touch me" vibes most of the time. For a woman in a small city.
At least that wasn't a COVID exposure incident; I also had to navigate my way past a lot of unmasked people out on the street.
More than anything I resent how it brought up one of the ways in which people driving cars exploit people walking around on foot. As nice as it is to have a social norm for helping someone with directions, it's asymmetrical for those of us who prefer to not drive and are already more out in public than people traveling about in their gasoline-powered wheelchairs. If you can't drive a car to navigate to your destination, maybe that's your problem. Also, hell if I know how to get there in a car.
In any case. This all makes the hassle of hauling out the bike and locking it up at my destination seem like less of a hassle, overall.
Then we had the wild national rollercoaster on Wednesday, which has included an absolutely incredible amount of yelling and hot-taking on social media. People who wanted to push buttons very much pushed buttons. My personal rule of staying off the Book of Face and Tweet-Machine during working hours continues to be an important personal rule.
What I still wonder is: how do these recent events relate to that massive government network security breach that happened not too long ago? How do other groups of people who are not aligned with the political views present in my social media bubbles conceptualize what has happened, in a bigger picture? For example, for those Republicans who proceeded to still vote against the (theoretically largely ceremonial) certification of the Electoral College results - what were they thinking? I don't think they were just thinking dumb thoughts about catering to their voting constituents.
They obviously have some viewpoints that astute listeners should pay attention to. As has become the norm, they are unlikely to actually express that viewpoint verbally. You have to base your understanding more on how people act rather than how they speak. And I suspect that viewpoint has some longer-term strategy tied to it that looks beyond the current narrow majority margin in the Senate.
And are there any strong implications from the ways that P***e's hands were forced on Wednesday? I find the whole National Guard timeline very troubling. If the National Guard and police don't protect our representatives, who does, and what does that say about the national balance of power?
I find national politics extremely annoying under the best of circumstances.
Across the board, I hope to at least personally be able to move on and move forward with things in my own life as best I can, while we're still here deep in the dark depths of this raging pandemic.
But it already became a kind of weird week for me, even before Wednesday. On Tuesday I had one of those things happen that's difficult to talk about on the internet, but I'll talk about it here, publicly, anyway, because street harassment needs to be talked about. On Tuesday, amidst everything, I was walking to a natural foods store on a road near my house when a man pulled over purportedly to ask for directions, but actually because he was a flasher. One of those things where as the victim I can't help still feeling residual anger over the period of time between when he pulled over and I realized what was going on and made it clear that he'd better stop, or else. I unfortunately did not have the presence of mind to deploy some of the better street harassment response tactics. There's a part of me that's just angry that I gave off enough of a look to be a mark, given that based on how I usually look, dress, and walk I think I'm at least reasonably good at giving off "don't touch me" vibes most of the time. For a woman in a small city.
At least that wasn't a COVID exposure incident; I also had to navigate my way past a lot of unmasked people out on the street.
More than anything I resent how it brought up one of the ways in which people driving cars exploit people walking around on foot. As nice as it is to have a social norm for helping someone with directions, it's asymmetrical for those of us who prefer to not drive and are already more out in public than people traveling about in their gasoline-powered wheelchairs. If you can't drive a car to navigate to your destination, maybe that's your problem. Also, hell if I know how to get there in a car.
In any case. This all makes the hassle of hauling out the bike and locking it up at my destination seem like less of a hassle, overall.
Then we had the wild national rollercoaster on Wednesday, which has included an absolutely incredible amount of yelling and hot-taking on social media. People who wanted to push buttons very much pushed buttons. My personal rule of staying off the Book of Face and Tweet-Machine during working hours continues to be an important personal rule.
What I still wonder is: how do these recent events relate to that massive government network security breach that happened not too long ago? How do other groups of people who are not aligned with the political views present in my social media bubbles conceptualize what has happened, in a bigger picture? For example, for those Republicans who proceeded to still vote against the (theoretically largely ceremonial) certification of the Electoral College results - what were they thinking? I don't think they were just thinking dumb thoughts about catering to their voting constituents.
They obviously have some viewpoints that astute listeners should pay attention to. As has become the norm, they are unlikely to actually express that viewpoint verbally. You have to base your understanding more on how people act rather than how they speak. And I suspect that viewpoint has some longer-term strategy tied to it that looks beyond the current narrow majority margin in the Senate.
And are there any strong implications from the ways that P***e's hands were forced on Wednesday? I find the whole National Guard timeline very troubling. If the National Guard and police don't protect our representatives, who does, and what does that say about the national balance of power?
I find national politics extremely annoying under the best of circumstances.
Across the board, I hope to at least personally be able to move on and move forward with things in my own life as best I can, while we're still here deep in the dark depths of this raging pandemic.
