Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Notre Dame & UNC | Lefsetz Letter

“Notre Dame cancels classes for 2 weeks after Covid-19 spike”

“UNC-Chapel Hill fall semester going online amid COVID-19 outbreaks, one week into classes”

This is what happens when you live in fantasyland. When you’ve got that American optimism, but none of the can-do spirit.

Who’da thunk college kids would get infected? After all, it’s an educational environment where kids go to learn, to attend classes and then stay in their dorm and study. WRONG! College is about partying, getting high, having sex. If it weren’t, I’d have never made it through. I learned much more outside the classroom and so does everybody else. You live apart from Mommy & Daddy…they may check in every day on your smartphone, but they don’t know you stayed up until 4 A.M. and puked over the weekend.

The truth?

The colleges need the money. That’s why they’re open. Despite being bastions of learning, they’ve learned nothing.

And we’ve got this same optimism from our president. If we just ignore it, put our heads down and do what we want, everything will be fine, everything will go away…we’re a nation of CHICKEN LITTLES!

And if you say otherwise, if you deflate the balloon, you’re a hater. America can’t handle the truth, it doesn’t want to hear it. About seemingly everything. Upward mobility is higher in Canada and Europe. Life expectancy is down and infant mortality is up. But isn’t this the greatest country in the world! What’s next, a NASCAR driver who says he’s gonna win after his engine blew up?

It’s like America failed the marshmallow test. It can’t sacrifice, not a whit. It wants what it wants and it wants it NOW! And nobody can suffer. And if you do, it can only be for a brief period of time. Imagine telling that to cancer, I was sick and stayed home for a month, now it’s over, forget medication, I’m gonna live my life. Hilarious!

And the big story today is not the Democratic Convention, but the words of our supreme leader, Donald Trump:

“‘It will end up being a rigged election or they will never come out with an outcome,’ Trump told reporters on Tuesday. ‘They’ll have to do it again, and nobody wants that.'”

“Trump floats idea that fraud could lead to re-do of November election”

WRONG! That’s exactly what Trump wants. A tarnished outcome that allows him to continue to rule, despite him doing the tarnishing.

And forget politics, this disavowal of the truth, this disbelief in facts, permeates all sectors and both the left and the right.

SPOTIFY IS THE DEVIL! When the truth is Spotify gives 70% to rights holders and its business model is based on such slim margins that it often loses money.

TICKETMASTER IS THE ANTICHRIST! When the truth is Ticketmaster does nothing the acts don’t tell it to do and the primary profit in concerts is in the ticketing, and the fees don’t all go to Ticketmaster anyway, but are split with the building, the promoter and sometimes even the act!

It just doesn’t feel right!

But science doesn’t run on feel.

Trump said he had a feel for the coronavirus. Like you have a feel for the law. You believe you could argue the case better in court, not understanding there are underlying principles, a structure the attorneys and judges are functioning under. WHEN DID AMERICA GET SO DUMB?

So, we could have been planning how to integrate these college students into society at home. Where they’d live, where they’d get jobs, how much they would pay for online schooling. BUT NO! The institutions refused to come out of their bubbles. They flew on a wing and a prayer. And now that classes are cancelled…if I’m not living in the dorm and I’m not eating the food don’t I deserve a discount? That’s a legitimate question!

And then there are the wankers who believe concerts should start back up. After all, THEY’RE NOT SICK! Thank god the heavyweights in the industry realize this is untenable. But when Marc Geiger said no concerts until 2022 it made national news. As if people could combat the virus by wishing it away.

Now the ski areas are saying they’re gonna open. They’re gonna do social distancing. But they survive on international business, and if they don’t let outsiders in they can’t make their numbers. So, what’s the plan? New Zealand just had a few cases and shut down the ski fields. The odds of skiing before a vaccine? DE MINIMIS!

Don’t plan on doing anything for a long time. Because all indicators say it’s going to get worse. With the cold weather and flu season. But you just won’t believe it, that’s just opinion. Yeah, BY EXPERTS! But expertise has been denigrated.

Can’t somebody speak English?

We used to rely on musicians, before they all sold out to the man and bitched about their income. But now their reach and credibility are so low that no one’s listening to them anyway. Meanwhile, a bipolar rapper is running for President and everybody watches the reality sideshow with their hands off when the truth is the man is sick and needs medical attention. What happened to our compassion?

It’s bad and it’s gonna get worse. And so far, the system hasn’t saved us. And the chances of it doing so in the future are slim. Trump told hospitals to report Covid cases to his people as opposed to the CDC, now we’ve got no idea what the real numbers are. And local leaders are afraid of their constituents, so they don’t take action either.

Test, trace, vaccine. It’s the only way out of this.

As for business reopening…NO ONE WANTS TO GO!

As for Amazon…why is everybody bitching about Bezos, imagine what life would be like without his service! So, his wealth went up, SHOULDN’T IT? I don’t know about you, but the delivery person is at my house seemingly every day, obviating my need to go to a retail establishment and put my life at risk. We shouldn’t be tearing down Amazon, we should learn from its success and drive MORE E-COMMERCE! Oh, but we’ve got to save Main Street, the department store, when the truth is the public avoids them as soon as they’ve got a cheaper alternative. BUT SHOPPING IS THE AMERICAN WAY! Didn’t George Bush tell us to do shop after 9/11? But the truth is the younger generation is not into shopping. Yes, you hear all about the retail adventures of the Kardashians, but oftentimes today’s kids don’t even get their driver’s license. If Mommy & Daddy won’t take them, there’s Uber. As for goods…THEY WANT VIRTUAL GOODS! Hell, that’s what the war on TikTok is all about, selling within the app, but you believe it’s just about evil Apple. Apple may be evil, but the lesson here is today’s youth are into ethereal purchases if they buy anything at all, it’s about experiences, not physical items.

Of course there are exceptions. If what you write or say isn’t 100% true, if there’s even the slightest inaccuracy, YOU GET EXCORIATED! Our country lives on gotcha, it’s the new American sport.

Meanwhile, Jared Kushner goes on CNN and says the President is doing a great job:

Wolf presses Kushner: 1,000 deaths a day isn’t success, right?

But why are we listening to this nincompoop whose father bought him a seat at Harvard, who made one of the worst real estate deals in New York City history and only got his job through nepotism.

Trump doesn’t divest his holdings. Trump has the military stop at his golf resorts. Trump keeps pushing it and pushing it and constantly gets away with it. But the Democrats keep telling us…they’re going to beat him with the SYSTEM!

Do you believe in the system? Where there is not enough money for school supplies? Where you’ve got no job but can’t get relief? Where you can’t even make ends meet when you have your low-paying service job?

Forget the Trumpers, they’re delusional, getting their info from Fox and a Facebook algorithm that keeps them ill-informed. As for Zuckerberg…he fought America’s corporations and won, a much bigger victory than Bobby Fuller’s. You see Zuckerberg IS the law. And despite the blowback, nothing is changing at Facebook. As for the post office, what about the damage that’s already been done?

This is not a time for celebration, this is time for reality. Now is the time for experts with no financial investment to tell us the truth. What next, you go to the doctor and with a tiny chance of survival they tell you you’re gonna live? A track not on streaming services becoming a hit?

Sling your arrows all you want. And tell me I’m wrong when one thing is not as I predicted it. Who knows, the coronavirus might not come back with a vengeance this winter, but isn’t the Boy Scout motto BE PREPARED? Oh, that was before the organization was controlled by the religious and admitted it was a bastion of predatory behavior. Priests couldn’t be at fault. Trump can’t be at fault. It was inevitable, it was baked-in…WRONG!

[from https://ift.tt/2k9aO1A]

No comments: