The Law of Inertia rears its ugly head

Just look what the holidays and the political zeitgeist and the new semester and... well, everything can do to our best intentions: it's been two months since my last post on this blog. 

I could make excuses, including trying not to continually moan and groan about the latest outrage from the Orange One and his minions, but they remain excuses, and they are not that great. More responsible for my not posting is simple inertia. A body at rest tend to remain at rest. as Newton would say in his First Law. 

Still not a great excuse.

So, time to restart.

The first weeks of the Trump administration have been a blur of executive orders, bizarre public pronouncements, outright lying, half-truths, and ongoing outrage from the pundit class. In other words, business as usual in the world of Trump. 

I was not surprised to learn that there is a term for his strategy of  "flooding the zone," so to speak: distributed amplification.

Apparently, the phrase came into academic usage during the pandemic, when the deluge of opinions and information and disinformation, mostly online, left most of us puzzled, possibly afraid, and certainly a bit unsure of the truth about Covid and its effects. The term originated with electrical engineering, describing a method that expands the capacity of circuits to reach wider bandwidths (whatever that means).

A less academic-sounding concept that plagues us all right now is "telling the same lie over and over until an audience suspects there must be some truth in there." Interestingly, the bigger the lie or the more brazen the scheme, the more an overwhelmed public will believe.

I was thinking today about the tragic collision of a helicopter and an airliner over the Potomac and how it is inevitable that social media will quickly create conspiracies and bizarre interpretations of the event.

There were Russians on the plane! (There were: ice skaters and coaches.) The military helicopter was engaged in some clandestine mission! (Maybe, but more likely this was a routine flight from across the river.) Joe Biden orchestrated the crash as a way to embarrass the new administration! (Really?) The price of eggs will soar even more! (Can we stop with the egg prices?)

All this is to introduce what I hope will be a more regular examination in this blog of what most Americans want or share or believe, all from the point of view of this 74-year-old white male. 

Well, that's the hope. 

And I will try not to surrender to Newton's First Law again.