Our household went to sleep sometime after midnight, when the handwriting was already on the wall. It is astonishing to me — because I’m always an optimist, I suppose — that American voters have chosen a dementing racist and misogynist, a twice-impeached convicted felon, a malignant narcissist, serial philanderer, and adjudicated rapist to lead their country. They have chosen a fascist in a girdle and lifts who projects a bizarre sort of supposed strength and stokes an irrational fear of an other, whether the other is a trans kid or an immigrant or a Democrat. (Hi, my name is The Enemy Within.) And American voters have chosen an aspiring autocrat who has promised to weaken our alliances, to prosecute his political enemies, to end any effort to reverse climate change, to end the Affordable Care Act, to end women’s reproductive rights, to hand healthcare policies over to a nutcase, and to build concentration camps as the prelude to mass deporations. I could go on.
If your only concern is the price of a loaf of bread (on PBS last night, David Brooks helpfully told us that it’s $1.93), you’ll vote for the strongman. The cost of groceries is a legitimate concern. But so is the cost of healthcare. And so is everything else. A vote based on the cost of a loaf of bread might come at a much greater cost.
All I will add is that I won’t obey in advance. And I won’t despair.
[I keep tinkering with this post. No moving on from it, not today.]
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
What now?
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comments: 10
I’m with you and your house, Michael. ❤️
My. latest blog is entitiled, Quotation for America's New Dawn, November Six. The only line in the post is, "We have always been at war with Eastasia."
me, too! unfortunately short term thinking was in abundance for the election. my washpo subscription gets cancelled today. they keep sending me emails that i can get it for 50 cents a week. they are hurting for subscriptions.
kirsten
Sean, I saw your post in my RSS. I'm prepared for another four years of new "realities" with Eastasia, North Korea, Russia, et al.
Kirsten, I've been reading The Guardian. My WP doesn't run out until next May. No offers for me so far.
The (ahem) "gentleman" across the street has had a sign up suggesting that the cost of a bag of groceries under a Kamala Harris administration would be three times that of a similar bag under the administration of the other guy. Pure fantasy, of course, nor do I believe that anybody's cost of living is going to go down as a result of electing a lunatic sociopath whose real natural constituency is billionaires. Prices don't respond well to jawboning, not even when it's the jawbone of an ass.
No, and if he’s able to implement his tariffs on everything, calamity awaits. It just hit me: remember how so many people were baking during the pandemic? If store-bought bread is too expensive, why not bake?
and many places have bakery outlets that sell almost out of date bread as well as bread mark-downs in the local stores. i have picked up 50% off bread at aldi. freeze it and it's great. there are so many ways to cut food costs - but it does require some effort not a quick solution. the cost of food is an easy one to point to as many americans are unable to equate the costs of other items under different presidents.and what they forget is that the first 18 months of any presidency is that they are reaping the benefit /downfall of the previous presidency.
kirsten
I read today that the benefit/downfall is a point that Bill Clinton made when Obama first ran.
I have the wonderful Square Meals cookbook, with all sorts of penny-pinching recipes from the WWII years. I wonder now about the complaints about food costs when I see a half-dozen or more cars, engines running, waiting at the Starbucks drive-thru. The same at McDonald’s.
I bake bread a couple of times a week, but I don't do it to save money, nor am I sure that I can bake bread more cheaply than I can buy it from a supermarket, given the economies of mass production. I bake bread mostly because I just like baking and eating homemade bread, but also in part for what might be called moral reasons, because I think it's morally unhealthy to be unable to make anything on one's own. I don't grow or grind my own flour (though some people do). But time constraints are more likely to be an obstacle for working people; it takes time to make food at home, and people working two jobs to pay the rent don't have that time. And the average consumer doesn't have the option of raising their own milk, meat, etc.
True, it is time-consuming. I guess the savings depend on what kind of bread you’re not buying. I was thinking back to early in my teaching career, with an embarrassingly meager salary. We saved toward buying a house in countless ways, one of which was that Elaine baked bread.
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