Self-licking ice cream cones

The real desire for news?

Extreme weather punctuated our conversation yesterday as central Scotland has had nothing but unceasing rain and wind this year. As we landed in Glasgow Tuesday, I noted several fields with standing water but that became a much more common sight as we neared Loch Leven where we lunched yesterday. It has been great for the flowers but the soil looks ready to expel the next raindrops out of exasperation.

The conversation yesterday was rewarding because we had not seen our friends for two years and the four of us asked a lot of questions of each other. We are all retired folk, well into our multiples’ decades of experiences. We were lucky enough to trust one another to share our experiences whether it be in Scottish nationalism or the growing violent crime in wee Annapolis. We exchanged ideas and heard each other, I think, over the course of a spectacular afternoon.

I don’t think any of us merely intended to reinforce our long-held positions, a trend making me increasingly uncomfortable these days. Not that I am not guilty of being enamored with my convictions, I suspect, but so much conversation-big and small-these days seems an attempt to reinforce our existing ideas. This probably has happened since the Dawn of Time but I find it dangerous.

The political conventions are a manifestation yet we tend to pronounce them as news events, according to whether the verbiage is what we abhor or what we embrace. How many minds are these events changing for either party, really? Short of someone dropping off the stage because of missing the X designating the location for the best camera angle, do voters-as opposed to partisans- tune in to these extravaganzas or are they merely backslapping among like-minded friends who only reconvene in the flesh every fourth year?

Donald Trump is the same man he has been since 2016, only more brazen in his statements. But, his acumen on the public stage dates back to multiple bankruptcies (I have no idea why anyone would see hims as a brilliant businessman if those legal cases alone count) and high viz divorces/remarriages over the past half century. Has he changed except to age?

Kamala Harris is, admittedly, less well known but got plenty of attention when she launched an unsuccessful bid to defeat Trump on her own in 2019 before taking the Veep slot under Joe Biden. She had run successfully at the state level in the huge media market of California vut opponents questioned her philosophy on the law, on prosecutions, and on the prominence of a biracial female in the public eye for a generation. Is Chicago really new?

A note I received yesterday, in response to the column on “outside the Beltway” from a loyal Idaho reader resurrected my sense of a self-licking ice cream cone (a keenly DC phrase) regarding all of this when he opined “Most have chosen sides, and no amount of media blitz, interviews (or lack thereof)…will change their minds…”

Sadly, I fear he is correct.

So many self-aggrandizing electrons masquerade as something else, perhaps to include this column (though I would like to assume not). The bottom line is that at some point we decide something, then rarely really taking in much data that is anything other than confirming for our biases. That is, again, not a startling revelation.

What is startling is that within our individual eco systems we have found it perfectly fine merely to consult sources to confirming those biases with little fear of contradictory data, even if everything we think we know is completely false. We don’t care if it is false anymore, I guess. That is flat out dangerous.

Yet we have become so fractured as a world that questioning those basic assumptions within your eco system can exile you from family and friends, much less those with divergent thoughts, as we only seem to desire protecting views we find comfortable. We aren’t interested in data challenging our deeply held beliefs in the vast majority of cases because the personal costs can be so high.

I know there are readers who don’t agree with everything what I posit in this newsletter. Most of you would likely cover different themes but I try getting to what I see as generally urgent, with occasional whimsy. But I am thrilled you persevere, respond, and challenge because that was my point all along. I WANT to hear what works or doesn’t and why why why why.

None, repeat none of us knows for certain what Xi Jinping is thinking nor can we predict Vlad’s actions except by historic analogy but we are looking at the questions together. I am not clairvoyant about anything but want to open us all to possibilities, often hopefully not to transpire. We can’t be certain of much except within the laws of physics about gravity, the principles of conservation, and the like. This newsletter raises different views not to implore you to accept them but to think about their implications, hopefully to construct civil exchange of ideas built on something less prone to more distrust and until ultimately hatred.

Perhaps I kid myself.

In any case, I recognize that there are radically different views from my own. I may find some distasteful or dangerous but I respect the right someone has to hold them in our system.

Thank you for reading Actions today.

Be well and be safe. FIN