Friday 8 January 2021

Reporting the Washington events. Beliefs and conspiracies. Failed outdoor project and planned indoor projects.

On BBC 2’s Newsnight last night they had a report from their man in Washington, whose name escapes me. The previous day he had arranged to accompany the Proud Boys as they went on the march to the Capitol. I wonder if he had an inkling of just how that march would turn out. As it was he got some rather frightening and worrying footage: scenes of masses of people, predominantly white men (I don’t think I saw a black face), many armed with sticks or baseball bats, not to mention the weapons we could not see.


At one point the group knelt in prayer, asking their god to support them in their endeavour to get justice for their cause. (Gosh! If I were God I would get really sick and tired of being asked to support random bad ideas!) And once again I am amazed at people’s capacity to believe that God is on their side. 


Some of the president’s supporters displayed a certain amount of muddled thinking -well, all right, the whole thing was muddled thinking but some of it was quite specific. One person went on at length about the unfairness of things, the fact that politicians are paid “huge salaries’ and particularly “all the millionaires in there (indicating the government buildings) telling us what to do”. Did nobody ever tell him that Donald Trump is one of the millionaires, not a modest-wage-earning member of the American public?


A wall was being erected around the Capitol. (I suppose Mr Trump would approve of that -he likes walls!) State troopers were being readied. (But who is in charge of them and who will they give their loyalty to?) Trump-supporting protesters were still out and about in Washington. (Potential street battles?!) And even more frighteningly, Trump still has access to the nuclear codes and two weeks in which to make use of them. (Potential international incidents!?)


We certainly live in interesting times!


Many of the people the BBC chap spoke to were believers in one conspiracy theory or another. Conspiracy theories abound all over the world, like urban myths. One of the strangest I have heard about recently is that the Helen Keller story is just that: an invented story. I remember as a child being fascinated by the story of the deaf-blind girl who managed to learn to speak, to read, to write, to communicate. I could imagine being deaf or being blind but the double whammy was hard to take in. And Generation Z youngsters, or some of them, apparently think we made it all up. Oh, they accept that Helen Keller existed and that she was deaf and blind but not that she was able to go to university and to write books. Especially as she did it before the IT era. And yet, some of them believe that zombies exist!


I mentioned the millionaires who run the world. Well, Barron Segar, the president and chief executive of the World Food Program USA, has been putting out an appeal for billionaires and millionaires to redistribute some of their wealth.


“Segar said he was taking the unprecedented step of asking for an individual billionaire, or small number of donors, to come forward because he could see little other prospect of filling the funding gap. “Hunger is solvable,” he said. “This can be solved with significant support from ultra high net worth individuals.”

Segar declined to name any individual billionaires, but several of the world’s richest people have seen their fortunes soar with the impacts of the virus and lockdowns across the world.”


He may have declined to name names but the writer of the article I read added these:- 


Amazon had benefited from the massive increase in online shopping, while usage of Facebook and Twitter has leapt as people spend more time online and work from home. Shares in Elon Musk’s electric car company Tesla, have risen in value as conventional carmakers and oil companies have suffered. Musk has now overtaken Jeff Bezos of Amazon as the world’s richest person.”


The article didn’t say anything about the money that has disappeared into certain pockets for the purchase of non-existent PPE for the NHS and non-existent laptops for underprivileged children doing lessons at home. I suppose that will be a different report ... or maybe not.


Anyway, it seems only fair that those who have grown rich as a result of the pandemic should be asked to help out the less fortunate. Somehow, though, I don’t think it’s going to happen any day soon.   


Here in our lockdown world we had planned a possible Diggle Chippy Hike  for today. Earlier in the week it looked as though we might have a cold but reasonably dry Friday. Cold it is, still, but there’s a thin, sleety rain falling. Eating fish ‘n’ chips in the rain by the duckpond is less than appealing. So we have put it off for another day. 


Indoor projects are called for. Some time before Christmas, on one of our “adventures” Granddaughter Number 2 expressed her regret at not having a good long scarf, old Doctor Who style. So I rummaged in my box of wool and made her a stripey scarf of enormous length as an extra Christmas present. She was delighted. So was her smallest sister, who requested a similar one. She was fairly specific about colours and added a finishing touch: it should have an embroidered “Elsa from Frozen” at one end! 


The knitting has been done. My indoor project now is to find a picture of Elsa from Frozen, stencil it onto some fabric, exercise my embroidery skills and then appliqué the result onto the aforementioned scarf. Not much if you say it fast! I do like a good challenge. 


Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

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