Rhinebeck Revisited: Fewer Sheep, Less Wool

It's been four years since I last posted about the annual New York Sheep and Wool Festival, known succinctly as "Rhinebeck" in the knitting world for its venue, the Dutchess County Fairgrounds in Rhinebeck, NY. If you haven't yet read my first post about it, start there.

Rhinebeck has been my favourite event for the dozen or so years I have been privileged to know it. The first year I attended, I took the bus from WEBS. This had its advantages, from the cider donuts, raffles, and festive atmosphere on the bus, to the fiber-y camaraderie. The what-are-you-knitting conversations on the way down shifting to a show-and-tell of what everyone purchased on the journey home. I even made a new friend on that bus ride (hi Rena!). The not having to drive part was also appealing but I have opted to drive myself every year since. I need the control of getting there early and staying until the bitter end, as well as the opportunity to enjoy the fall foliage along the Taconic State Parkway, a route the bus cannot take. Not to mention the extreme level of motion sickness I suffer every time I ride a bus puts somewhat of a damper on the day.

In the years since my first Rhinebeck pilgrimage, I have taken one knitting friend to yarn mecca (hi SJ!), as well as my father, who for several years planned his annual visits around Rhinebeck weekend. He is not a knitter, but he appreciates fine craftsmanship and he enjoyed browsing the booths of the many woodworking vendors, who sell beautiful wooden tools for all the fibre arts, from spinning wheels and looms to handmade crochet hooks, as well as spoons and other kitchen tools, and carved animals (I was tempted by the hedgehogs and had to remind myself that I am not a dust-catching-tchotchke person).

The four-hour round trip drive gives me enough time to listen to my favourite recording of my favourite opera, so that has become something of a Rhinebeck tradition as well. Others include ordering a pizza when I am about 20 minutes from home on the return journey. Pizza is a treat that fits the celebratory atmosphere of the day, but also serves the practical purpose of providing dinner when I am too exhausted to cook. A shower, a glass of wine, and pawing my Rhinebeck purchases without getting pizza grease on them is the limit of my energy level at that point.

I would like to indoctrinate introduce my partner and his daughter to Rhinebeck, but the stars have not yet aligned to make that feasible with his work schedule. It is also possible that I have scared them a bit by describing the methodical way I approach the day, which comes across as more akin to a secular praying of the rosary through the stations of the cross than a fun day out at the fair, munching on cider donuts as the colourful leaves drift down around you and the sheepdogs bark joyfully as they run to catch frisbees.

Yes, I am severely OCD, but I am not alone in my devotional approach to Rhinebeck. Sagacious knitting wit Franklin Habit, who recently moved to Paris, marked the occasion this year by posting "Happy Rhinebeck to all who observe."

Speaking of those cider donuts, I have marvelled that the consistently longest of the ridiculously long food queues at Rhinebeck, rivalled only by the lamb sandwich line, is the cider donut queue. Living in the heart of New England, you can't swing a skein around my town from Labor Day through Thanksgiving without hitting a place that sells cider donuts (and, even better, pumpkin donuts). I have the obligatory sacramental cider donut each fall—this year during an apple picking outing, fittingly—but I confess to taking them for granted now that I live in New England. The online buzz about Rhinebeck this year, after its pandemic-related cancellation in 2020, included much anticipation of cider donut consumption, often tucked in posts and comments advising first-time Rhinebeckers on what not to miss. All the donut talk reminded me that many knitters come to Rhinebeck from the Sun Belt, the Rust Belt, the Bible Belt, and other places outside the Cider Donut Belt. The women behind me in line to get in the gate were from Georgia. They were talking, as I could not help hearing, about the difficulty of finding a bra that fits properly and is comfortable, without underwires digging into underarms, underboobs, and underribs. I did not join the conversation as they were not wearing masks but I silently echoed their awed exclamations when one of the women mentioned that she works in a lingerie store that carries bras from a 28A to a 48O and they paused to attempt to imagine the formidable rack on the customer needing a size O bra. (Yeah, I know you just Googled. Take as long as you need. I did too.)

After missing a year of Rhinebeck, my anticipation was verging on desperation. This was little-kid-on-Xmas-Eve level excitement. I could hardly sleep or focus on any task for at least a week prior. Ironically, between my day job, freelancing, and taking care of family, I had no time to actually knit, but I was thinking of little else, even as I endeavoured to be present in other areas of my life. I started listening to a new-to-me knitting podcast on my morning jog, and perused knitting patterns on Ravelry instead of politics on Twitter in the loo.

But I had a nagging worry that the lingering pandemic, due to the anti-vaxxers/anti-maskers, was going to negatively affect this year's longed-for Rhinebeck experience. The omens of an abridged Rhinebeck multipled as the holy third weekend of October approached. First, neither the organisers nor the fairgrounds required masks or proof of vaccination to attend. Masks were requested, but not required, in buildings, for anyone vaccinated. But we know that the Venn diagram of people who refuse the vaccination and people who refuse to wear masks is nearly a circle, so such milque toast requests are worse than useless, they are a capitulation to the selfish, homicidal Covidiots who wish to prolong the pandemic at all costs, even their own preventable deaths and Darwin Awards (which cannot come fast enough to please me, but that's another blog post). None of my knitting friends was going, fearing that it just was not safe yet.

The organisers were implementing some changes to limit transmission of the coronavirus and forestall a super-spreader event, but they sounded more likely to abridge the experience without much increasing safety. Vendors were to be limited to every other booth space, no double booths, and some vendors were moved outside. All workshops and speakers and indoor demos were cancelled or moved online. All children's events were cancelled, although that seemed like a good precaution, to be fair. (And, to be blunt, Rhinebeck is not very kid friendly anyway. Few knitters bring their children to Rhinebeck, if they can avoid it, because kids' limited patience precludes the parent from perusing the yarn. It is not that they don't love their kids, they just can't shop with them in tow. Of course, if dad is there, he can take the kids to watch the sheep herding and pet the llamas whilst mom herds skeins and pets yarn, but two-parent families are rare these days.)

I was simultaneously worried that vendors would stay away but crowds would be worse due to pent-up demand. Attendance turned out to be much lighter than usual, great for me albeit not for the sellers, but my fears about the dearth of vendors were more than realised. The every other booth arrangement did not lead to the rest of the vendors simply being moved outside. There was a smattering of tents but most of the vendors I look forward to browsing and buying from simply weren't there. All vendors noted that they had brought much less stock than usual, and the larger vendors, who normally use two adjacent booth spaces, were unrecognisable in single booths with limited stock. The vendor who makes the felted cat toys that I replenish each year was there, but no cat toys. The same sad scene was repeated, with the notable exception of soap. For some reason, soap vendors have been multiplying like rabbits at Rhinebeck in recent years, and, in lieu of yarn, I somehow came home with about 15 bars of soap. I'm strict about soap scents being seasonal, so one bright spot in a disappointing Rhinebeck year was stocking up on autumn and winter soap. I am definitely covered until Rhinebeck next year, and possibly for several years beyond that.

Cider donuts excepted, the food was different this year too, or perhaps I'm different: I look forward each year to a certain chocolate chip cookie vendor who sells cookies in the shape of a bar. They're egregiously expensive, but worth it as an annual treat, along with a hot cup of coffee to ward off the autumn chill. I was afraid the cookies might be a casualty of the pandemic, but they were sold by a vendor attached to the fairgrounds, i.e., in a permanent location, that vends at every event held there, not just Sheep & Wool, so I lived in hope.  Maybe the cliche of nothing living up to our inflated expectations applies, or perhaps it's my habit of making my own cookies with greatly reduced sugar content, but I found the cookie to be both bland and sickly sweet. And the hot coffee? It was 76F, nearly a Rhinebeck record. As someone who freezes when it gets below 75F/25C, I have been enjoying the unusually warm autumn, as have my peppers and tomatoes, which are still producing fruit in mid-October, but even I admit this warm weather is somewhat inappropriate for a knitting festival.

One of the many initially-informal-but-now-codified traditions that has arisen around Rhinebeck is the making and wearing of the Rhinebeck sweater. This is a garment knit for the express purpose of showing it off at Rhinebeck to an appreciative audience. No Rhinebeck is complete without tapping a few strangers on the shoulder to exclaim, "I love your [jumper, cardigan, hat, shawl, cowl, whatever hand knit item they are wearing to elicit this response]!" It typically takes about two years to knit a sweater but, since the organisers cottoned on to this tradition, an official Rhinebeck sweater pattern has been promulgated, giving knitters a year to complete it for next year's festival. This tradition in turn has given rise to t-shirts, bags, and buttons that say "No rest [sleep, in some versions] til Rhinebeck!" Any knitter who sees this in the wild knows exactly what it means. This year, most fairgoers abandoned the wearing of their hand knits in favour of tank tops and flip-flops, but a few stubbornly wore their (beautiful, it should be noted) Rhinebeck sweaters. She moved through the fair, drenched in sweat.

Another inviolable Rhinebeck tradition is the (increasingly overpriced) lamb sandwich. It is, ironically, the only line this militant vegetarian is willing to stand in—yes, hypocrisy duly acknowledged. I don't normally eat lamb, or any meat, but the juxtaposition of the lamb sandwich, its lamb sliced like pastrami and served on a kaiser roll with onions and mustard, with supporting the use of sheep as fibre animals has struck me as complementary. There is not enough money in raising sheep just to shear them for wool, and some, usually males, as in the dairy and egg industries, are killed for food and skins. I do not approve but I understand the economics of the situation for farmers, many of whom are engaged in preventing heritage breeds from becoming extinct. Finally, the culinary designation 'lamb' refers to meat from sheep under a year old, by which time they are long since fully grown. They are still cute, but not the adorable baby lambkins gambolling around playfully that I, for one, could not imagine anyone being so heartless as to murder, even if starving to death were the only other option. So, hypocritical, perhaps, but this is my rationalisation for my once-a-year-at-a-sheep-and-wool-festival lamb sandwich, which I have not actually had in four years, as I got the soup two years ago, and they were sold out three years ago. The lamb sandwich vendor also sold lamb sausage and lamb and barley soup. The soup, with carrots and spices, is delicious, and warming on a cold autumn day. But this year, the part of the menu sign listing the sandwiches and sausage was covered over, replaced with a handwritten menu offering lamb shank ($22) or lamb riblets ($20). No lamb sandwiches this year, although they still had the soup. It was, though, as I mentioned above, 76 degrees, so for the first time, there was no queue, and with good  reason. I managed to find a vendor selling pumpkin mac & cheese, which indulged my autumn food fetish adequately, but the lack of lamb sandwiches was odd and disappointing. 

Traffic in the buildings was designated to be one way, another pandemic precaution, but there were some flaws in the execution. One doorway (all doors were kept wide open this year for air circulation) had "entrance" signs, the opposite doorway had "exit" signs. There were arrows on the floor backing up this traffic flow instruction, but someone had accidentally (presumably, unless they were having a laugh), put the arrows on the floor in the wrong direction, so they were pointing toward the designated entrance, leading everyone to ignore the whole mess and just browse around in every direction as usual, like squirrels who have eaten some coffee beans.

Much lighter crowds this year

Hearing snippets of conversation is unavoidable, and there is usually one Rhinebeck gem. This year, in the Ewetopia booth, I overheard a man retort to his companion, "You're the earth tones. I'm not. I'm Jew tones."

The kangaroos and lemurs were there as usual

So were the sheep, albeit far fewer than usual

Yet another tradition is to photograph one's Rhinebeck haul and post it on social media. This year, I bought far less than normal, and most of it was gifts for my partner and his daughter rather than additions to my yarn stash. There was (much!) less to buy, but I also felt constrained by my lack of time for knitting, something I am determined to remedy this year. I still have enough yarn in my stash to circle the globe several times over, so I feel guilty buying more until I have used it. I also seem to have acquired a future, and that has altered my perspective. (Yes, that first clause was stolen not-quite-shamelessly from Possession.) Back when I was under- or unemployed, broke, heavily in debt, barely scraping by living on my credit cards, throwing money down the toilet in interest, and feeling little hope of ever improving my financial situation, shopping for yarn once a year seemed to be a small indulgence to make a life on the financial and professional fringes bearable. A lot has been written on the mystery of why poor people waste money on small indulgences, such as coffee drinks, rather than living as ascetically and frugally as monks and saving every penny. The answer, obvious in retrospect, turned out to be that the poor have no hope of socio-economic mobility. Giving up small indulgences like a $5 coffee are not going to lead to enough money to buy a house or invest or otherwise climb out of poverty and the disdain heaped upon them by the rich reflects a breathtakingly myopic selfishness, a lack of understanding that pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps and trickle-down economics are a myth and a self-serving lie, an excuse for perpetuating a system that rewards rich people for being rich and punishes poor people continuously, in every area of life, from conception until death and beyond, for being poor. Now, I have a full-time job. True, it does not pay enough, but I augment it with freelance work, minimise my living expenses, and have a partner who has just moved in and started sharing rent and utilities. I have paid off two of my three credit cards and I can see what I never believed possible before: A life where I am not flushing money down the toilet in interest every month, and can start, for the first time in my life, building a savings account for emergencies. A house is probably still unrealistic. The Boomers were the last generation to be able to afford to own property, but living debt free, and having a cushion for emergencies, even accounting for the inevitable future bouts of unemployment due to the lack of job security in any field these days, is something I can see on the horizon now. I no longer buy anything I cannot pay off at the end of the month. No more accumulating credit card debt because it is my only option to live a little. Knowing I would have to pay off whatever I purchased by the end of the month effectively stopped me from buying much at Rhinebeck this year.

One vendor from whom I did make a small yarn purchase hailed from Irasburg, Vermont. I love the Northeast Kingdom and have a special affection for Irasburg, thanks to the Kingdom Run, so I was moved to support this seller in particular.

Trumpublicans? I didn't ask, but they show the Covidiot signs

Even before the pandemic, I never wanted to support vendors whose values I deplore, but unless they advertise their politics, I have no way of knowing how they vote. The pandemic made that more obvious. I decided that I was not going to buy from any vendors who were not wearing masks as that clearly identifies them as Trumpublicans, anti-mask, anti-vaccine zealots who are responsible for prolonging the pandemic. One booth had three sour-faced sellers, no masks, one wearing a cowboy hat, with an American flag on the wall behind them. I tried to get a photo of them as a textbook example for this blog post, but they were glaring at me, so I retreated across the aisle and was not able to get a clear photo through the crowd. I was horrified to see one of my favourite soup vendors maskless and quickly asked what their stance was, hoping I would not have to forego buying some of their lilac soap. They explained that they were vaccinated, and had been masked all morning, but their position near the wide open, breezy doorway had led them to feel safe removing their masks. I don't think that was wise, given their exposure to so many people, but at least they weren't virulent anti-mask/-vaxxers.

Another vendor that pissed me off this year was Bumblebee Yarns. They had a Harry Potter line in 2019 and I was looking forward to shopping it again this year but they said they had discontinued it due to the Rowling transphobia controversy. Jesus Fucking Christ, for the millionth time, Rowling is NOT transphobic. That is a wilful misinterpretation of her words and her views.

This year's tiny Rhinebeck haul

As the sun shone and the queue for ice cream eclipsed the donut line, the forecast rainstorm looked to be delayed. But 30 minutes before closing, the wind picked up and a bank of clouds approached and overtook the sunny day with cinematic drama. Fairgoers scattered like cockroaches when you turn on the lights in a city apartment kitchen. Food vendors rolled down their steel shutters, yarn vendors packed up and abandoned their booths, and the festival informally and abruptly closed early. I got to my car just as the wind-driven prickles of rain changed to fat drops. The rain was traveling west to east, and so was I, so I faced a white-knuckled drive home trying to outrun the storm whilst going about 30mph on the Interstate in a blinding downpour.

The clouds roll in, vendors shutter, crowd scatters

When I got home, I discovered that my local organic pizza haven, due to the pandemic, now closes at the absurdly early time of 7pm. My partner found alternative pizza, but the main pizza joint in a college town closing at 7pm on a Saturday night, really?

Still, I showered and had that glass of wine, and petted my (small) yarn haul. Tonight, we knit.

Until next year, baaah.

To the victors go the spoils, to the losers go the votes?

Victory and concession speeches carry no legal weight.

A candidate can concede or declare victory at any point during the vote counting when the tally looks bad/good for them, but the actual winner is the person who has the most votes when the counting stops.

In recent elections, some Republicans have petulantly refused to concede. Roy Moore, for example, never conceded, but that made no difference to the fact that he lost.

Concession is a mark of civility and class, like calling the victor to congratulate him or her, thanking supporters, and speaking warmly of hope for bipartisanship. It is crass, petty, immature, and selfish for the loser not to concede gracefully. But Republicans think they have an entitlement to rule, and that no non-Republican winner is legitimate, even in a landslide.

As noted above, claims of victory or defeat have no legal significance, but they do have psychological significance. If the legitimate winner wrongly concedes, as Gore did in 2000, it has the effect of making any dispute about the results seem illegitimate to the public.

In the imminent 2020 election, a record number of ballots will still need to be counted after election night. Federal law gives states 35 days to count them, although some individual state laws mandate a shorter timeframe. Too many ballots will remain to be counted for us to know for certain who has won the presidential race and many down-ballot races on election night, unless the victory is by such a huge margin that it exceeds the number of ballots yet to be counted.

So, expect a harrowing election night, but do not expect to go to bed knowing the winner of most races. Nor should you expect many candidates of either party to concede that night. Do expect Trump to declare victory no matter what the vote tally shows on the night. This is tactical; his Orwellian strategy is to try to make people believe falsehoods by simply stating them repeatedly as if the mere repetition of lies makes them true.

It is anticipated that there will be a "red mirage" on election night, with more Republicans going to the polls on the day and more Democrats voting by mail, leading to a false sense of Republicans leading in many races until all the votes are counted.

Expect Republicans in general, and Trump in particular, to argue that the count should be stopped and mail-in ballots should not be counted. In anticipation of this, some Republican-controlled counties are setting aside mail-in ballots to count after Election Day with the expectation that they may not be counted at all.

If the red mirage does not occur, and Trump, and other Republican candidates, are behind in important races, expect them to abruptly change their tune and argue vociferously that every ballot must be counted and the election is not over until they are. Remember that one group of ballots not counted until after election night is military ballots, which skew heavily Republican.

The Republican stance on counting ballots will depend on how they are doing in their races, but either way they will pretend it is on principle. Both parties will find this risible, but, just like with the SCOTUS seat, Republicans do not care about hypocrisy when it benefits their side. Not a single Republican believed the argument that filling Ginsburg's seat was not hypocritical after their refusal to fill Scalia's because this time the same party controlled both the Senate and the White House, They simply did not care. They had power that they could use to benefit their own side, so they did.

Given the prevailing belief among Republicans that mail-in ballots will contain more votes for Democrats, they have been trying to slow down the mail so that ballots will not be received by Election Day. Some states require ballots to be postmarked by Election Day, but others require them to be received by Election Day. Alaska and Ohio have the most generous deadlines, accepting ballots up to 10 days after Election Day. By slowing their transit, the Republicans can prevent ballots not received by Election Day in states that require it from being counted. In response to the Republican mail tampering, some states have scrambled to change their laws to allow counting of ballots received after Election Day. These changes have been challenged in court by Republicans, with mixed results, depending upon whether the change was initiated by the state legislature or the state courts, and other factors. Another strike against the already appalling record of 2020 may be that it proves to be the first U.S. presidential election when mail tampering is such an effective voter suppression tactic that it changes the outcome.

The only guarantee of a Democratic victory is such a large majority of votes for Biden on Election Day that the uncounted ballots will not change the outcome. If that transpires, it is unlikely to prevent Trump from challenging the results. He, and the Republicans, can still harness electoral votes to override the popular vote.

How? Shockingly easily, as it turns out: All states but two give all of their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote in the state. (Nebraska and Maine divide them proportionally based on percentage of popular vote.) But they do not have to do this; the state legislature is at liberty to ignore the popular vote and give the state's electoral votes to the candidate of their choice. 

That sounds radical, but the legal barriers are surprisingly thin. The Constitution allows states to choose electors 'in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct'. All states currently have laws directing their legislatures to allocate electors based on the popular vote, but these laws can be changed. A state with a Republican-controlled legislature and a Republican governor (of which there are currently 21) can do it easily; if the governor is a Democrat, the legislature will have to have a sufficient number of Republicans to override the governor's veto. If a state has both a Republican governor and a Republican-controlled legislature, it is likely to be a red state in which the popular vote favours Trump anyway, but there are a few Republican-controlled battleground states that could go to Biden (e.g. Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Texas).

If Trump is in need of electoral votes, states with Republican-controlled legislatures and Republican governors can simply ignore the state's popular vote and allocate all of their state's electoral votes to Trump. This manoeuvre could give Trump a second term even if he loses the popular vote by a wide margin, and even if he is unable to halt counting of mail-in ballots or otherwise invalidate legal Democratic votes.

Of the many nefarious schemes the Republicans are plotting to secure victory, this strikes me as the easiest and most likely for them to pursue unless the electoral vote is so close they they only need to stop the vote count in a few states to reach 270, in which case they have the federal courts in their pocket to enable them to do that.

Post-Pandemic, Expect a Swift Return to Status Quo Ante

This pandemic should be a wake-up call to decrease economic inequality. Instead it will exacerbate it.

If every country had locked down sooner, the spread of the virus could have been arrested.

If the Chinese had recognised its pandemic potential sooner and prevented people from travelling abroad, it could have been contained within China.

If China had caught it even earlier, it might even have been contained within Hubei, the province where it originated.

If factory farms and consumption of wild animals had been eliminated after previous pandemics, we’d have fewer zoonotic viruses to fight.

If the virus hadn’t struck near the time of the Chinese New Year festivities, when Chinese emigrants travel home to celebrate then fly back to the countries into which they have immigrated (e.g. northern Italy), then the spread would have been slower, with more time for countries to react.

If governments at all levels had learned from previous pandemics to have a plan in place in anticipation of the (inevitable) next one, it could have been activated in a dispassionate, nonpartisan manner without time-consuming bickering about the appropriate response.

If supplies of PPE had been stockpiled against future need, demand would be less likely to exceed supply in a crisis.

If people practiced social distancing, with or without government guidance, the number of infections would be considerably less.

If tests weren’t withheld to keep infection numbers artificially low, we’d have a better estimate of actual cases.

If death certificates weren’t fudged with other causes of death to hide COVID-19 fatalities, we’d have a much more accurate tally of how many deaths are attributable to this virus.

If, if, if. As the human and economic toll mounts daily, we are justifiably wracked with self-recrimination for not doing more, sooner, to contain the virus. Will ‘we’, speaking broadly for humanity, both citizens and government officials, learn from our COVID-19 mistakes and act with more alacrity the next time a novel virus is suspected in a patient? I doubt it. I’m finding it hard to be optimistic. Rather than “buck stops here” mea culpas from elected officials, we are getting blame-shifting and denial. Rather than increasing international coordination and cooperation, we are seeing a free-for-all fight for PPE and medical equipment, and a refusal to accept aid by countries that need it, such as Iran and North Korea, based on pride and propaganda rather than public health considerations. Many countries are limiting testing for COVID-19 to keep numbers low. Federal officials in some countries, such as Brazil, Mexico, and the United States, have been locked in often vitriolic opposition to state and local officials over the question of whether to shut down businesses, with citizens caught in the middle, sometimes taking it upon themselves to self-isolate and expressing frustration and disgust with their political leaders.

This depressing pattern does not hold true for every country. Some affluent European and Asian countries, such as Denmark and South Korea, managed to take steps to save both lives and businesses. But they are outliers, with smaller, and more homogeneous, populations who have higher levels of trust in their governments. The delayed and mixed response of most of the world is disheartening. Even when national and subnational governments get their act together to enforce social distancing, people resist and defy directives that have been issued solely to protect them. Except for totalitarian governments who exert control over citizens to preserve their own power and enforce their ideology, governments are now making a trade-off between public health and the economy that has the potential to get them booted from power. Electorates reward incumbents in good times and punish them in bad times, regardless of their actual responsibility for economic conditions, which don’t usually correspond to election cycles in any case. A government who saves its citizens lives but sends the country into a recession is setting itself up for electoral vengeance, however undeserved.

What will the “if only” self-recriminations, electoral punishments, and economic fallout mean for the future? Ed Yong, in his March 25 piece for The Atlantic, opines:

“Veterans of past epidemics have long warned that American society is trapped in a cycle of panic and neglect. After every crisis—anthrax, SARS, flu, Ebola—attention is paid and investments are made. But after short periods of peacetime, memories fade and budgets dwindle. This trend transcends red and blue administrations. When a new normal sets in, the abnormal once again becomes unimaginable. But there is reason to think that COVID-19 might be a disaster that leads to more radical and lasting change.”

I don’t agree; once social distancing directives are removed, I predict a swift return to status quo ante.  That is an empirical prediction, not a normative wish. We should use this as a learning opportunity, to address global health, economic inequality, authoritarian regimes, lack of education, the idiocy of religious belief. Last year a troubling statistic went viral in the United States: 40% of Americans could not scrounge up $400 in an emergency. The support for pseudo-populists like Trump and Johnson and Bolsonaro around the world, and genuine populists like Bernie Sanders, the anti-immigrant sentiments, the rise in racism and sexism, are a direct result of growing economic inequality. We are returning to a feudal society of a wealthy 1% and a peasant population dependent upon the crumbs the rich deign to bestow in wages, benefits, a social safety net. There has been an undercurrent of rage that has been simmering for years as the middle class has shrunk and younger generations are unable to achieve the standard of living of their elders. Between the financial insecurity of the gig economy and never-ending student loan payments, hallmarks of adulthood like savings and home ownership are increasingly out of reach for even college graduates, hence the alarming statistic about nearly half the population being unable to find $400 in a pinch.

The most compelling lesson of this pandemic has nothing to do with viruses, public health, political leadership, or culture. There are fascinating and important lessons to be gleaned from all those facets but they pale in comparison to the simple fact that most of the world’s population, even in the wealthiest developed countries, still lives hand to mouth and is one paycheque away from not being able to pay current bills. Measures to delay rent and mortgage payments, prevent utilities from being disconnected, temporarily pause student loan payments, and halt evictions are only necessary because so many people are unable to survive for even a week without pay. The wealthy have tried their usual avocado toast blame game, but no-one is buying it this time. It’s impossible to deny that the reason so many people don’t have even a month’s cushion in savings is not because of too many lattes but because they—we, I should say, as I am part of this cohort—are not earning enough to save. It’s not self-indulgence stopping us from saving and investing; it’s a lack of jobs that pay a living wage.

If nothing else changes, post-COVID-19, this glaring problem should be addressed. Imagine the situation today if every individual and business had 6 months of savings to draw on. The damage to the economy, the need for taxpayer-funded relief packages, the failure of businesses and looming homelessness and crushing debt for so many Americans would disappear.

But it won’t. Nothing will change. The wealthy will turn this crisis to their advantage, squeezing even more money out of the poor in interest and penalties for every bill paid late. I am sure the credit card companies are salivating at the prospect of all the interest and penalties they will be able to charge.  Expect creditors to raise interest rates. Expect employers to lower wages, cut benefits, and not hire back much of their laid-off workforce, using the shutdown as an excuse to retool their businesses to lower overhead and increase profits. We were living in a world that catered to the very rich at the expense of everyone else. That world hasn’t changed because a few hundred thousand mostly elderly people have died of a virus. The rich will continue to get richer and the poor will get poorer. This pandemic should be a wake-up call to decrease economic inequality. Instead it will exacerbate it.

Meet Kyle, Dumbass of the Week

In case you've been living in a cave with no WiFi, let me introduce you to Kyle.  At midnight (better known as save-in-draft-mode-until-morning-o'clock) on Thursday, Kyle decided that the world needed to hear these words of manly wisdom:

Kyle personifies 2017.  Kyle has never seen a female orgasm so, instead of asking women about it, he mansplains that female orgasms must not exist.  Social media now guarantees he will never see one—by noon on Thursday, Kyle's asinine, patronising post had gone viral.  In football (soccer) they call this an "own goal."

Yes, instead of asking women about the female orgasm, he tells women they're a myth. Instead of considering that women might know more about our sexual experience than he does, he says we are wrong not to be sexually satisfied sans orgasms.  I can't wait for his next post telling us we should be satisfied as helpmeets without education and careers.

Even if chauvinist Kyle refused to believe women about their own orgasms, a quick Google search would have informed him that male researchers have documented the physiology of the female orgasm. But he couldn’t be bothered because clearly his own research on the subject is definitive, and finding evidence that the female orgasm exists would mean facing what a loser he is in bed. I guarantee that Kyle has never fucked the same woman twice. No woman makes that mistake more than once.  One commenter noted that apparently Kyle hasn't even had a woman bother to fake an orgasm Katz's Delicatessen style, implying he made so little effort that no one ever felt obliged to spare his feelings or give him some credit for the attempt.

Kyle's post is such an obvious indictment of his own skill that one can't but wonder if he is trolling.  Who in their right mind would advertise, using his real name and photo, on a worldwide public billboard, "I AM TERRIBLE IN BED."  To be fair, it was midnight, and we don't know what he was drinking/smoking, or if his roommate hacked his account.  His post is reminiscent of Ryan Williams, the 19-year-old British assclown who, just over a year ago, tweeted "If a woman ‘cannot hold in her period until she gets to a toilet’ then it is her problem, not the taxpayer’s.”  Last fall, the UK was considering removing the VAT (sales tax to Americans) on feminine hygiene products because they are a necessity.  Three weeks later, after what he claimed were "death threats from feminists," he said his Tweetastrophe had been a hoax.

Ryan initially invoked a tiny amount of sympathy from people who thought he was ignorant due to poor education rather than assholery, but Kyle has no such excuse.  He richly deserved the unlubricated public ass-reaming he received.  Unless he is currently incarcerated in a maximum security single sex prison, in which case he would not have access to the internet, he could have simply asked a woman.  Heck, even in Supermax, his fellow inmates would have told him he was full of shit.

Perhaps, like most men of his generation, Kyle's sex education has come mainly through internet porn.  There are female-friendly porn sites (trust me, I have them all bookmarked) but you can count them on your one (free) hand.  99.99999% of porn focuses on male pleasure.  When women are depicted as having orgasms, it is not to showcase female pleasure but male prowess, and they are transparently fake, with none of the physiological signs of a real orgasm, which are delightfully apparent in the real deal.

Those of us who had the luxury of misspending our youth before the internet but after the sexual revolution reached sexual maturity at a time when women expected to both give and receive sexual pleasure.  From the time of our first awkward kiss onward, we never got our boyfriends off without extracting quid pro quo orgasms.  Even the most fumbling, bumbling 80s teenage boy understood that pleasing his partner was non-negotiable.

We assumed that subsequent generations of women would be even more sexually demanding; instead, they seem to be regressing.  Boys raised on internet porn form their sexual expectations based on what they see onscreen.  Since porn focuses exclusively on male pleasure, young men today don't consider female gratification.  For a guy, being a good lover used to mean the ability to please his partner; now it means having lots of selfish, meaningless porn-style sex, parroting the anal, blowjobs, and degrading insults.  No man under 40 has ever seen pubic hair.  They don't see it in porn (where it is treated as a fetish) so young men don't expect to see it in real life and women have complied.  In a recent survey, 62% of women under 40 reported removing all of their pubic hair and 40% of men admitted to asking their partners to do so.

Consent is now emphasized on college campuses because the old double-standard survives in uneasy juxtaposition to hook-up culture.  Women can have casual sex like men but they can't want it—they can't have sexual agency.  It's the tired, old Madonna/whore complex but updated for the 21st century: Women aren't expected to be chaste—then they are harangued as prudes and of no interest/use to men—they just aren't expected to like or want sex themselves.  College sex looks a lot like rape: Men initiate it and order women into the porn star contortions they've grown up watching.  Young women comply but they are not saying "yes," they're just not saying "no."  Depressingly, studies of high school and college women show that the idea that they should get something out of the experience never crosses their minds.  Women over and under 40 give starkly different answers to the question, "Do you expect to have an orgasm during sex?"  For younger women, sex seems to be more about pleasing the man than reciprocal.  I'd like to think that as women have made progress towards economic and social equality that progress would manifest in the bedroom but the reverse seems to be happening.

Although the female orgasm indisputably exists, it usually takes more time, effort, skill, and communication to bring off than the male version.  There are doubtless evolutionary reasons for this—the biological purpose of female orgasm is still hotly debated.  (Alas for that brief era of medieval history when it was thought to be as necessary as the male orgasm for conception.)  In today's Tinder-driven hook-up culture, couples sometimes don't copulate more than once and it can take some practice together before even the most willing and considerate man learns how to get his woman off.

Those willing and considerate men are few and far between.  When a recent survey asked college-age men if they cared if their partner orgasmed, they responded that they sometimes cared in a relationship but never in a hook-up.  "I don't give a shit" said one.  Hook-ups are understood by both men and women to be exclusively about male  gratification. Women report not feeling comfortable asking their partner to help them cum, as if it is unreasonably demanding.

Kyle's mansplaining chauvinism indicates that he assumes sex is all about him:  In his mind, women should be satisfied with being desired but not experience desire ourselves.  We should be happy to settle for letting the Kyles of the world get off any way they choose to use our bodies and not expect any more from sex.  Kyle's attitude fits perfectly into the culture that produced Todd Akin, the Missouri Rep. who thinks women can't get pregnant from rape, and the growing list of rich and powerful men whose history of viewing women as objects without independent agency is coming to light.  And let's not forget the pussy-grabber-in-chief, who famously said on the Howard Stern show that "I couldn't care less" if the women he slept with got any pleasure.  You're in great company, Kyle.  Go fuck yourself.

Defending Gravity

Young women are rejecting the term "feminist".  When I hear a woman state that she is not a feminist, I grill her on her views.

"So, you don't think women should vote?  You don't think we should be allowed to drive?  Be educated?  Own property?  Leave the house without a man's permission?"

They are invariably shocked and stammer that they believe in complete equality of the sexes.

"Ah," I reply, "you are a feminist."

At which point they protest that they don't hate men and they don't believe women are superior.  That is what they believe the definition of "feminism" is.

According to one survey, only 23% of Americans identify as "feminists" but 82% agree with the statement that “men and women should be social, political, and economic equals.”  In a survey of millennials, only 35% identify as "feminists" but a majority agree that discrimination against women is still a problem.

It seems we have a semantic snag.  According to the OED, the definition of feminism is, "The advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes."  Not, please note, "the advocacy of women's superiority on the basis of misandry."

So, help me out here, people.  I'm having a Rip Van Winkle moment.  When and why did the definition of feminism morph in the popular view from equality to misandry?

I can take a guess:  It's the same problem as Charlottesville.  The civil rights movement changed the laws of the land and forbid legal discrimination on the basis of race and sex.  But it didn't change people's attitudes.  It affected how they could behave, what they could say in polite company, but not their mindset.  The disgusting racist displays we have been seeing since Trump's ascendance to the presidency indicate that racist attitudes have not died out; they were just hidden underground (another reason to protect free speech, but that's a rant for another day).

In a related fashion, men have increasingly been called out on sexist behaviour so some of them have learned to put on a veneer of civility to women in the workplace to avoid getting fired.  But it hasn't changed their attitudes, just their surface behaviour.  Their resentment at having to treat women like equals has manifested in a victim mentality.  They used to be in charge and having to share power with women (and minorities if they are white) feels like a defeat, a blow to their egos.  So, they retaliated by labeling feminists as man-haters, claiming we want special rights rather than equal rights.

Gays have also been accused of requesting special rights when seeking equality.  When same sex marriage was being debated, it was common to hear opponents blathering that gays were asking for special rights.  That twist was a way of delegitimizing a bid for equality.  It's the same with feminism.  By claiming that women who seek equal rights with men are man-haters who think we are superior to men, they delegitimize the term.  Don't buy into it.  Call yourself a feminist.  Reclaim the word.  Defend gravity.

"Let's Not Start Sucking Each Other's Dicks Quite Yet"

Paul Ryan to Mitch McConnell before Deplorable Care Act vote was postponed.

Ok, fratboy Eddie Munster is probably too homophobic to refer to blowing another guy even as a joke but he's behind on his Koch-sucking and his sugar daddies aren't happy.  Americans For Prosperity (a.k.a. IGMFY) announced that "the piggy bank is closed" until they see some motherfucking tax cuts.  I mean, they paid good money for them and they've got two out of three branches (and they've already stolen a seat in the third—they'll have the whole enchilada if Ginsburg's health fails), so what's the delay?  The Rethugs can't complain that Dems are thwarting their nefarious plans, so why didn't they ram through their whole tax-and-reg cutting agenda in the first 100 days?  Could it be that some Rethugs might….gosh, dare we even say it….have a heart?  Or a modicum of reason?

Alas, no.  Turns out the delay on the Trumpcare vote is mostly due to Senators who think it's too generous.  They want healthcare to be left entirely to the market, with no government involvement whatsoever.  See Ron Johnson's staggeringly stupid Op-Ed in the New York Times.  Read the comments whilst you are there.  The piece is so devoid of basic logic and rudimentary sense that the cheesehead Senator's ass was deservedly handed to him by nearly 2,000 commenters.  It is a satisfying takedown but a bit like shooting fish in a barrel.  The question I always have with fucktards like this moron, and the religionists as well, is do they actually believe their own drivel?  I mean, are they peddling it knowingly for their ignorant voters to swallow or are they braindead enough to actually believe it?  They're supposed to just spoonfeed it to the gullible masses, not swallow it themselves, but sometimes I wonder how they can sell it with a straight face if they don't buy it.  Lasik as an example of why all healthcare could be left to market forces?  If Johnson doesn't see the absurdity of that comparison, how does he tie his shoelaces in the morning, let alone get elected to public office?  Peristalsis must be a significant mental challenge for him.

To be fair, there is some opposition from GOP moderates as well.  A few Senators are concerned that taking healthcare away from too many of their constituents might hurt their re-election bids.  After all, 64% of nursing home residents, 49% of births (yep, nearly half of total births in the entire country), and 39% of children are on Medicaid and the vast majority are in red states.  But they needn't worry:  Poor red state voters elected them in the first place and they aren't going to suddenly stop voting against their own interests.  If they were gullible enough to think Cheetolini had their backs, they won't realise that Ryan telling them that his plan will give all Americans "choice" and "freedom" and "access" to care means the unsaid, "if you can afford it."  People tend to listen to what is said and latch onto words that sound good to them rather than shrewdly noting what is not said.  Rand Paul remains the staunchest opponent of the current bill because it isn't libertarian enough for him yet he comes from a state that was one of Obamacare's greatest successes.  Kentucky's uninsured rate was over 20% in 2013 before Obamacare and dropped to around 7%, with about 80,000 people obtaining individual subsidized policies and 420,000 new Medicaid enrolees.  When a Republican governor roared into office on a campaign promise to dismantle Obamacare in his state, he found that his voters' vocal support of that idea was at odds with their dependence on the ACA.  Some of the voters most in favour of repealing Obamacare had insurance because of it but were, mystifyingly, unaware of the connection.  So, he mostly settled for re-branding to make it more palatable to Rethugs.

You have to feel sorry for the Senate. They almost won their bet with the House that they could take healthcare away from more people but they came up one million short on the CBO score: 22 million vs. 23 million for the House bill.  When Ryan was confronted with the number, he tried to spin it that no-one would be thrown off, they would just be choosing not to buy coverage once the individual mandate was eliminated.  As this NY magazine piece recognises, most of the people losing coverage are on Medicaid, not the ones buying insurance, and Ryan had claimed that the Rethug successor to Obamacare would offer lower cost and better policies that people would want to buy.

But this bill isn't about healthcare; it's about tax cuts.  The Rethugs have two goals: 1) Gut Medicaid to facilitate massive tax cuts; 2) End government subsidies to buy private insurance to enable more tax cuts.  Tax cuts are really popular, so that bit is an easy sell.  The trick is to spin the resulting loss of healthcare access as encouraging "personal responsibility" and "freedom from government dependence."  To make that work, you have to paint everyone who can't afford healthcare without government assistance as undeserving, whether due to laziness or an unhealthy lifestyle.  Affording healthcare must be seen as in their power if only they had a better work ethic.  Given the myth of the American dream, mentioned in my previous post on healthcare, it's usually simple to get Rethug voters to throw the poor under the bus to justify tax cuts.  They just have to lie a little more baldly when it comes to healthcare because most Americans cannot afford to pay for it, not just those at the very bottom of the income spectrum.  Thus, they can't quite spin it like welfare or foodstamps; they have to pretend that they are actually making healthcare more accessible and affordable for more people rather than admit they are doing the exact opposite.  The reason that the vote was postponed today, the reason the Rethugs have failed to implement their agenda despite having complete control of the government, is simply the fear that some Congressmen have about not getting re-elected if their constituents ever begin to notice the yawning gap between their rhetoric and reality.  In almost no other policy area is the evidence that Rethug voters are voting against their own interests more obvious.  As I said above, I don't think they need have any fears on that score, but it looks like enough of them are worried to prevent Obamacare from being repealed, despite its being their main campaign promise in the 2016 election.

Also note that most of the provisions in their bill to reduce healthcare access don't go into effect for years—a decade from now, in some cases.  That timeline gives them the ability to tell their donors that they did their bidding whilst at the same time preventing an immediate electoral backlash.  Smarmy, but effective.  Getting inside the head of a Rethug makes you want to wash your brain out with soap.

When the voting delay was announced, I was in my local Barnes & Noble picking up a copy of New York Magazine, which I usually read online but I wanted a hardcopy of the current issue.  Some people in the café were talking about the individual mandate and risk pooling.  I overheard someone say, "The way to get people to buy insurance is to end medical bankruptcy."  Their conversation moved on and I bit my tongue but, Jesus bloody fuckballs.  I live in a notoriously liberal area—one local town has its own foreign policy, another is the lesbian capital of the known universe.  I'm kind of staggered that someone around here would propose something so terrible that even Mitch McTurtle might consider it beyond the pale.

As I noted in my last blog post, most medical bankruptcies are filed by people who have insurance, and people who could afford to buy insurance but choose not to are a vanishingly small minority, in the same mythical Rethug fairytale as those avocado toast-eating SNAP-ers.  Besides, Rethugs believe that no-one should be forced to buy insurance so they should approve of those Americans who choose not to purchase it then use bankruptcy to get out of paying their medical bills.  "That makes me smart", right guys?