Fools And Their Money

Trump’s latest email blast is full of incendiary lies pic.twitter.com/9GD35ZzILU

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 15, 2021

I realize this is another sign that democracy is doomed and we're all going to wish we'd listened when the sky falls in on us (no, I'm not attributing that sentiment to Rupar; he's too intelligent to be that dim), but this is a fund-raising e-mail, not a notice sent out on Twitter by Trump's "press secretary" (Or whatever her title is).

This is the crap schmucks are paying for by donating to Trump and getting on his mailing list.  They actually paid to receive this crap.  And I don't care who's saying it, up to and including Trump:  it's still a distinctly minority position.

I heard two things on the news this morning:  one about shipping ports in Italy, one about cops and vaccine mandates in Chicago.  The Chicago Police Union (of course), which has only the best interests of its members and the public in mind, are threatining a work stoppage over the Mayor's order that all city employees show proof of vaccination or pay for regular covid tests themselves.  The city is taking this seriously enough to seek an injunction in court, but Chicago has already lost 7000 police officers to covid, ya gotta wonder what the problem is here.  You've also gotta wonder how many cops are actually gonna stay home over this issue.

Recent history says:  not many.  As they say in the stock prospectus, past performance is no guarantee of future performance, but we've heard about these "huge numbers" of people who will quit if they have to get the vaccine, and those huge numbers just...fail to quit.  Yes, people are quitting retail and restaurant jobs in massive numbers, but mostly that's because of rude customers and exposure to covid, not because they have to be vaccinated.

Which brings us to Italy.

A work stoppage and protest was called at a major port there for today (sorry, I was in the car, I can't recall where, exactly, this was to happen).  The protest was over Italy's "green card" vaccine "passport," and probably involved ship crews as well as port employees.  The expectation was for a major shutdown of Italian shipping.  Stephanie Ruhle even breathlessly asked the reporter at the port how this would affect world-wide shipping.

Not at all, as it turned out.  "Tens" of people, said the reporter, showed up to protest.  Business went on as usual.  Nothing was so much as slowed down by the protestors.  A lot of noise, in other words, but nothing else.  And noise passes soon, and is over.

So the noisemakers dominate the news, and news anchors who need people to stay tuned tell us breathlessly that doom is predicted and here's our correspondent to tell us just how bad it is, and....it isn't.  (Ruhle also breathlessly reported on the situation in Southlake, which she said involved just one school, but that's how it gets started.  The reporter made clear it started with a stupid state law, but Ruhle was playing talk-radio host and had to keep the flames fanned.  I used to think better of her.)*  Trump is making a lot of noise, must of it either unintelligible or self-destructive. This kind of noise (in the tweet above) is for the fools soon parted from their money.

Those people will always be with us.  Just try not to be one of them.  It's pretty much the best you can do.

*I'm looking forward to the parent who finally sues over a "violation" of that law, so the courts can point out its far too vague and indistinct (what does it mean to make someone feel "bad" about their race?) to be enforceable.  Which will end that nonsense.  Again, we owe a debt to the courts, even if it takes awhile for us to get there.