Here’s a bit of fun from McSweeney’s – Proverbs for Introverts. My favorite: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single nap.”
Jumping right into politics, I think the January 6th Committee is about to ruin a strong start. Their opening salvo, hearing #1, was great. It used Trump’s own people to make the case that he knew exactly what he was doing when he pushed The Big Lie. But after that great start, I think the hearing’s producers are making a big mistake. They think people will sit through seven multi-hour sessions to hear/see all the material, and they’re wrong. We have a short attention span, and these hearings aren’t exactly on a par with Breaking Bad as entertainment.
They forgot the golden rule about a three act play. There’s a reason an effective story doesn’t have seven parts in its dramatic arc – people lose interest. And this story is no different. So I fear that the hearings, while useful in bringing forward key insights about Trump’s attempted coup, will be ineffective in changing the polarized opinions of anyone. There might even be a smoking gun in act four or five, but by then the audience will have moved on. Hell, I love politics and think understanding what really happened is important, but I’m not gonna sit through 14-21 hours of testimony to hear the occasional “holy shit” moment. Wasted opportunity. Typical Democrat strategy – hit people over the head with facts relentlessly and expect to win their hearts. Facts matter, but effective stories are what reach people and change their minds about things.
On travel, COVID has really broken the airlines’ systems. What I’m seeing this summer is that all the airlines have cut their schedules, cut their available flights, and priced the remaining seats sky-high. They tried to use old, pre-COVID schedules, but now that labor, pilots and parts are unavailable, they’re constraining supply at a time when demand is at an all-time high (people *really* want to get out and travel again). Result…high prices. That’s bad news for a person who spends time at two homes 2000 miles apart. And who has a plan to do a lot of travel the next six months. So it goes.