ugliness abounds

This article in the Atlantic is one of the more interesting perspectives I've read on covid-19. On our unfortunate fixation on coming up with a single fix that will be 100% effective, he says: "Many critics of masks argued that they provide only partial protection against the virus, that they often don’t fit well, or that people wear them incorrectly. But some protection is clearly better than no protection. ...'X won’t stop COVID on its own is not an argument against doing X.' Instead, it’s an argument for doing X along with other measures." Unfortunately, the article is long and somewhat repetitive. But even if you only read the first third of it, you'll get the idea. 

NPR's discussion of the history and future of plastic recycling. Turns out, the plastics industry has always known that recycling plastic isn't viable. It's far more profitable to create new plastic products than to recycle used plastic. The plastics industry spent millions on ad campaigns to convince us that recycling was going to work, even though they knew it wouldn't. This is one of the more disturbing articles I've read recently. We really, seriously need to use less plastic. Carry those reusable bags, people. Worth reading. Thanks to my friend Marina for the link.

I was going to do seven links to interesting articles as one of my "seven things" posts, but I got so depressed while I was looking up other articles, I gave up. It just makes me want to go offline and put my head under a rug. No matter what happens in the election in November, this stuff isn't going away. Maybe we can at least get an administration that doesn't lie to us, but the problems we're facing aren't going to evaporate either way.

One thing I kept running into was our current obsession with assigning the worst possible motivation to the "other side," whichever side you're on. One example out of dozens: if someone is opposed to health-care-for-all, it can't be because they're concerned about our staggering national debt, it's because they're racist and don't care about the health of marginalized people. You get yourself into an echo chamber where you only talk to people who agree with you, so you lose touch with the idea that people on "the other side" might actually have some legitimate concerns about the issues. These issues are complicated. If they were simple, they'd be solved already.

And the solid gold elephant in the room that is not recognized nearly enough: we're being coached into paranoia and distrust by media and corporate and political entities who are consolidating their power and/or making billions in profit from our distrust. People don't click on headlines that are calming and sane. There's no money (or votes) in de-escalation. 

Here was the one thing that made me smile today: The "Couch Choir" singing the old Turtles' song "Happy Together."