Look, I know bullshit. As a white man in our society, and as an English major in college, I have a TON of training on how to create truth-shaped objects regardless of factual content. I have had to work hard to train myself not to reflexively answer questions and admit, “I don’t know.”
And now we have mechanized the process. Elizabeth already posted about Kate Davies’s great article in our business. (I have to admit I find even human generated knitting podcasts dull, I can’t imagine how bad the slop must be.)
But of course the biggest bullshit generator is in the White House. We have war and runaway inflation because of his bullshit. We are losing our civil rights in its service. And the people who should be pushing back against that bullshit on the local level, our elected city council (all nominally Democrats), struck a huge blow in favor of bullshit last night.
Local hero Kim Roney (vote for her for mayor come fall) was the only holdout against an insane no-contract police surveillance system with “guardrails” that on closer inspection are made of bullshit. The community came armed with facts, details, legal expertise. Patrick Conant (another local hero whose superpower is data visualization) and Sunshine Labs spearheaded the effort, but a broad swath of the community stepped up to say no. And Esther Manheimer (who delayed and dithered so long trying to get people to tire and leave that public comment didn’t begin for SIX HOURS) cut off comments by the public after an hour, even though she let the police spew propaganda for almost that long for one speaker.
You have to understand that our city government only cares about money. They have no core beliefs, no will to do what’s best for our community. They spew slop about affordable housing and public engagement, but they take their marching orders from CIBO and the developers. And now Chuck Edwards. Every single one of our council members EXCEPT Kim Roney voted to shut down debate, to stifle factual information, to kill the democratic process, to trample Constitutional rights. Why? It’s unclear. To appear “tough on crime”? To give the cops the new toys they demand? To flex their power? Because they’re getting secret kickbacks? We may never know, but we do know they don’t respect us. Their only constituents are the hotel industry, we just live here.