Midrange Weekly Jun 7
Your Weekly Round Up On What’s Got The Midrange Staff’s Attention
Midrange Staff @midrangeyvr
Hello and welcome back to Midrange Weekly. We are fresh off of last week’s annual Midrange Team Building Day in which the staff goes to the beach, discusses ideas for the website, engage in fun for all ages activities and work on our back stroke. That was the plan at least; the day mostly devolved into applying copious amounts of sunscreen to Tristan so he wouldn’t melt and doing everything in our power to keep Jamie’s hair from getting wet. Mickey brought an excellent hat so we still view the day as a success. We are told that while we were gone things of actual importance happened this week, and we sure did our best to look into them once the sun burned subsided. Let’s check out what’s been going on.
Trump Supporters’ Decent Into Full Blown Cult Continues
Part of the ever spiralling indoctrination process of a cult is for the acolytes to be fed increasingly ludicrous forms of propaganda and then be expected to believe and espouse it. Having your ardent zealots promote the conspiratorial delusions of an exploitive organization serves the purpose of severing its members from conventional society, therefore alienating them from it and ensuring that only within the hermetic mania of said cult will they have any kind of home. We are seeing this process play out once again in the MAGA/Qanon ecosystems that, despite be banished to the toxic outer provinces of the internet, far from the conventional norms of facebook or twitter, simply refuse to die. The Q crowd’s inane prophesising has strained rationale since its inception, ranging from democrats are secretly a cabal of vampiric pedophiles whose occult coven is located under a DC pizza shop (yes really) to assuring us that Hillary Clinton is surely going to be arrested and summarily executed any day now. This time for real, just you wait. Meanwhile the MAGA crowd look at Trump as a messianic figure and describe him with similarly hagiographic platitudes. Mix these noxious cultures together- bat shit theorizing, and a dear leader that is the inexorable conclusion to what a cult of personality can become- and you end up with some bizarre ideas.
These ideas do not exist in a vacuum or in isolation from each other, but are a specifically curated escalation of surrealist fog and tests of misplaced faith. This began to really take form in the 2020 election with cries across the country among Trump supporters incongruously demanding that voting counts be stopped in states where he was ahead despite polls not being closed, or vote counts continuing where he was had lost despite the polls very much being closed. From there, asinine accusations of voter fraud popped up only in the states Trump lost, and nearly 60 of those claims were laughed out of court. Trump took this manipulated anger and frustration- again, that had no bearing in reality- and whipped it into a throng of violent insurrectionists on January 6th. When that failed, Qanon proselytizers floated the idea that Biden and Trump had switched bodies (yes, like in Face Off, the nadir of Nicholas Cage’s choke hold on 90s pop culture), and that when Biden was to be inaugurated on Jan 20, it was really Trump we would be seeing take the oath of office. I don’t think that happened! Q supporters moved the goal posts once again suggesting since the original inauguration day dating back America’s founding was March 4th, that would be the day Trump would resume command of the presidency. Again, nope.
You can see the pattern here among his most feverish true believers. The continuingly desperate reaching, the furtherance in their wilful detachment from reality, and the onus on them and their ilk to reaffirm their commitment to these ideas despite the incredulity of it all. The details start to become more and more tenuous, less and less affixed to any kind of logical framework that is at least nominally supposed to support their beliefs. This brings us to the current moment in the ever dispiriting cult of Trump. The present theory making the rounds around his followers is that Trump is going to be reinstated in late summer… somehow. The reasoning goes that the Arizona recounts, already marred by dubious ethical motivations, will prove that Trump won the state and therefore he should be reinstated as President. Let’s put aside that the Arizona recount has been a partisan fishing expedition adjudicated by political operatives with explicitly far right agendas, and also that flipping Arizona into Trump’s count would not be enough to over turn the electoral collage number in his favour anyways, there is absolutely no mechanism in American governance to simply reinstate a president. No legal mechanism, no constitutional mechanism, nothing at all. Sure, health issues or impeachment are potential vectors to remove Biden from office, as those possibilities have been hypothetically present for every president, but that would simply elevate Vice President Harris to the top job; it would certainly not default back to Trump.
And yet the most loyal in the MAGA and Q circles are spreading the idea like wild fire over second rate social media sites like Gab and Parlour, where a relative lack of moderation allows stuff like this to proliferate. Former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell recently said as much at a recent Qanon rally (the same rally where disgraced former national security advisor Michael Flynn suggested a military Coup to reinstall Trump). It’s not just the supporters, but Trump himself that has bought into the idea. Trump has been reported to be lurching around Mar-A-Lago asking his advisors what they think of this reinstatement idea. Other reporting suggests that Trump truly believes this turn of events is at hand. Again… somehow. This was originally reported by Maggie Haberman at the New York Times.
Trump has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August (no that isn’t how it works but simply sharing the information). https://t.co/kaXSXKnpF0
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) June 1, 2021
Herein lies the other dimension of spreading such obviously mendacious rhetoric among a group of like-minded and weak willed individuals, and it’s far more insidious. At the core of these wild claims, the point is not for them to come to fruition, but to generate hope that will inevitably plummet into disappointment. Figures like Trump thrive on channelling that disappointment into rage among his supporters. When Trump is obviously not simply reinstalled in August, he will certainly claim that it is not his fault but the meddling of external and pernicious factors. The deep state, a potential indictment, blame it on Hilary Clinton for umpteenth time. His people will believe him and Trump will have generated a fresh wave of fury and frustration among them once again. That fury led to the Jan 6th insurrection, and if it reaches that kind of boiling appoint again America may be in for another violent incident that Trump will then try to wash his hands of. If one bristles at the idea of this all being extracted from the play book of a cult, well then terrorist ideologies come to mind as well. That doesn’t exactly sound better. -Tristan
To Drink Or Not To Drink?
In this day and age, I’m confident plenty of you have asked yourself one of these questions. Do I feel like drinking today? Do I drink too much? How much is too much? Should I take a few days off? A week possibly? A month?
Each of these questions has come up in my mind many times in the past and with each I’ve felt the tug and pull of what I want to do and what I think I should do.
This brings me to the theme of my column today which came from a recently published essay in The Atlantic, one written by editor Kate Julian and aptly titled America Has A Drinking Problem: A little alcohol can boost creativity and strengthen social ties. But there’s nothing moderate, or convivial, about the way many Americans drink today.
First, I’d like you to pause and think about that title for a second. Do you agree or disagree with its statement? Have you ever thought about your relationship with drinking? Your patterns? What you expect or look for when you drink? Take a sec and think about that before you continue. You might surprise yourself with what you come up with.
Kate Julian’s essay is lengthy and there is plenty to unpack. Her entire narrative is built around trying to understand our obsession with the fermented drink, how this fondness came to be (she leans heavily on the work of UBC Professor Edward Slingerland, whose latest book, Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced And Stumbled Our Way Into Civilization delves into this very topic. He’s coming on my podcast Track and Food for an in-depth interview to discuss said book next week. Stay tuned for updates on this.), as well as America’s quixotic relationship with drinking and the social norms which have followed.
As someone who came about drinking at a late age (24), my view on this pastime is probably not fully in line with the societal standard. Don’t get me wrong, I love to drink and I’ve had many a fun night, but I am different in one big way. For starters, no one in my family drank when I was a kid. Literally no one. I was never around it. In Julian’s essay she details the enjoyable nature of alcohol, how its past and present has been dominated by social gatherings and togetherness, which as she argues, is something Americans seem to be lacking today. This type of bonding was something I never saw as a child and I’ve always wondered if this exposure, or shall I say lack of, has helped(?) shape the way I view alcohol consumption.
For clarity, I don’t drink alone. It’s never been something I’ve wanted to do. I’m not stating this fact to brag as, hell, some of you might view this realization of me as silly and boring. Totally acceptable if you do. But it is what I do and it’s in Julian’s article where she dives into this very idea as the title of her essay pertains to America’s fascination with solo and personal drinking habits. These American patterns as she describes, when compared to those of the rest of the world, and history for that matter, look to be in stark contrast with how alcohol was and is currently taken in. Essentially, we (I’m lumping us Canadians in here), drink harder alcohol today and more of it alone.
Conclusion: This is not a good thing.
Regardless of where you fall on this topic, it’s interesting to read her take on the idea that socializing, the very nature of it, has in some ways helped foster our society. It’s an interesting hypothesis for sure, and if I didn’t work in hospitality I might cringe at the notion that in order for our society to function, we need alcohol. Part of me fought with this idea many times during this pandemic as I often wondered how vital liquor stores were and if they needed to remain open. Everyone I spoke with on this agreed that they must. This disturbed me in some way but made sense in another.
I guess overall what her column and Slingerland’s book have made me realize the most is our relationship with alcohol, most specifically mine and those whom I know. It’s made me wonder if people living in other countries suffer from the same issues we do? Do they take months off from drinking as so many of my friends do, or do they have healthier relationships with how they drink and socialize? What really is a normal relationship with alcohol and should I care to think on it?
Most of us don’t and for that we enjoy our choice spirit whenever we choose. But it often isn’t that easy for some and where they fall with regards to their choices says something about who they are but also who we are as a society here in North America. We have age requirements which make zero sense, we have laws for where you can and cannot drink, which also at times seem clueless. There’s so much to unpack and even then your decision on this matter might align with mine but not with someone else’s. Alcohol definitely brings us together and it sure is fun to get drunk with friends. To drink or not to drink? I guess you’ll have to decide on that one. - Jamie
Things From The Internet We Liked
Spell Of The West finds new heroism in old standards, polarized with the essence of nature and life. And yes, deep ecology means we have to try harder.
This short film by animator Sam Lane explores the dominant nature of modern industrialism and the profound connections we have with not only our environments, but our reciprocally beneficial eco-systems in all things natural. A cacti farmer named Rose discovers that her world of growth cycles, and pretty hilarious animal friends - including a horse with yellow boots, named Boots - is under attack form an “ax-man” who seems to be cutting down all the surrounding trees. The crew’s next step is to find this ax-man and put an end to it’s destructive force that is slowly changing her and her friend’s habitat into a waste land of stumps. It’s a touching yet playful story about the duty humankind has to protect life at any cost, and a reminder that we live in oneness with all living beings. Also the soundtrack by Diego Gaeta is just great.
Let’s Look At The Wild Making Of The Best Fast And Furious Action Sequence Ever
Spare us your trite derision towards the Fast And Furious Franchise. Yes they are ridiculous, melodramatic, often just plain stupid films. However they are often a lot of fun, and they are occasionally mind-blowing in their conceptual action sequences. Case and point is the now legendary bank vault sequence from fan favourite Fast 5. While every fan knows the part, you might just be amazed at how many practical effects and real life shots went in to making this insane sequence. You’d be hard pressed not to afford the franchise just a bit of begrudging respect after observing all the work and planing that went into it all.
The Wall Street Journal Drops A Really Fascinating Video About Microchips And Why We’re Headed For A Shortage
This video is so interesting. Showcases how much smarter some of us are than the rest of us. Like seriously, how did we figure this stuff out?