Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• 600,000 dead: With normal life in reach, covid’s late-stage victims lament what could have been They came so close. Some had vaccine appointments in hand; Some had just received their first shot. Some had been reluctant to commit to such a new medicine but were coming around to the idea. And then covid-19 took them. On top of the grief and sorrow, their families now also must deal with the unfairness, the eternal mystery of what might have been.(Washington Post)
• One Failed Bridge in Memphis Is Costing Business Millions Closure of cracked Interstate-40 span clogs local roads, hinders national supply chain (Wall Street Journal)
• Temp checks, digital menus and ‘touchless’ mustard: The maddening persistence of ‘hygiene theater’ Atlantic writer Derek Thompson catalogued ineffective but showy anti-covid tactics last summer. He listed examples of what critics call “hygiene theater,” the deployment of symbolic tactics that do little to prevent the spread of the coronavirus but may make some anxious consumers feel safer. (Washington Post)
• How QAnon captured the American church The cult has taken hold among Evangelical Christians (UnHerd)
• ‘We’re Going to Publish’: An Oral History of the Pentagon Papers On Oct. 1, 1969, Daniel Ellsberg walked out of the RAND Corporation offices, where he worked as a Defense Department consultant, into the temperate evening air of Santa Monica, Calif. In his briefcase was part of a classified government study that chronicled 22 years of failed United States involvement in Vietnam. By then, the war had killed about 45,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. (New York Times)
• What Nashville Is Now Gigi Gaskins’ anti-vax “gold stars” are just one example of how my hometown has transformed. (Slate)
• Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, Forceful on Jan. 6, Privately Are in Turmoil The far-right groups face a financial squeeze, internal discord, social-media cutoff and isolation from the financial system. (Wall Street Journal)
• Interview with Barry Meier, author of “Spooked” The longtime New York Times reporter asks of his colleagues, “When will we learn?” (Matt Taibbi)
• Why The Two-Party System Is Wrecking American Democracy Other democracies are polarized, but the U.S. is unique. (FiveThirtyEight)
• Shark Attacks in Maine Were Unthinkable. Until Last Summer. Last year’s first-ever fatal shark attack jolted Mainers into acknowledging that great whites regularly swim off the state’s shores — and that there’s plenty about them we don’t know. (Down East)
• The Price of No Consequences for Trump Joe Biden and Merrick Garland are acting like Donald Trump was a crazy dream. But the threat to American democracy will only get worse the longer we ignore it. (Slate) see also Trump-inspired death threats are terrorizing election workers Election officials and their families are living with threats of hanging, firing squads, torture and bomb blasts, interviews and documents reveal. The campaign of fear, sparked by Trump’s voter-fraud falsehoods, threatens the U.S. electoral system. (Reuters)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Social Psychologist Robert Cialdini, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University. He is the author of the book Influence, which has sold over 5 million copies in 30 languages. The latest revision is out Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion.
30% of GOP voters believe Trump will ‘likely’ be reinstated this year
Source: The Hill
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