The Gist: Picking Up The Pieces
The last few months have seen a lot of news. This week saw some of those old ghosts of stories past come around for a second pass. This is the Gist.
Tales of Two Congresswomen
A violent mob storms the Capitol building at the losing President’s instigation and roams the halls looking to kill senior members of the incoming government party. It’s a pretty big story. This week saw two women dealing with the fallout from that event in public.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released a video giving greater detail of how near to harm she came as the mob searched for her, specifically. She addressed it, in a characteristically thoughtful way, in the context of her past experience of sexual assaunt.
Meanwhile Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was stripped of committee seats by the Democrats after the publising of her conspiracy theory-filled past statements. Greene, a sort of human avatar of your dumbest cousin’s Facebook feed, explained that she’d read a lot of stuff on the Internet and been ‘allowed to believe’ them. This stuff included advocating for the execution of her current work colleages, claiming bereved parents of schoolchildren killed in mass shootings were only codding and that (deep breath) the California wildfires were started by a space laser beam which was controlled by Jewish bankers.
The Republican members of congress reportedly gave her a standing ovation at their party meeting.
Yeah, But No, But Yeah
The Government continuted to suffer for their inability to explain resistance to hotel quarentine, despite every effort being made by the various arms of the state to come up with one.
One of the problems with not having a clear reason for doing something is that everyone starts making up their own reasons- in part to deal with questions, but also to tell themselves a story of their own actions that makes sense to them.
So it was that Ministers took to the airwaves, and for the second week running, just couldn’t say the same thing twice.
The following day, the Minister for Health came back and explained what he’d said was right, but also this other thing that was different to it was right too. This had the reassuring quality that you would expect on the electorate.
