I feel your pain. My family grew up on Long Island, NY. We are Hispanic family. My older brother moved down South he has become anti-immigrant (side note my husband of 19yrs is an immigrant from South America who just became a US Resident 3 years ago thanks to Obama) he said in a room with my husband that he hated immigrants. He he is a Prepper, Republican (but he does not like T), He loves Alex Jones, He worked for the election of Rand Paul and he loves conspiracies and he also said Covid was just a flu. He is a the opposite of everything my mom has taught us. He has no empathy. I had to tell my poor husband to ignore his ignorance. But my brother wrote a letter of support for my husband immigration case. He can sometimes be ok.
He was sending me videos of how the covid was a big lie and was sending me links to Alex Jones website. I don’t talk to him. It’s on a very rare occasions. He drives me up the wall. He called me when NY was having the high numbers. I thought he was calling me because he was generally worried for me since I am the last one left on LI. No he was calling me to say it was just the flu and that I should buy hydrated foods. He was trying to tell my parents not to be worried but thank god we already know he is NUTS. I usually ignore his craziness but I had to text him back one day that to stop sending me that crap since it’s not the dam flu. 3 months later Florida is the epicenter. Makes me want to text him that it’s ok it’s just the Flu. He will be ok.
Re Cohen and the retaliation ruling -- While I am happy with the judge's ruling and for that reason agree that Cohen should be released, there are thousands of prisoners who are still housed in Covid-infested state and federal facilities. Where is the compassion and justice for them? Money, power and fame wins out.
Thank you.
My brother has a tendency to wrap his nonsense in trappings of intellectual pursuit a la "the great rabbinical traditions." He claims to be "rabidly centrist" - meaning that what he does is accuse the left of running around saying the sky is falling, and accusing the right of outright lies, but he puts more weight on incompetence than malevolence and derides those of us who use the words nazi, fascist and gestapo when describing current events.
Important to remember that my bro is a total convert - was raised Episcopalian (his wife was raised Baptist), and he confessed to me that rather than become a Unitarian or Unity member, he wanted to become Jewish "to make a subversive choice". So what happens is that occasionally people who either a) are born people of color, or b) born Jewish, call him out, and I agree they are right to do so. He made a choice, and to go around correcting everyone else on holocaust or white supremacist terminology is disingenuous.
He's my brother, so I've put him on 30-Day-Snooze on FB, so I can ignore him til I calm down.
@laura-f My mother and sister are both toxically Catholic, and I live with my mom. Even though I've actually unfriended them both on FB so I don't have to deal with their crap on line, I still have to hear it at home, so I can completely relate. *sigh*
wow 30 days. You are much nicer then me. I just hid my brother page so I never have to see it again
If you wish to engage with your brother (and believe me, I totally understand if you don't want to), I would simply ask him sincerely, "Okay, hard data... what would you consider "hard data" in this situation?"
And listen to him. He may bluster, but in rabbinical tradition, he's supposed to give an answer. (I went to school and worked with MANY Conservative and Orthodox Jews).
Next question: "Okay, how would hard data be gathered in the situation in Portland?" Make him think through the steps of how this would operationally work: how it would be gathered, when it would be gathered, etc.
"And WHO would be doing the gathering?" "How would that information be consolidated into a data set? Who would be doing that consolidating? How long would it take to consolidate that information? When would it be available?"
Warning: Your brother may have a breakdown somewhere along the way, but the object is to nudge him into a real self-examination of whether there really is any "hard data" that he would accept here.
I did that, in different words, and other friends of his posted along the lines of "Aside from in-person videos, there is no hard data".
He shut everyone down, and deleted any discussions that didn't fit into his "parameters" even though everyone was on the same side and very civil.
My hubby tried too - he is born Jewish and was a Poli Sci major in college. The only point my brother would concede to him was "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
He's asking everyone to do this work for him - another friend of his pointed out how lazy it is, and kind of $h*t stirring, but then he's not allowing discussions on his query. No one has succeeded.
To my mind, it's as if he's asking us to quantify how many clouds are in the sky, and no links to partisan sites of any kind. OK, but what I tried to put across is that it's impossible for any of us to provide such data (e.g., the number of clouds in the sky all day today) because it's still today and no one knows yet how many clouds there were, nor do we know how much of the sky he wants us to look at.
Yes. They are using it to detect virus shedding before symptoms show enough to test and results are back. The reason I couldn't find the articles I was specifically looking for is because there are dozens of pages reporting on that on Google, as it is becoming a trend the last month or so. The issue with that is when signals are found, the issue is still too politicozed and people dug in too deep nowadays that it won't do anything to change behaviors in an affected community.
This issue has gotten to the point where I was speaking with my daughter's former teacher yesterday. This woman is in her 60s, an early childhood psychologist, and an excellent teacher. You would think there would be some sense used by someone educated(especially in psychology), but of course she did her damnedest to convince me that Bill Gates, Deborah Birx, and Tony Fauci were working together with the CDC and WHO to use covid as population control and then mask tracking chips as vaccines to keep tabs on people and easily kill them when they decided to. When I asked her where she was getting her info from, she refused to name any sources other than "news and websites" and wouldn't accept my disagreement, or logic for that matter' as a valid argument.
It cracks me up when people claim the government wants to track us all with microchips. If you have a smartphone and if you are on social media, you are already being tracked, but by corporations instead of the government.
Besides, why would the government, an entity that loves tax money, kill off its citizens? That's less tax money for them, lol.
Nice to know I'm not the only one surrounded by people who don't take COVID-19 seriously and believe in dangerous conspiracies. This pandemic truly highlighted just how gullible and stupid people are, even the so-called educated ones.
A Seattle ban on tear gas, non-lethal projectiles and pepper spray has been blocked by a federal judge. The ban had not yet taken effect, but it has now been sidelined.
For anyone planning on going to a protest - contact your local ACLU. Many state chapters (including CA) have an app you can install. What the app does - you use your phone camera to record on the app and it immediately uploads it to the cloud, in case your phone gets confiscated or destroyed. It can also be used to record ICE and other police actions.
@carmen the crazy-making thing about ridiculous conspiracy theories is that, whenever there really *is* a criminal conspiracy in the government, it just gets brushed off as another whack-o "Conspiracy Theory", case closed.
Besides, why would the government, an entity that loves tax money, kill off its citizens? That's less tax money for them, lol.
A: Maybe because dead people cost the govt. less than long-term health care and Social Security benefits for the elderly. Also the fact that people of color are disproportionately affected by the disease could outweigh the loss of revenue, for an openly white supremacist administration. Add to the mix collusion with a hostile foreign government, and it raises the possibility that they really do want us all dead.
A vaccine that tracks people is a conspiracy theory. Covid-45 is real, and has been weaponized against the American people, either purposefully, or negligently, or some combination of both.
The word I use for the pandemic is "opportunistically", but there is malevolence in the mix. I've been saying all along that the goals of the theo-oligo-autocracy include:
- Cull the herd. Less disability, SS, WIC, Medicare, etc. to pay, the better.
- As many people in jail as possible, especially PoCs.
- Prisons are a constitution-free zone, not that it matters because prisoners can be used as slave labor.
- Use Christianity as leverage where possible.
- Eliminate free public education, or at the least make it so non-functional that it doesn't actually educate the young populace.
- Use anyone they can deem "Other" as a scapegoat as it is convenient to them.
- Ransack the Treasury and also rob the populace blind to line their own coffers.
Then there are the foreign interests who are meddling in any way they can to destabilize countries they don't like. This includes Russia, Saudi Arabia, N. Korea and China. They'll do anything they can, whether electronically, financially, conspiratorially, or straight up as terrorism.
Never forget that the 9-11 plot can be traced back to Saudi Arabia, not Iraq. Remember how tied our oligarchy is to S.A., including the Bush Dynasty. I can still see in my mind pics of the Saudi prince with Shrub, walking hand in hand and smiling. They smile while they put the knife in, as they say.
And it's no coincidence that the "fed agents" that are committing war crimes are probably mercenaries courtesy of Erik Prince.
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/3/10/war_contractor_erik_prince_has_close
@laura-f But it's costing billions and billions and bringing down a lot of businesses and institutions. I'm not saying the pandemic isn't being used for evil now that it's here, but I have a bad time with conspiracy theories. Absolutely everything is a conspiracy. I remember seeing Martin Short's one man show where he brought John Stamos on stage and said, "Where were you when Queen Elizabeth killed Princess Diana?" Just one of many, including Hitler escaping, Elvis still alive etc. The only thing I'll agree to is we don't know everything about the Kennedy assassination. But not for 10 seconds do I believe that Johnson said the night before, "We won't have to worry about Kennedy after tomorrow." Give me a break. And that's what happens when a conspiracy theory gets going. Or the Las Vegas shooting, where a woman was walking around saying "You're going to be dead in 45 minutes." Or the person who told someone before 9/11, "don't be in the city next Tuesday." I lived in NY - you know how many versions of that I heard? Seeing the way things are done, it's hard for me to believe that a bunch of people are that organized or that smart.
@suspira44 which part of @laura-f's post sounded like a conspiracy theory to you?
What @unk-p said - Where am I saying anything is a conspiracy??? I'm one of the people on here who shuts those down!!
And I used to live in NY too, and my brother worked around the corner from WTC (and we didn't know if he was ok for a whole day) AND I have jettisoned out of my life those friends (on the left mostly) who continue to insist that 9-11 was an inside job after YEARS of every year on 9-11 having to listen to their crap.
And HERE:
The only actual conspiracy is the one visited upon us since 1950 courtesy of the "GOP". And it's working so far.
@suspira44 Where on this site has someone posted that covid was invented to kill people?
I think it was lost in translation, all;-)
Also, do not forget that the entire world is struggling with Covid. What is happening in the US is horrid, but people are dying all over the globe. It has come to Africa now, that will be a massacre with healthcare in disarray there.
The 6 points Laura F mentioned, can play a part in the US by the non to smart political minded, but nothing about this can be controlled. You can only use the consequences for a while until it blows up in your face ('you' as in wrong doers). It used to be 'democrats use the virus' as parroted by the GOP. Then it was 'oh look, it is only wiping out democratic strongholds aka NY'. Now it's in republican areas. After a while, most ppl will use their brain. I cannot believe that 40% of the US are die-hard Trumpers who cannot think further than 'woe is me' and 'everybody is out to get me'.
I think the most important part is that we make sure people don't use those 6 points successfully and make a wall of moms, light-workers, democrats (not the party, but the system) ourselves ao;-)
I have a feeling we all agree on that part?