Biden Stays Silent on Democracy: Show Notes, 11/28/22
Also, we're growing too isolated in our lives.
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China, Iran, and the White House’s Silence
Protests are erupting in China over COVID-19 protocols, including continuous lockdowns and constant testing. One of the catalysts there was a fire that killed dozens because lockdown protocols had forced people to be locked into their homes from the outside. The Chinese government is going all-out to try and censor any of the protests from being seen globally but to no avail.
Likewise, protests are still ongoing in Iran, where the people living under the totalitarian regime there have grown weary of being scared into submission by religious dictators. Where has Joe Biden’s White House - which has spoken so much on freedom and democracy in order to contrast itself with Donald Trump and Republicans been on this?
Dead. Silent.
Here’s a thought: No one is asking Biden to speak for the protestors. They are asking Biden to speak to them, to reassure them that America, which is supposed to be a beacon of freedom and democracy in the world, stands with them in their fight for their own freedoms.
Instead, the President is scared to alienate China and Iran.
Our Increasing Isolation - and Poor Mental Health
An opinion piece from the Washington Post late last week caught my eye: Americans are choosing to be alone.
Check out this graph, which really says a lot.
According the Census Bureau’s American Time Use Survey, the amount of time the average American spent with friends was stable, at 6½ hours per week, between 2010 and 2013. Then, in 2014, time spent with friends began to decline.
By 2019, the average American was spending only four hours per week with friends (a sharp, 37 percent decline from five years before). Social media, political polarization and new technologies all played a role in the drop. (It is notable that market penetration for smartphones crossed 50 percent in 2014.)
Covid then deepened this trend. During the pandemic, time with friends fell further — in 2021, the average American spent only two hours and forty-five minutes a week with close friends (a 58 percent decline relative to 2010-2013).
Similar declines can be seen even when the definition of “friends” is expanded to include neighbors, and co-workers and clients. The average American spent 15 hours per week with this broader group of friends a decade ago, 12 hours per week in 2019, and only 10 hours a week in 2021.
I mentioned this last week when I filled in on the Moon Griffon Show, but it bears repeating: We have a mental health crisis in this country, and we are steadily disregarding our fellow man’s humanity. We make it all too easy to toss aside human life when we don’t see the people we dislike as less than human in the first place.
We are psychologically not built to be isolated. We are social creatures by nature, but technology, cultural shifts, and other factors have really done a lot to hurt how we see each other, making it much easier to just turn away from our friends and family and favor isolation.
Headlines of the Day
‘F---ing nightmare’: Trump team does damage control after he dines with Ye and white supremacist Nick Fuentes (NBC News)
Meet the Voters Who Fueled New York’s Seismic Tilt Toward the G.O.P. (New York Times)
Chevrolet’s Newest Holiday Ad, ‘Mrs. Hayes,’ Will Absolutely Tug at Your Heartstrings (RedState)
Brian Kemp launches federal PAC (Axios)
Tech companies begin rerouting critical chip supplies to trucks with rail strike looming (CNBC)