The strangest part?
While running errands today, I noticed that most people on the streets don’t wear masks - not even “chin covers”!
News blues…
I began following the work of The Lincoln Project last May when I wrote:To the extent that I appreciate The Lincoln Project’s sense of humor, dedication to principle, and growing list of succinct ads, I declare myself an “Honorary” Lincoln Project Republican. (Read the post about the context of “honorary.”)Some views presented in The Lincoln Project’s ads are antithetical to my views and I don’t post them. Politico, however, published a thoughtful article by Joanna Weiss, “What the Lincoln Project Ad Makers Get About Voters (and What Dems Don’t)”. Excerpts:
…How has one renegade super PAC managed to trigger Trump and his allies so thoroughly? Part of it is surely frustration that a group of Republicans would issue a full-throated endorsement of Joe Biden. Part of it is skill: the Lincoln Project ads are slick, quick and filled with damning quotes and unflattering photos. But part of it might just be that Republicans are better at this than Democrats. Trump may sense that these ads are especially dangerous because they pack an emotional punch, using imagery designed to provoke anxiety, anger and fear—aimed at the very voters who were driven to him by those same feelings in 2016. And history, even science, suggests that might in fact be the case—that Republicans have a knack for scaring the hell out of people, and that makes for some potent ads.Read Joanna Weiss’thoughtful article.
…Research shows there’s a reason these ads could be effective with Republicans voters: Conservatives are an especially fear-prone group. In a 2008 paper in the journal Science, researchers subjected a group of adults with strong political beliefs to a set of startling noises and graphic images. Those with the strongest physical reactions were more likely to support capital punishment, defense spending and the war in Iraq. A 2011 paper in the journal Cell found a correlation between conservative leanings and the size of the right amygdala, the portion of the brain that processes emotions in response to fearful stimuli. In her book Irony and Outrage, University of Delaware professor Dannagal Young points out that liberals and conservatives respond differently to entertainment rhetoric: Liberals have a higher tolerance for open-ended ambiguity, while conservatives look for closure and want problems to be solved.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch…
Yesterday’s post addressed obsessions one can develop during Lockdown. I also described someone else’s obsession: to snuff me out!Amazed at the lack of effective action by our private security company and the police, I penned an article about the experience for a local weekly newspaper that will be published in next week’s (print) edition:
Justice, South African styleThoughts? (email raisingsandradio – at – gmail.com)
I was recently verbally abused, and life and limb threatened, by my 87-year-old mother’s domestic worker’s son, a 40-year-old child-man. This, because, drunk again, he acted out his anger at being legally dislodged, two years ago, from mother’s Merrivale property. He’d squatted there for six months, drunk, unemployed, rent-free, and with full board, lodging, and laundry service.
He stood outside the upper gate and I recorded on my cell phone his obscenity- and death threat-laden harangue while I waited for our private security services provider and SAPS.
Both arrived within half an hour of my call. Then things got interesting. Both were a sharp contrast to what occurs in my home state, California.
For the last several years, I have spent several months each year in Merrivale caring for my fragile mother. This year, I was due to return to California on 21 May, four days before George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis.
Lockdown prevents me from returning to the US where, concurrent with the pandemic, massive protests rage against police violence.
Police violence, and protesting police violence, is nothing new in the US. I’ve experienced several convulsive protests: Rodney King (1991), Oscar Grant (2009), Eric Garner (2014), and too many similar killings – few of which have resulted in police officer convictions. America, the can-do country, armed to the teeth, believes in going beyond the call of law-enforcement’s duty to crack down on resisting arrest, civil dissent, or, depending on the color of your skin, on nothing much at all.
I am more anarchist than law-and-order uber alles. Nevertheless, words, deeds, and actions contrary to a human’s and a society’s rights must be recognized effectively.
A drunk, abusive, and life-threatening perpetrator should be listened to as intently as a sober victim. Should not the benefit of the doubt, however, be afforded the victim when the abuser, a convicted rapist, publicly threatens rape, mayhem, even murder?
Apparently not in this section of KwaZulu Natal.
Both security service provider and SAPS listened to my abuser, encouraged him to pull up his britches, then prepared to drive away with nary a word to me. I had to wave them down to learn that 1) I could make a police report if I wished – at the police station, but 2) “Covid”, the officer implied, prevented the generation of a police report.
Then, both private security and SAPS drove off, leaving my abuser to continue his foul harangue outside my gate.
Would I have preferred he was physically beaten, handcuffed, a knee held to this neck?
Not at all. But perhaps he could have been placed in a vehicle – or a cell – until he sobered up?
Instead, at sunset, he returned, even more drunk, to the lower gate – opposite my bedroom window – and began a more graphic series of threats (also recorded on my cell phone).
I’ve heard nothing further from the private security firm nor SAPS.
I have, however, cancelled my account with that private security firm. I‘ve engaged a more proactive team that is working with me to apply for a restraining order.
Do I expect a miracle? No. But recognition of my rights as a human would be nice.
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