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ill-be-istj-if-no-one-else-is · 4 years

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Help with identifying ISTP vs ISFP-About a year ago I was typed as an ISTP, and although I initially had doubts, I accepted it. The doubts were primarily based on stereotypes (ie-I’m no handyman or care to take anything apart) and I originally resonated with “Fi”. Recently, I’ve begun second-guessing it by again considering ISFP. The following reignited my vacillation, as I can’t seem to rationalize these points through an ISTP lens:

In addition to the previous-listed hesitations, -I look for self-expression in nearly everything I use-my car, my clothes, my edc gear (pen, wallet, watch, etc)). -any game I play, my avatar has to be a fictional representation of me, not just in appearance, but action. -I seek out opinions from family, friends and co-workers; but any decision will always be mine. Disharmony be damned (kinda-joking). I’ve never given into peer pressure. In fact, I’ve run counter-just to run counter.

Oddly enough, I care a lot about what people, especially strangers, think about me. I’ll jog across the street if cars are waiting for me in a crosswalk or shush my gf in a theater. I’ll be polite in public, until I’m not and then it’s aggression (which has turned physical). I make jokes that I find funny and routinely find only myself laughing at something many would deem inappropriate. But, in this case, I don’t care what people think. Humor > all. In closing, I’m a 6w7 648. Thanks

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Hi anon,

Based on these ISTP still seems way more likely. Some of it is the vague “I know it when I see it” stuff - you don’t come off as a high Fi user from your writing style - but going through the information here, all of your doubts are carefully rationalized to be valid and everything is based in neatly slotted together logic, not “I don’t feel like an ISTP” which would have been a truer ISFP response. You even say your issue is one of being unable to rationalize.

Based on the things you mentioned, Ti with low Fe also fits much more anyway. People like to see themselves in media and to have objects that they enjoy and expresses a certain message about themselves. Sometimes it’s purely for their benefit, but the fact that our choices will say something about us to others is a constant truth anyone with any sense of like, life and society is aware of. Even movements built around individuality and not caring what others think have an element of wanting others to know that you don’t care what they think.

The part about seeking out opinions from people close to you but ultimately making your own choice, but caring what strangers on the street think is far more Ti with low Fe than Fi as well. With the exception of some FJs/2s who are very invested in putting others first, or situations like parenthood where one’s children must be put first in many cases, most people ultimately make their own decisions for their own good. ISTPs are often extremely independent and at times contrarian to be contrarian, vs. ISFPs who can be similarly independent and individualistic, but when they aren’t 4s (so a 6w7) are much more secure in that individualism and don’t see a personal choice to go with the crowd as in conflict.

An Fi dom wouldn’t care much about the opinions of strangers, is maybe the biggest thing, although the examples you gave are generic politeness (which anyone who isn’t a dick follows) vs. actually caring what strangers on the street think of you.

The part about jokes and disagreeing just to disagree are both really indicative of Ti to me as well; ISFPs are more likely to be uncomfortable with inappropriate humor than ISTPs, by far, and while it might be related to the gender divide are also pretty rarely physically aggressive. If you’re running counter just to run counter, see above; you’re still being controlled by what other people are saying, you’re just going with the opposite.

#Anonymous #istp #isfp #introverted thinking #mbti #the thesis of this post is punks aren't punk weird old ladies are the real punks

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momestuck · 5 years

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Epilogues: Candy, Ch 22-26 [Epilogue 5]

/So a lot of heavy shit has happened, though worse is yet to come (I’ve been warned of an onscreen sexual assault in chapter 32).

Everyone’s been having babies and funerals! It’s a busy time.

(note: csa mention in chapter 23, though it does not occur in the narrative)

Chapter 22

This is another John-Terezi text convo chapter. There’s been a three-year timeskip. And... it’s raining ghosts now.

So I guess that’s what became of the whole ghosts in the Furthest Ring thing?

We also learn that, on top of the breeding restrictions, trolls are banned from rising beyond certain levels in government. Jane is, we learn, pretty much running the government behind the scenes, because what makes fascist movements tick is one evil person, obviously.

Karkat’s the one with a backbone at least...

JOHN: and karkat...

JOHN: he’s gone completely off the grid!

JOHN: at first we all assumed that the reason he ran away was because he got fed up with his shitty poly relationship.

JOHN: which was probably part of it, honestly. but now i keep seeing his face on all the resistance posters!

JOHN: i think they may have actually put him in charge?

TEREZI: H3H

TEREZI: 1 4LW4YS KN3W H3 H4D 1T 1N H1M

This situation is only exacerbated by the ghosts. So that means characters who were very definitely dead in the main storyline can show up.

Gamzee has been apparently spreading this religion of ‘redemption arcs’ by ‘making out with people’, and doing some kind of milk-based ‘baptism’. John, meanwhile, asks about the ethics of kidnapping baby Tavros from his horrific parents...

We get to bare witness to Gamzee ‘redeeming’ the ghosts of Feferi and Eridan. Which involves Eridan going on about Feferi’s feet and Gamzee mashing their faces together to make them ‘kiss and make up’.

Jane, it seems, is going full Condesce in more ways than one:

Just then, a dark shadow passes over the park. The crowd falls silent as they raise their heads to watch a drone ship pass by overhead. Its design is insect-like, splitting into many jagged branches, each decked out with weapons and cameras. It’s completely silent, and encased in armor with a bright red finish, smooth and seamless. It’s often cited by Jane as the crown jewel of Crockercorp’s various military contracts with the government.

...including literally building her spaceships, and sending them out over the Troll kingdom.

So we’re basically going to have the Holocaust allegory in here I guess? Fucking hell.

chapter 23

We get more words towards Roxy’s steady character dissolution...

It’s not like Roxy had ever been argumentative, exactly. He just seems to remember someone from his youth who was somewhat more contrarian in spirit than this person he’s married to now.

Back when they were dating, John thought she was acting a little off. Not quite in a bad way, but perhaps a little too “in love,” too fast. At least she still seemed like herself most of the time. But since the wedding, every year that goes by, she seems to become just a little more conciliatory. Not just toward him but toward life in general. She indulges Harry Anderson liberally and almost thoughtlessly. She doesn’t care that her best friend is slowly turning into an executive overseeing the corporate arm up the puppet ass of a ruthless dictatorship. She still thinks Gamzee is being sincere about all this “redemption” bullshit, even though he’s been casting an increasingly dark and hungry shadow behind Jane: a malicious royal vizier to her burgeoning imperial persona.

So John’s going to do something, and hopes that it will make things feel ‘real’ again... which is to say obviously what he talked about with Terezi, kidnapping/rescuing Tavros Crocker. Well-intentioned, but... I do not anticipate this going well.

We learn a little such as... Jane’s planning to outlaw human and troll marriage, which would retroactively hit Rose and Kanaya. Which I guess is the final straw for them. (Frankly it should be well past the final straw for all of them. They should all be with Karkat by this point!)

Also Jane and Jake are in ‘auspistice counselling’. We witness a loud row, in front of Tavros...

TAVROS: It’s fine,,, my parents are kismeses after all,,,

like, fuck.......

It’s a birthday party for Harry Anderson (John and Roxy’s kid), and Jane’s gift is, well, a fucking imperial drone!

sometimes I picture V’s gleeful face as we see the next thing she’s got for us... and now you lick the clown’s armpit... jane’s making the Holocaust but for fictional space aliens...

John awkwardly finds an excuse to be alone with Tavros, to convince him to run away. The kid dialogue is convincingly naive.

The possibility of child sexual abuse (by Gamzee) is raised, but it’s made clear this isn’t the case: what ever else Gamzee is in this version, he doesn’t rape children. However, that the situation is overall abusive in just about every other way is more than clear. Tavros, on his part, seems to be very keen to leave once he’s convinced John can escape Jane’s security.

I have a feeling the imperial drone may become relevant again shortly.

Jade, however, witnesses what John’s trying to do. She insists it will just make everything worse... (also Jake has an ‘execution dance off show’ because yeah...)

Whatever weird character corrosion has hit them is finally raised...

JOHN: if there was another way we would have found it by now!!!

JOHN: but there isn’t one, because everyone’s been all... brainwashed by marriage, or whatever the hell happened over the last few years that made things be this way!

JOHN: it’s like everyone just talks past each other all the time!

JADE: john...

JOHN: i’m the only one who ever seems to realize that something...

JOHN: that something’s WRONG!

Tavros sadly can’t get a word in edgewise as they start having a go at each other - John calling out everything that’s wrong, the way Jade forced a relationship on Dave and Karkat, and... and the noise is loud enough that Jane arrives on the scene.

John finally has a go at her with all the latent awfulness that’s been building up to this point. The fascism, the way she’s treated Jake, the Gamzee thing... the narration has put us very much on his side, centred his perspective, but his friends won’t hear it. And his windy powers destroy the room. So that’s something.

John runs away.

Comment: the mostly strict John viewpoint makes me wonder if there’s any degree of unreliable narration. All the same, most of the stuff is pretty undeniable.

chapter 24

This one begins with an interesting exchange:

JADE [alt-Calliope]: the timelines are interacting again.

ARADIA: ooh do you hear anything interesting

SOLLUX: don’t be s0 n0sy aradia.

To me the implication is that a lot of the ‘arrivals’ in this timeline - alt-Calliope in Jade’s body, the ghosts - are as a result of things that might be happening in the Meat story.

Through alt-Calliope’s eyes, we see Terezi and John’s conversation. Terezi is lost, in more ways than one, in the dreaming void searching for Vriska. She’s also experiencing derealisation... John, apparently in a mood for dropping harsh challenges, tells her point blank that Vriska is either dead, or, not worth her time for leaving her in doubt for so long.

alt-Calliope explains that what is at stake is not the destruction of this universe - but those of them here are ‘the lucky ones’, who live ‘beyond the reach of the prince’. She doesn’t bother to explain what is at stake.

Meanwhile, John and Terezi talk depression. There’s some really vital Terezi dialogue here...

JOHN: please. please come home.

TEREZI: TH3N WH4T

JOHN: umm, i dunno.

JOHN: we hang out and stuff?

TEREZI: JOHN YOU ST1LL DONT G3T 1T

TEREZI: 34RTH C 1S *NOT* MY HOM3

JOHN: do you really miss alternia that bad?

TEREZI: 1 D1D FOR 4 LONG T1M3

TEREZI: MOR3 TH4N K4RK4T 4ND K4N4Y4 D1D 4T L34ST

TEREZI: BUT 1 H4V3 NO 1D34 4NYMOR3

TEREZI: 4LT3RN14, VR1SK4, SGRUB

TEREZI: 1M SO CONFUS3D 4BOUT WH4T 1 W4NT

TEREZI: UGH, 1 THOUGHT TH4T NOT K1LL1NG H3R WOULD M4K3 M3 F33L B3TT3R

TEREZI: BUT 1NST34D 1TS L1K3 1 R3TCONN3D 4 HUG3 CHUNK OUT OF MY SOUL

TEREZI: 1 3R4S3D 4N 4CT1ON OF R3GR3T 4ND GR13F...

TEREZI: 4ND JUST TURN3D 1T 1NTO SOM3TH1NG 1 C4NT STOP CH4S1NG 4FT3R

TEREZI: M4YB3 WH4T 1 D1D W4S N3CESS4RY TO S4V3 3V3RYON3 3LS3

TEREZI: BUT 1T SUR3 D1DNT S4VE M3

oh terezi....

terezi is giving up. she tells john she texted, echoing his words, to ‘give him the courtesy of closure’. and that she’s going to let herself die, alone in the Furthest Ring.

this is the ‘sweet fluffy’ branch huh

chapter 25

finally an update on what’s going on with Karkat!

he’s been somehow appointed ‘Commander’ of the rebellion, with good old Swifer Eggmop as one of his comrades! I’m so glad Swifer is having a role. Karkat is not all that pleased about the successes of his rebellion:

KARKAT: SO FAR ALL THIS “TROLL REBELLION” HAS AMOUNTED TO IS A WHOLE LOT OF DICK ALL, WITH AN ADDITIONAL SIDE SERVING OF JACK SQUAT, FOLLOWED UP BY A FINAL COURSE OF GETTING TO WATCH OUR TOP ANALYST, CLIPER BORDEN, BEING FORCED TO DANCE TO AVOID LIFE IMPRISONMENT IN A LABOR CAMP ON LIVE TELEVISION AND MAKING A COMPLETE ASS OF HIMSELF.

It’s all a weird mix of surreal and grimdark, much like the Alpha kids’ backstory in Homestuck proper. There’s hard labour camps... making cake; a ‘pastry-based shadow dictatorship’.

Rose and Kanaya are at least involved somewhat in the troll rebellion, and transport of the Mother Grub has been arranged.

Anyway, Karkat’s typically grumpy internal monologue is interrupted by the sudden arrival of Meenah from another dimension. A living Meenah - equipped with a Ring of Life. John asks if she got it from Calliope, but Meenah insists she did not. (Possibly she got it from Andrew Hussie himself? I’d have to watch Cascade again probably...)

Meenah, it seems, is fresh from battling Lord English - apparently without success. But her massive army of ghosts arrives with her... and she’s willing for Karkat to take charge and order her around, as long as he does it with a suitably commanderly demeanour. Does this mean the rebellion now stands more of a chance? Meenah is ruthless (she was the Condesce in another life), though capricious... Karkat is honest and direct and angry about the right things, but rather prone to getting lost in it.

Also he still won’t text Dave, and won’t let Rose talk to him about it.

chapter 26

Back to John, who’s thinking about messaging Terezi again - presumably in the hope that she is not, in fact, dead?

He’s getting a good old mope on about the seeming fakeness, non-’canonicity’ of life on Earth C. But after some ‘melodramatic contemplating’ in this vein, he’s interrupted by his dad’s car.

I’m going to be very curious if the Meat route explains how all this stuff got into the Earth C universe.

Unfortunately, what John finds in the car is... not his dad, but a bit of Terezi’s blood. From which he concludes... he’s never going to see her again, there was never even a possibility of it.

Feeling derealisation more than ever, John just screams a lot.

Damn lol, this story is making me care about John Egbert of all people!

epilogue 5

This is the episode where the whole idyll comes crashing down. Things aren’t ok, things weren’t going to be ok, trying to pretend things were ok just made everyone miserable.

I am sufficiently depressed that that rather appeals as a narrative - much more than a ‘happily ever after’ ending. But it’s not over yet.

Hopefully there’s yet hope for the characters I like to find some manner of escape from this latest hell, develop out of the worst selves they’ve built... Roxy, at least, I hope can change, stop being this non-person...

#momestuck

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go-redgirl · 5 years

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Exclusive Excerpt—Charles Hurt: ‘Still Winning: Why America Went All In on Donald Trump—And Why We Must Do It Again’

Exclusive excerpt is from Charles Hurt’s new book, Still Winning: Why America Went All In on Donald Trump—And Why We Must Do It Again.

***

Donald Trump understood from day one that he could never win the presidency talking the way politicians talk. And he could never win by “acting presidential.”

People came to love his hilarious campaign trail shtick where he stands upright behind the podium and woodenly pretends to “act presidential” as he struts around the stage like a toy soldier, muttering meaningless politically correct bromides. It is a still-hilarious shtick that drives crowds wild. But more important, it demonstrates just how utterly useless it would have been for Donald Trump to run as some kind of normal political candidate.

No, this was a man who was out to crash the gates of Washington. And in order to do that, he had to radically upend the way the game of politics is played. He had to start by changing the language.

Such a change would not be easy. And it certainly would not be popular among politicians firmly ensconced in Washington. The royalty of the American political scene— known variously as “the Establishment” or “the elites” or “swamp creatures”—closely guard the language that is spoken in politics. It is a powerful tool in maintaining their grip on power. And the political press slavishly enforces these rules of language. (If you don’t speak the language, you don’t play the game.)

These people have spent decades establishing this vocabulary and hounding from politics anyone who veers outside the proscribed lines. They are forever culling the herd of politicians for saying things that are stupid, thoughtless, strange, or outside the acceptable range of political orthodoxy. The result of this ever-vigilant speech police is a stilted, meaningless political vocabulary that’s poll tested and riddled with preposterous euphemisms that provide for an infinite number of acceptable phrases that Democrats and Republicans yell back and forth—never actually winning any arguments and not accomplishing anything tangible for the voters they claim to represent.

Speech codes are nothing new. They have been popular among tyrants, despots, and demagogues since the beginning of human politics. Such a speech code was made famous, of course, by George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, published in 1949.

In Orwell’s fictional country of Oceana, the establishment “Inner Party” uses the official language of “Newspeak” to control the lower population of workers. The Inner Party uses all manner of media—two-way telescreens to microphones to spies—to enforce the Newspeak speech codes and report back any “thoughtcrimes” committed by the working proles. […]

The Lexicon of Lunacy

It is chilling to read 1984 today, seven decades after George Orwell published it. His ability to predict how established government authorities would use such “Orwellian” tactics to hold on to power is rivaled only by the ability of America’s Founders to ward off the very same abuses in some of their wisest elements of our Constitution.

In America, obviously, political leaders don’t enforce a “Newspeak” speech code and they certainly do not codify it. They don’t have a name for it at all, because to have a name for it would confirm its very existence. But others—outside the established “Inner Party”—do have terms for it. “Political correctness” is probably the most common description.

I call it the Lexicon of Lunacy.

The list of words, terms, and phrases in the Lexicon of Lunacy runs from the ridiculous to the deadly serious. Take the word “cisgender,” for example. I don’t actually know what it means but I know that we are supposed to use it when we are all tiptoeing around somebody’s severe midlife mental breakdown in which they decide to go under the knife to rearrange the sex organs God gave them.

Come to think of it, this is not at all funny. I feel genuinely sorry for anyone who finds himself, herself, or itself that thoroughly confused and lost in life. The only thing that could be worse would be if politicians decided to take that devastatingly depressing sorrow and weaponize it for political use.

Oh yeah, that has already happened.

So, how about this for an actually funny term from the Lexicon of Lunacy. “Overweight” has become a bad word because we don’t want to “fat shame” or “body shame” anyone. Instead we call the person “under tall.” Or, maybe “height- challenged.” Or “girth-oppressed.”

Those are funny. My children use them against me all the time.

Others are not funny at all.

The fuzzy term “pro-choice,” for instance, is the accepted euphemism for a political stance that favors killing a healthy, live human fetus that is living and developing in its mother’s body. In some cases, the term “pro-choice” can even mean the extermination and dismemberment of a healthy, growing fetus that might even be viable outside the womb. Who on earth hears of such a grisly procedure and thinks of the word “choice”? And, of course, the prefix “pro-”?

Less graphic but devastating in other ways are terms such as “free trade.” “Free trade” has become a mantra for hyperglobalization of the economy in ways that punish American workers, wildly enrich Wall Street and the captains of industry, and obliterate the ideals that have always separated America from the rest of the world.

The only group without a voice in this debate were millions of regular American voters. Until Trump announced his campaign.

Donald Trump saw all of this for exactly what it was. It was a fraud. Whether it was trade, immigration, wars, spending, or taxes—it was all a fraud. The American people were getting taken to the cleaner’s financially, and the American people were getting sold out as losers.

And Trump wasn’t even president yet! He was still just one of sixteen people vying for the Republican nomination. If you polled the media that day, every single reporter in all of politics would have given Trump a zero percent chance of winning the nomination, let alone the presidency.

After the speech was over, I called my office at the Washington Times and told my editor to scrap the column I had filed—that a new one was on the way. I endorsed Donald Trump, something I had never done before in a newspaper column. Because, after all, who gives a crap what I think about anything? But this was clearly something different. The speech was brilliant. It was daring, to be sure, but it also reflected an enormous amount of intentional thought. Trump had been listening very closely to voters. He had also been talking to some very smart people who clearly follow politics closely and understood the political landscape far better than any of the self-anointed geniuses inside the Beltway.

So I picked up the phone and called Steve Bannon, a friend who I knew liked to dabble in the more contrarian world of counterpolitics. We agreed the speech was great and, of course, Bannon told me he had been talking to Trump. A speech had been written. Bannon had seen it as late as the night before, he said. But the speech Trump delivered on live television to the country was entirely different than the one that had been prepared.

“Yeah, he didn’t read the speech,” Bannon marveled. “He got up there and just decided to wing it!”

Even at that point, Trump was not to be handled or scripted or managed or staffed. He was going on nothing but his own raw political instincts. And in the end, voters trusted Donald J. Trump to remain in character more than they trusted any politician to keep his campaign promises.

That turned out to be a pretty smart bet.

READ MORE STORIES ABOUT:

Media Politics 2016 election Charles Hurt Donald Trump george orwell Orwell's 1984

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sneaksite · 4 years

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‘America’s weirdest state’ offers an extreme case of the country’s broader failure to take the pandemic seriouslyI have spent the past three months in my home state of Florida, during which time I’ve watched it become the hottest of coronavirus hotspots on the planet. This week began with the announcement that the state registered over 15,000 new infections in a single day, which was almost 3,000 more daily cases than any state previously had recorded since the pandemic began. If Florida was a country, according to Reuters, it would have the world’s fourth-highest tally of new Covid-19 cases over that 24-hour span, trailing only the US, Brazil and India.Florida has a well-deserved reputation as America’s weirdest state, so perhaps the pandemic punishment being meted out to us right now shouldn’t come as a shock. A 1948 Fortune magazine study observed: “Florida is a study in abnormal psychology, useful in signaling the … hidden derangements of the national mood.” A lot of bad trends in American life find their most bizarre and refined forms in the Sunshine state, which is why “Florida Man” has become shorthand for the bad behavior of too many state residents. As far as the present pandemic is concerned, the simplest and most convincing explanation for why Florida is experiencing an explosion of Covid-19 cases it that it is an extreme case of the broader American failure to take the pandemic seriously.Considerable blame rests with the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis. A former member of the House Freedom Caucus, the most slavishly pro-Trump faction in Congress, he won election as governor in 2018 largely on the strength of the president’s endorsement as well as campaign ads that showed him teaching his children how to build walls and recite “Make America Great Again”.Unsurprisingly, he followed Trump’s lead in minimizing the seriousness of the pandemic. Florida was one of the last states to impose a stay-at-home order, in early April, and began reopening little more than a month later. A state data scientist responsible for tracking the spread of the virus was fired when, she claimed, she wouldn’t manipulate the data to show sufficient recovery from the pandemic to justify further easing of restrictions.Even now, DeSantis is aggressively pushing for schools to reopen next month, on the grounds that if big-box stores like Walmart and Home Depot can resume operations successfully, then so can schools. Teachers object that schools are smaller and more crowded spaces, and that few customers spend eight hours a day in the stores. But perhaps DeSantis is channeling the dystopian future vision of the film Idiocracy, in which higher education has been taken over by stores like Costco.DeSantis, to his credit, allowed some of the hardest-hit cities and counties to delay reopening and require masks in some public settings – unlike the Republican governors of Texas and Arizona, who blocked any pandemic restrictions more stringent than those imposed by the state (both governors have backtracked). He also seems, in hindsight, to have been unfairly pilloried by the media for allowing beaches to stay open, in view of current opinions on the lower risk of outdoor transmission.> Florida’s subtropical climate is an irresistible inducement to hedonismIt’s also clear that Florida, like the country as a whole, failed to shut down to the extent and duration necessary to contain the spread of the virus, or to wear masks and practice social distancing to the extent that was routine in most societies where the virus was successfully brought under control. During the first two months I was down here, I rarely saw as many as half of the customers (and in some cases staff) in supermarkets and drugstores wearing masks. Groups of teenagers thronged the shopping malls as if the pandemic was a thing of the past.Bars, nightclubs, movie theaters, gyms, massage parlors, nail salons and a host of other transmission-friendly environments reopened in early June, with distancing restrictions more or less ignored. Floridians who chafed at weeks of restrictions made up for lost time by partying down with a kind of feral intensity, to judge by local social media, at any rate. Florida’s subtropical climate is an irresistible inducement to hedonism, and many of the young people who crowded into bars and nightclubs believed that they had nothing to fear from the virus. Health officials have linked more than 150 Covid-19 cases to a single bar in Orlando. (DeSantis subsequently banned on-premise alcohol consumption at establishments that derive more than half of their income from alcohol sales.)There could be some other factors peculiar to Florida that explain the virulence of the pandemic’s spread here. Partisanship is hard-edged here, and not wearing a mask has become a mark of Republican tribal identity. Many conservatives I know (particularly men) consider mask-wearing to be an infringement upon their constitutional freedom. Skepticism of science and experts, along with ingrained contrarianism – some otherwise sane Floridians I know resolutely maintain that the virus is a hoax, or no worse than seasonal flu – surely plays a role in some cases as well.The state government’s handling of the pandemic has proved shockingly inadequate, largely because the previous Republican administration sabotaged its institutional capacities. It took weeks and even months for laid-off Floridians to get unemployment relief, largely because the online system was designed to make it harder for workers to receive benefits so that the previous governor (now a senator), Rick Scott, could claim lower jobless numbers.Floridians historically have shown a ferocious individualism and an unwillingness to abide by state government restrictions. In addition, the severe economic damage inflicted by the shutdown surely has made people more willing to engage in magical thinking about how the dangers of the virus have been inflated by the media and the establishment, including the mistaken belief that hot weather prevents virus spread.> The inability of too many Floridians to distinguish between reality and fantasy is part of what’s frustrating about this placeTwo-thirds of Florida’s residents (and nearly all of its tourists) come here from somewhere else, which may cut against the collective sense of social responsibility that’s more widespread in more settled communities and societies. And masks are indeed uncomfortable in Florida’s heat and humidity, as visitors to a reopened Disney World are finding out.The pandemic laid bare the incompetence of the Trump administration, which took much too long to put widespread testing in place and has yet to implement contact tracing on the scale that’s needed. But the pandemic has also shown the weakness of America’s federal structure and its insufficient state capacity relative to other developed countries, where governments have implemented more uniform and effective national responses. Perhaps one of the pandemic’s legacies will be greater citizen insistence on competent government.I’ve spent most of my adult life outside Florida, but I share the affectionate exasperation that many Floridians feel for their state. It’s not like anywhere else, for both good and ill. The New York Times recently interviewed a couple who visited the reopened Disney World and shared their belief that the park’s reopening “was the first thing that made us feel like we could leave our house and still feel safe”. Why? Because “it’s Disney”. The inability of too many Floridians to distinguish between reality and fantasy is part of what’s frustrating about this place, but their irrepressible optimism makes me hope we will get through this pandemic without losing too many more of them.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://news.yahoo.com/im-florida-coronavirus-crisis-doesnt-103748520.html

#Sneaksite

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qadeer00001 · 4 years

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from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/38XwHXO

#News Alart

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