Reality bites
Increasingly, Americans hold a view of reality that comports with their political leanings. Polls consistently show that members of the president’s party think the economy and country are doing better than members of the other party. When a president of the other party is elected, the sides flip, even though the economy has not changed. Similarly, people’s views of the coronavirus, school reopening, and even the merits of free trade swing with, or against, the positions espoused by President Trump.
One result of this phenomenon is that political leaders with sufficient stature within their respective parties can get away with, uh, less than complete depictions of the truth when communicating to the base. Which brings me to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, and specifically to a poster Cuomo personally designed, intended to celebrate New York’s having bent the Covid curve.
The poster defies description, and I urge you to click that link to check it out. Take a minute to really look at it – there’s a lot to take in. There are many layers of weirdness when it comes to this poster:
1. Aesthetically, it honestly looks like a teacher assigned a group of fifth grade art students, all of whom are related to Cuomo, to design a poster about New York’s Covid experience.
2. A sitting governor actually designed this poster, and he apparently is really into poster art and has designed other posters.
3. The thing is embarrassingly self-congratulatory. I mean, it would be cringe-worthy, even if congratulations were warranted.
4. Congratulations, self or otherwise, are objectively not warranted. New York has had more Covid deaths, over 32,000, than any other state in the country, and it’s not even close. The next highest is California, at about 7,500. Florida, at about the same population of New York, has had 4,676 deaths. New York trails only New Jersey in deaths per 100,000 population, at 167. New York’s death rate applied to a full Autzen Stadium would result in about 92 people dropping dead, or between two and three people per section. Cuomo’s state has suffered worse than any other during the pandemic.
Cuomo’s an astute politician, so why would he congratulate himself on his handling of a disease that killed 32,000 New Yorkers? Because he thinks he can,and he’s probably right. Despite the many deaths, extended lockdowns in places like New York City, and his order that nursing homes admit Covid-positive patients, Cuomo is more popular than ever. He has been successful in persuading people that he’s doing a good job, even while chiding Republican governors who preside over states with a fraction of the deaths of New York. It’s like a bizarro world in which facts don’t matter. It happens with Republicans too, but Cuomo’s case is the most extreme, in my opinion.
Greater Idaho
Some people frustrated with Oregon’s, ah, sometimes left-leaning governance want to expand the borders of Idaho into eastern and southern Oregon to form something called “Greater Idaho.” If you take a close look at the proposed new borders, you will notice that Redmond and La Pine are welcomed into the new mega-state, while Bend is rather conspicuously gerrymandered into what’s left of Oregon, along with Portland, the Willamette Valley, and the northern coast, presumably a reflection of Bend’s increasingly leftward drift.
As pointed out by friend of BBR Kim Gammond, Ashland, which makes Bend look right wing in comparison, is to be included in Greater Idaho. Coming under the distant rule of Boise would probably not be welcomed by the city in which a major bone of contention recently was whether to ban public nudity, including a city councilor going nude in protest. Something tells me that the laws governing nudity (and especially the civilization-threatening atrocity that is city councilor nudity) would be more lenient in Lesser Oregon than Greater Idaho, if any of this were to happen, which it won’t.