One of the things that irks me

One of the things that irks me: Republicans in general are very big on putting the onus on the individual for solving systemic problems.

For example: don't bother with boring energy conservation everyone should just turn off their lights. People should pull themselves up by their (non-existent) bootstraps, that'll solve poverty! Why should there be a cheap affordable option for health insurance? People should just pay via their (ha ha ha) HSAs.

Individual solutions to the systemic problems of global warming, poverty and hunger, and universal health coverage don't exist. They can, at times, help some individuals, but for a true solution, you need the bigger impetus, the large scale solution, even if it's implemented in dribs and drabs.

Welfare and SNAP alone won't solve poverty, but they're a start, and if you add in free community college, rent relief, maybe a basic income, help for childcare, health care... we'll be well on our way to a true solution.

Republicans don't want to see that, they'd rather just blame individuals and excoriate them to do better. Their contention seems to be that people should figure it out themselves, and not be a burden on "the rest of us".

And here we are in 2020, still in the middle of this freaking pandemic, with numbers getting worse. We have a vaccine on the horizon, but we aren't there yes. Over 250 000 Americans have died (*), most of them because of the total incompetence of government, led by Trump.

But here is what gets me. Until that vaccines is available (more on that later), the ways to help spread disease? Are all individual solutions to a systemic problem. Wash your hands. Socially distance. Stay home. Wear a mask.

For once we are truly in a situation where what the individual and smaller groups do makes a difference, and the people who like to go on and on about "personal responsibility" to, say, have enough money to pay for food, refuse to see that washing their hands and wearing a mask is an act of personal responsibility to help the community, to not be a burden on the community.

In many ways, it's very puzzling. They swap out principles like dirty socks. Yesterday, personal responsibility was the name of the game, today, it's "freedom". In effect, freedom to kill others.

It'll be interesting to see what happens when the vaccine becomes available. They're in love with "herd immunity" as long as the part of the herd being culled is (mainly) BIPOC. What will happen with we have to get to true herd immunity via vaccination? I suspect their politics of personal responsibility to again give way to a "freedom" and as a group they'll be less likely to vaccinate.

(*)Not that I don't care about the other 1.25 million or so. I just don't think their deaths are quite as tied to governmental incompetence, cruelty, and ignorance.

Book Review: Caste

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson.

Best book, hands down, that I've read this year. Yeah, I've read happier books, and fluffier books, and and and, but this one was by far the best.

Read it. It's a must read. It's an incisive, often painful walk-through of the caste system, history and present, written by someone whose compassion, really, for the human race allowed her to show not just what was, and what is, but where we can go next, how we can be better.

I listened to the audiobook and have the written book on my Kindle. I'm going to re-read large parts of it, I'm sure, but just wanted to encourage people to read it.