The Week’s News Through a Psychology Lens: From Feinstein to the UAW Strike and a Little Racism

I know there are many many blogs and news media organizations that recount, recap, and review the week’s news out there already, so why should anyone read another one, and why am I doing one? We’ve already got these two must reads:

• SCRAPINGS OF THE DAY – 09/29/23 on BobCabKing’s excellent ecclectic blog, Of Cabbages and Kings.
• Burr Demings’ weekly rundown of all things interesting and amusing on the web on his blog, Fair and Unbalanced.
• Feel free to link to any others that you frequent in the comments!

Here at Ye Olde Blogge, our niche is the intersection of psychology and politics and psychology and current events. When I was teaching high school psychology, I realized that the things I was teaching explained issues like the right’s love of guns, mass shootings, sexual assault, the growing divide in our politics, techniques to reconcile our differences, the rise of Trump, the irrationality of the rank and vile MAGA, the increasing inanity on the right in the rank and vile citizenry and the Freedumb Cockus. In fact, I felt like I could explain pert near everything using just a handful of the studies, findings, and theories I was teaching.

Nowadays, juggling my increasing work demands has become more challenging. With time constraints limiting my posts to just once a week, conducting the extensive research required for some of my more intriguing pieces has become almost impossible. It’s “amusing” that somehow the vast majority of the world can carry on, blissfully unaware, never having bothered to even read, much less rate, like, share, or even comment on my work. Of course, I don’t take it personally. Seriously, believe me when I say it doesn’t faze me at all when a post amasses over a hundred views, only to receive a mere three likes and four ratings. Nope, not a smidgen. It’s not like I fall asleep muttering disdainfully about the short passthrough times and the impersonality that the Internet has brought into all of our lives. However, I realized that I must adapt to this reality; I must devise an approach that allows me to publish twice a week, tackle current topics, and feed the psychology beast that animates my soul. Hence, the birth of the weekly news post. And boy, what a week for news it has been – amirite or amirite? You know the answer, without a doubt!

So, in no particular order, here’s the news of the week with some psychology thrown in.

The Tragic End to Senator Diane Feinstein’s Incredible Career

Senator Feinstein died this week. Having worked geriatrics, it should have come as no surprise to anyone. You could literally see the decline in her. From her famous bouts of dementia to her use of a wheelchair, she was vanishing both physically and mentally right before our eyes.

Her situation casts some light on how we as a society address aging related and mortality issues. Spoiler alert: not well.

Mental acuity and physical ability decline with age. My hearing and eyesight are noticeably weaker than were just five years ago. My rate of hair loss has slowed, but aches and pains that had never been there before have increased. At the same time, none of us want to admit that we’re losing a step or two or dozen. That’s what makes Feinstein’s end so painful.

I find it unfortunate that one of the lasting memories I have of her involves a Senator Murray advising her to just say aye , as if she were Nancy stage whispering, ‘We’re doing everything we can, dear,’ to Regressive Ronnie all those years ago when Congress felt compelled to conceal his evident dementia.

Now, the dementia of our aging politician is used as a schadenfreude-filled political football to be kicked joyfully about to score cheap points that can be celebrated like a common Brandi Chasten. Republicans delight in flip-flopping between accusing Biden of being demented and an evil political mastermind out to destroy the world because he hates our freedoms. And, our political press just reports it like, “Meh, I guess it could be…”

Meanwhile, no one really mentions Trump’s advancing age, increasing weight, and obvious slowdown in what little mental ability he ever had. As I wrote back in 2020 when the left was all abuzz about Trump’s “conspicuous” mental decline in his man, woman, person, TV, camera moment, without careful testing, you can’t really determine the cause or severity of decline.

There are only two points to make about Feinstein’s passing:

FIRST, it is nothing short of a major miracle that the Republicans have agreed — see if they actually do it — to allow the Newsom appointee to replace her on the Judiciary Committee. I mean, he did very publicly vow to replace her with a black woman, and you know how nervous black women make all those stodgy old Republicans, right? Senator Collins might clutch her pearls and declare herself disturbed if it happens.

AND SECOND, can we all agree to remember Feinstein as the mighty hero trailblazer she was in the Senate and the only good thing to come out of Harvey Milk’s assassination?

The UAW Strike

While by this late date (Monday 2 October), the dueling Biden and Trump speeches at the UAW strike seems like a lifetime ago. Of course, Biden has given two more speeches since then and Trump did appear at his business fraud civil trial in New York, so you’ll be forgiven if you’ve already forgotten it and understood if you’re wondering why the hell I’ve still got this in here.

It’s the American political moment in a nutshell! On one side, Biden is pushing for union jobs through his economic legislation, which includes the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act. He talks about growing the American economy from the inside out, essentially aiming to expand the middle class by making it easier to earn a decent income. And let’s not forget how he openly sympathizes with union members, even joining the UAW on their picket lines and engaging in conversations with them.

Now, onto the other side of the coin. We have Trump, making appearances at non-union businesses, usually by invitation from the management. During these events, he tends to talk down to whoever the management could muster to attend, often encouraging them to carry fake “auto workers for Trump“ signs. It’s reminiscent of that one black guy, rumored to be paid, who stands behind Trump at rallies sporting a “Blacks for Trump” t-shirt.

You can easily gauge the significance of Michigan as a presidential battleground state by observing how shrill and transparent the lies become when Trump claims to be a pro-labor, pro-union president. It is quite amusing to witness the Republican Party and conservative media mock their demands for a “French” four-day work week and higher pay. It appears that sincerity may not be their strongest suit.

No one seems to remember that it was W’s Great Recession that required the auto unions to take huge cuts to benefits and pay increases to keep the industry afloat back in 2008 and 2009. No one seems to remember that in 2019, just before the pandemic shook the industry to its core, workers only received modest gains in their benefits package. No one seems to remember that CEO’s make a whopping 300 percent more than their average worker. Since 2019, CEO pay increased 40%, hourly worker pay, by less than 15% . And, when we go all the way back to 2008, worker pay has fallen by nearly 20%.

When you say it like that, anything will sound stupid, right? That’s why the conservatives don’t say it like that.

This is a GREAT example of the effects of the widening wealth gap and wide-open geyser of the wealth pump transferring middle class income to the 10%. Unless we can stop this madness, we are headed for disaster.

In this case, all that anti-union rhetoric spread to create “right-to-work” states back in the 70’s and ’80’s is coming home to roost. Trump is implying pretty directly that it is the union bosses that are corrupt and causing union jobs to provide less than a middle class income like the union bosses are some kind of common Jimmy Hoffa that should be disappeared into some concrete piling or foundation on some work site. Instead, the UAW ELECTED their president for the first time in 2021 like he was some common politician.

And one last point, remember all those run-the-protesters-down laws passed during the summer of Black Lives Matter? Five picketers were injured by a fleeing non-GM affiliated third-party employee at a Flint, Michigan plant. Violence is a contagion and stochastic terrorism is a thing. We’re watching it happen live right in front of us.

This strike is everything wrong in America and how it should be fixed writ small.

Racism in America

We all know that we here at Ye Olde Blogge love us some racism. We write about the racist bastards of the United Fucking States of Fucking America rat fucking the fuck out of our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and our institutions all the time. White people’s asses are held so extremely tightly that they can’t seem to unclinch enough to actually do anything to change it.

It comes as no surprise, then, that four out of five Black Americans see negative racial imagery portrayed in news media just like they’re some kind of common dentist preferring toothpaste or something.

This isn’t some longitudinal study, neither. This was a Pew study done last winter using focus groups and survey information. Remember, this is fifteen years into John Money Doesn’t Corrupt, Does It Clarence? Roberts post-racial America where we have achieved racial parity and Black people no longer need the protections of the Voting Rights Act. This is three years after the BLM summer of rioting torn, burning cities, and assaulted white people according to conservative media or BLM protests according to the rest of us.

Has our media unclinched its tightly held white ass? Not according to 63% of the respondents who feel like Black folks are more negtively represented in the news media than other communities of color.

What have we been saying? Systemic racism is geographical and passed on in our institutions? ‘Nuff said.

Wrapping Up

I had a slew of other things to write about, but I missed by Sunday deadline and am about to push it to Tuesday, so discretion is once again being the better part of valor and I’m ending it here. Besides, most of this news is stale and even if my hot take is warmer than lukewarm, it ain’t worth much at this late date. The good news is, I’ve got a model and I’m setting up for next Sunday.

Image Attribution

“Sunday Newspaper” by Georgie Pauwels is licensed under CC BY 2.0.