August 29, 2023 - While driving home from the gym this afternoon, I finished listening to CD #10 in the 10-CD audio book version of "Why We're Polarized" by Ezra Klein:
It's a very interesting book. Unfortunately, the narrator of the audio book speaks somewhat softly, so it was often very difficult to hear everything while listening in my car. When I was well past being half done, I obtained a digital copy of the book and started reading it on my Kindle. But, I soon stopped, and I just finished listening to the audio book version.
The book opens with this information:
“I’ve spent part of nearly every day since November 8, 2016, wrestling with a single question,” writes Hillary Clinton in What Happened. “Why did I lose?”Here's more from further down on page 1 of the book:
What Happened is an unusual book. Published mere months after the 2016 presidential election, it is the defeated candidate’s effort to understand how she fell short. At its core is the belief that something extraordinary and bizarre occurred in 2016—an outcome beyond the boundaries of the normal give-and-take of American politics, an aberration that must be explained.
Donald Trump won the election. There was a Maya Angelou quote that ricocheted across social media during the 2016 election: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” Trump showed us who he was gleefully, constantly. He mocked John McCain for being captured in Vietnam and suggested Ted Cruz’s father had helped assassinate JFK; he bragged about the size of his penis and mused that his whole life had been motivated by greed; he made no mystery of his bigotry or sexism; he called himself a genius while retweeting conspiracy theories in caps lock.And the author of "Why We're Polarized" tries to explain what happened. It all began in the 1950s when Joe McCarthy tried to argue that his opponents were communists who were trying to take control of America. Since then, there's been a trend to demonize the other side in national elections. But no one played that game better than Trump. And that is how we ended up with a lying crook as our 45th President.
Even Trump’s team didn’t believe he was going to win. Plans were afoot for him to start a television channel in the aftermath of his loss. And then came election night. He won the electoral college even though 61 percent of voters, in Election Day exit polls, said he was unqualified to hold the presidency; even though most voters had a higher opinion of Clinton and believed Trump lacked the temperament for the office he sought.
It's a very interesting history lesson. The big question that remains is whether Trump will be thrown in jail, where he belongs, or will he be elected as our 47th President? Or both?
Trump supporters seem to be driven by their emotions, which means they like what Trump likes and hate what Trump hates. Logic and common sense are evidently not factors in their thinking. The big question today seems to be whether people who do not use logic or common sense will accept what judges and juries say when their hero is convicted of one crime after another.
August 27, 2023 - I seem to have a severe case of "writer's block." Day after day, I want to write a comment about something, but all I do is sit and stare at my computer screen for hour after hour. I also want to get back to work on my book about "Logical Relativity," but I can't even get myself to read through what I've already written to see where things need to be added and improvements can be made.
Instead, mostly I listen to podcasts. But, I've got a problem there, too. Every morning I go through my list of favorite podcasts, and I download any new ones that seem interesting. I download them into my 1 terabyte auxiliary hard drive, which currently has folders for each of 163 different podcasts. Then, later in the day, when I've run out of other things to do, I sit down on my easy chair and start listening to podcasts that are stored on my MP3 player. I delete each podcast after I finish listening to it. That means that, every three weeks or so, I run out of podcasts in my MP3 player, so I have to download a new batch from my auxiliary hard drive. That's a 2 step process:
1. COPY the new episodes from my hard drive to my MP3 player.That means I retain a copy of every podcast I've ever downloaded. For example, on my hard drive I have 4 episodes of "Everything Everywhere Daily" waiting to be downloaded into my MP3 player, and I have another 913 episodes that I downloaded previously. I have 1 episode of "The Infinite Monkey Cage" waiting to be downloaded, and 160 episodes I previously downloaded and listened to. However, I also have 42 episodes of "Stuff You Should Know" waiting to be downloaded, and 60 episodes I previously downloaded. The numbers get more complicated when you realize that the average episode of "Everything Everywhere Daily" is about 15 minutes, while the average episode of other podcasts can be as long as 2 hours, with some episodes running over 4 hours.
2. Move those new episodes on my hard drive from their original folder to a "Transferred" folder.
And, of course, some episodes seem too interesting to go through the normal process, so I transfer them immediately to my MP3 player, instead of waiting until my MP3 player is empty. Lots of podcasts about Donald Trump fall into that category.
Plus, I go to the gym 4 times a week, and I have other chores to do. I also never listen to podcasts after 4 pm, when I usually turn on my TV. The writers strike means that there's not much to watch on TV that is new, except for the evening news. But I have thousands of movies and 263 TV series on DVDs. Right now I'm watching Season 2 of "The Good Wife," which is all about lawyers fighting with one another. When they are in court and before a judge, it can get very interesting.
The problem is that I'm downloading new podcasts faster than I am listening to the podcasts I've already downloaded. So, I'm falling farther and farther behind.
But, I suppose there are worse problems that having too many interesting things to do and not enough time in which to do them.
