chasing '80 and....just sayin!
Saturday, September 19, 2020 at 01:20PM Ruth Ginsberg died today and, sadly, her remarkable life was instantly overshadowed by the never ending red/blue smackdown. Will coverage of her now disclosable liberal leaning sway the electorate? Yes, for accuracy, but likely, only about 3 in 130 million, or simply not at all. We are all fixed in our biases, regardless of the polling/media motivation to keep the election relevant.
One aspect of the divide is notably asymmetrical. All the blues know their voting why's and therefore's. They know categorically that they will pull the "against Trump" lever. For reds the logic chain is much less clear. You hear musings about taxes, and trade and IRAs, and conservative judges, often laced with "Trump Behavior" acknowledgments, but always ending with party allegiance.
These "identities" are so strident that they surely arose from a more primal human attribute. My 77+ sense leads me to this: At some point after Sapiens were declared the winners in the "inter-species wars", Sapiens took up the "strong/weak wars". Given the lessening species survival pressure, the physically weaker humans found opportunity to develop subtle skills to offset their physical power disadvantage. Over time the strong subsets competitive advantage narrowed, but their well being improved resulting from their adoption, albeit slow, of the weak subsets progressive skills. This fragile equilibrium exists today and although no longer tied to gender or brawn, it, through the mandate of story, explains why red stays red and blue stays blue.
Even when red is lead by a psychopath and blue wants to follow an ageing communist, we all line up with our strong/weak story, a story we chose in our early youth and which we rarely unwind...it's all we have. Yes, the strong/reds know that they need Dr. Fauci, and the weak/blues know that Schumer and Shiff are just plain weak, but....
No matter how much we might revere Ginsburg, or need $1200, or cry for the Mexican kids, or love Ronald Regan, or listen to a thousand Bloomberg ads, 99% of us are locked either strong or weak.
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