Sorrow is better than fear. Fear is a journey, a terrible journey, but sorrow is at least an arrival. When the storm threatens, a man is afraid for his house. But when the house is destroyed, there is something to do. About a storm he can do nothing, but he can rebuild a house.
- Alan Paton Cry, the Beloved Country
This week's featured post is "My Way-Too-Soon Election Response".
This week it was hard to think about anything beyond the election
That's the subject of the featured post. Long as that post is, there's a lot I didn't get to.
In general, I am avoiding articles that predict the electorate will now get what it deserves. They're emotionally satisfying, but I don't think they lead anywhere good. However, I can't resist sharing this H. L. Mencken quote:
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
The stock market seems to be anticipating corruption, as well-connected companies saw their stocks soar after the election. The American Prospect runs through a list of big gainers, including the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and installment lender MoneyLion, which the Biden administration has accused of overcharging members of the military.
Another big winner: Elon Musk, whose net worth has now exceeded $300 billion. On the surface this makes no sense, because Trump has been an outspoken critic of electric cars like the ones Musk's Tesla makes. But if Trump surrounds himself with oligarchs like Putin has, Musk will be one of the most prominent.
BTW, I would be wary of investing in Tesla. If Musk decides to screw the minority shareholders, will the Trump Justice Department protect them? This question illustrates one of the problems of shifting from a rule-of-law government to an authoritarian government: Everything becomes less trustworthy, so the machinery of economics gets creeky and slow.
Another person apparently slated for a high position in the new administration -- like maybe Secretary of Health and Human Services -- is RFK Jr., who has no healthcare credentials and a history of promoting conspiracy theories about vaccines.
One of the first things to watch is how quickly Trump's mass deportation plans come together, and what (if anything) can be done to slow them down. In his first administration, he moved quickly to implement his Muslim ban, which met a lot of resistance and eventually was significantly delayed/altered by the courts.
but there's still a world out there somewhere
Meanwhile, Germany's ruling coalition has dissolved, leaving the current chancellor without a majority in the Bundestag. Expect a no-confidence vote in January and elections in March.
Germany's economy has stagnated since Covid, producing all sorts of internal tensions. (Germany is one of the countries that would love to have the "bad" Biden economy.) In recent years the neo-fascist Alliance for Germany (AfD) Party has been gaining. Whether they can win the March elections is the next political disaster to worry about.
I'm not sure which narrative of the recent violence in Amsterdam to trust. It followed a Netherlands/Israel soccer game. In some accounts the violence was a pure antisemitic eruption. In others, obnoxious fans on both sides exchanged provocations until fighting broke out.
and you also might be interested in ...
Pope Francis recently started using #Saints in his tweets, not realizing that it refers to the New Orleans Saints football team. The team's X account thanked the Pope for his prayers and replied, "We need them."
The Saints are having a slow start to the season, and were sitting in fourth, and last, place in the NFC South. A significant number of injuries have struck among wide receivers and the offensive line, and last week head coach Dennis Allen was fired. But there are signs the Pope’s prayers could be working: on Sunday the Saints won for the first time since September, holding on for a narrow win over the Atlanta Falcons.
and let's close with some monkey business
Wednesday, 43 lab monkeys made a break for it after an employee at Alpha Genesis Primate Research Center in Yemasee, South Carolina left a door open. As of Sunday, 25 of the rhesus macaques had been recovered. Most of the rest seemed to be in the trees surrounding the lab complex, and occasionally jump back over the fence to interact with their caged compatriots. Police have warned people living nearby to keep their doors and windows locked.
News articles have been vague about what experiments the monkeys are part of, saying only that they "hadn't been tested yet", and so there was no public health threat. CBS reports:
According to its website, Alpha Gensis breeds monkeys and provides "nonhuman primate products and bio-research services" across the globe. The company's clinical trials reportedly include research on progressive brain disorders. ... The Post and Courier newspaper reported last year that Alpha Genesis won a federal contract to oversee a colony of 3,500 rhesus monkeys on South Carolina's Morgan Island, known as "Monkey Island."
Monkeys are uniquely valuable in medical research because they are so similar to humans. But that similarity also makes the cruelty of medical research uniquely horrible.
The Alpha Genesis CEO painted an amusing picture of the escape:
It's really like follow-the-leader. You see one go and the others go. It was a group of 50 and 7 stayed behind and 43 bolted out the door.
I find myself rooting for the monkeys to stay free as long as possible. I occasionally vacation down the road on Hilton Head Island. The next time I do I'll be looking closely up into the trees.
No comments:
Post a Comment