Paranoid

A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.

― William S. Burroughs

Political rancor is fine, when informed; it's uniformed partisanship that makes me cringe.

As we speak, Republicans ad nauseam are socializing this palaver:

No one should be allowed to drive again until there are no fatal accidents for 14 consecutive days. Then we can slowly begin to phase in certain classes of people who can begin driving again, but at half the posted speed limit and while wearing helmets.

This chestnut is rooted in ignorance and denial of the lethal nature of Covid-19. Two statistics and one calculation reveal how vacuous it is:

• 38,800 Americans died in car crashes last year, according to the National Safety Council; but 130,000 Americans have died of Covid-19 since its appearance four months ago.
  
  
• Annualized that's 390,000 dead from Covid-19―10 times the number killed in car crashes.

From the standpoint of body counts, equating infectious people to bad drivers is specious. Covid-19 is 10 times more deadly.

But know-nothing Republicans stand by this myth nonetheless.

Another myth they're peddling: 

Joe Biden molested a junior aide in the 1990s.

Again, a few facts should give any thoughtful person pause:

• Over 200 of his former staffers have told PBS then-Senator Biden never spoke to low-level employees, nor did he harass women. One called the accusations "surreal."
  
  
• The accuser didn't quit her job on the Hill, as she claims, "to pursue an acting career;" she was fired because she couldn't sort the mail. And Antioch University says the accuser never taught there, nor receive the law degree she claims to hold.
  
  
• As recently as January, she still practiced an obsessive hobby: posting pro-Russian propaganda on the Internet.

• The accuser also runs up expensive bills and skips on them; never pays her rent; lets her dogs poop throughout her landlords' houses; once she stole money from an animal-rescue nonprofit; and, worst of all, borrows books and doesn't return them.

The accuser is a whack-job. But Republicans know nothing of her background and insist her accusations are true (while those made by Christine Blasey Ford were, of course, false).

William S. Burroughs was right: paranoids know a little of what's going on. 

But never, it seems, enough.

NOTE: I'm grateful to followers for their many kind notes of encouragement. Goodly has now been read by over 385,000 people.