Jones, M. I., Sirianni, A. D., & Fu, F. (2021). Polarization, Abstention, and the Median Voter Theorem. ArXiv:2103.12847 [Physics]. http://arxiv.org/abs/2103.12847

Vaughan, A. (n.d.). Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy in poorest countries is lower than in US. New Scientist. Retrieved 25 March 2021, from https://www.newscientist.com/article/2271540-covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy-in-poorest-countries-is-lower-than-in-us/

Colleges Turn Arenas Into Vaccination Centers. (2021, March 24). Bloomberg.Com. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-03-24/colleges-turn-arenas-into-vaccination-centers

Guardian, getting the big-long-truth out of the way up front. Woohoo! Exactly the right context. Persistently malignant force in America, that we have been unreceptive & unmoving in every way my entire living life. Bad people.

Cormaic, R. M. (n.d.). Brexit blinds Britain to AstraZeneca’s blunders. The Irish Times. Retrieved March 22, 2021, from https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/brexit-blinds-britain-to-astrazeneca-s-blunders-1.4514825

Larson, H. J., Cooper, L. Z., Eskola, J., Katz, S. L., & Ratzan, S. (2011). Addressing the vaccine confidence gap. The Lancet, 378(9790), 526–535. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(11)60678-8

Scientists hit out at Chris Whitty for claiming UK unlikely to eliminate coronavirus. (2020, July 24). The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/coronavirus-uk-chris-whitty-covid-19-david-king-independent-sage-a9636246.html

‘U.K.’s “Obscure” PPE Process During Pandemic Challenged’. Bloomberg.Com, 3 December 2020. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-03/u-k-s-obscure-ppe-process-during-pandemic-challenged-in-suit.

Clinton, J., J. Cohen, J. Lapinski, and M. Trussler. ‘Partisan Pandemic: How Partisanship and Public Health Concerns Affect Individuals’ Social Mobility during COVID-19’. Science Advances 7, no. 2 (1 January 2021): eabd7204. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abd7204.

Lindow, Mike, David DeFranza, Arul Mishra, and Himanshu Mishra. ‘Scared into Action: How Partisanship and Fear Are Associated with Reactions to Public Health Directives’. PsyArXiv, 12 January 2021. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/8me7q.

Yeung, Peter. ‘The Lancet Editor: UK “Steadfastly Refused to Follow the Science”’. Accessed 25 February 2021. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/11/uk-covid-crisis-qa-with-the-lancets-richard-horton.

Khazan, Olga. ‘A Failure of Empathy Led to 200,000 Deaths. It Has Deep Roots.’ The Atlantic, 22 September 2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/covid-death-toll-us-empathy-elderly/616379/.

Haberman, Maggie. ‘Covid-19: Giuliani Tests Positive for Coronavirus’. The New York Times, 6 December 2020, sec. World. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/12/06/world/covid-19-coronavirus.

NW, 1615 L. St, Suite 800Washington, and DC 20036USA202-419-4300 | Main202-857-8562 | Fax202-419-4372 | Media Inquiries. ‘Intent to Get a COVID-19 Vaccine Rises to 60% as Confidence in Research and Development Process Increases’. Pew Research Center Science & Society (blog), 3 December 2020. https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/12/03/intent-to-get-a-covid-19-vaccine-rises-to-60-as-confidence-in-research-and-development-process-increases/.

Gligorić, Vukašin, Allard Feddes, and Bertjan Doosje. ‘Political Bullshit Receptivity and Its Correlates: A Cross-Cultural Validation of the Concept’. PsyArXiv, 27 October 2020. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/u9pe3.

Wolf, Martin. ‘Ten Ways Coronavirus Crisis Will Shape World in Long Term’, 3 November 2020. https://www.ft.com/content/9b0318d3-8e5b-4293-ad50-c5250e894b07.

Links to: https://chicago.suntimes.com/coronavirus/2021/1/23/22245873/chicago-bars-restaurants-reopen-pritzker-coronavirus-illinois-suburban-cook-county

Societies have been inexorably been moving toward interdependence. More and more people specialize and sub-specialize into smaller fragments of the work that we do. As a result, we become more interdependent on the work of others to underpin our own. This makes the worry about renting a domain seem somewhat disingenuous, particularly when we can reasonably rely on the underlying structures to work to keep our domains in place.

Perhaps re-framing this idea may be worthwhile. While it may seem that we own our bodies (at least in modern liberal democracies, for the moment), a large portion of our bodies are comprised of bacteria which are simultaneously both separate and a part of us and who we are. The symbiosis between people and their bacteria has been going on so long and generally so consistently we don't realize that the interdependence even exists anymore. No one walks around talking about how they're renting their bacteria.

Eventually we'll get to a point where our interdependence on domain registrars and hosts becomes the same sort of symbiotic interdependence.

Another useful analogy is to look at our interdependence on all the other pieces in our lives which we don't own or directly control, but which still allow us to live and exist.

People only tend to notice the major breakdowns of these bits of our interdependence. Recently there has been a lot of political turmoil and strife in the United States because politicians have become more self-centered and focused on their own needs, wants, and desire for power that they aren't serving the majority of people. When our representatives don't do their best work at representing their constituencies, major breakdowns in our interdependence occur. We need to be able to rely on scientists to do their best work to inform politicians who we need to be able to trust to do their best work to improve our lives and the general welfare. When the breakdown happens it creates issues to the individual bodies that make up the society as well as the body of the society itself.

Who's renting who in this scenario?

November 25, P. T. & 2020. (2020, November 25). Dr. David Williams is called out—And Doug Ford doubles down on him. Macleans.Ca. https://www.macleans.ca/society/health/coronavirus-in-canada-these-charts-show-how-our-fight-to-flatten-the-curve-is-going/

Pennycook, Gordon. ‘How the COVID-19 Crisis Exposes Widespread Climate Change Hypocrisy’. CBC, 22 May 2020. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/opinion-climate-change-should-believe-dont-understand-1.5482416.

This is an obviously emotional appeal that would affect anyone in the audience since most everyone has a sense of community somewhere. This statement also boldly shades those who uphold the system; including judges, cops, lawyers, and politicians.

Aletti, G., Crimaldi, I., & Saracco, F. (2020). A model for the Twitter sentiment curve. ArXiv:2011.05933 [Physics]. http://arxiv.org/abs/2011.05933

A lot of inflammatory dog whistle rhetoric here (not to mention the poor use of en dashes posing as em dashes).

He calls out destructive repercussions of identity politics, but fails to notice that everyone wants to feel safe in their identity, not just cis-gendered white male Republicans.

He calls out censorship of dissenting opinion while writing on his own website. When did the government censor his opinions or any other opinions? Republicans are so pro-corporation and pro-enterprise, but then get upset when those same great companies enforce basic social norms?

And then, in the same breath: "rewriting American history?!" Perhaps we just taking a more nuanced perspective of the actual truths? Maybe we're hearing the stories and perspectives of those who's dissenting opinions have been not only been censored out of the media, but never allowed in for almost 250 years?

Horton, Richard. ‘Offline: COVID-19—a Crisis of Power’. The Lancet 396, no. 10260 (31 October 2020): 1383. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32262-5.

Dickie, Mure, and John Burn-Murdoch. ‘Scotland Reaps Dividend of Covid Response That Diverged from England’, 25 February 2021. https://www.ft.com/content/e1eddd2f-cb0b-4c7a-8872-2783810fae8d.

Druckman, J. N., Klar, S., Krupnikov, Y., Levendusky, M., & Ryan, J. B. (2021). Affective polarization, local contexts and public opinion in America. Nature Human Behaviour, 5(1), 28–38. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-01012-5

NW, 1615 L. St, Suite 800Washington, & Inquiries, D. 20036USA202-419-4300 | M.-857-8562 | F.-419-4372 | M. (2020, December 8). The Changing Geography of COVID-19 in the U.S. Pew Research Center - U.S. Politics & Policy. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/?p=20076611

UK is with EU. (2021, January 18). ..The reason we are in this third lockdown is because of the anti lockdowners like Lord Sumption ..We are going in circles, countries who have done well controlled the virus and now have an economic recovery ..And every life matters #GMB @devisridhar speaking truth to power https://t.co/U3BBV0uUSb [Tweet]. @ukiswitheu. https://twitter.com/ukiswitheu/status/1351089812799950850

Republik. (n.d.). Warum tun wir uns das eigentlich an? Retrieved 23 February 2021, from https://www.republik.ch/2021/02/22/warum-tun-wir-uns-das-eigentlich-an

Horton, Richard. ‘Offline: Science and Politics in the Era of COVID-19’. The Lancet 396, no. 10259 (24 October 2020): 1319. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32221-2.

Fukuyama, Barak Richman and Francis. “How to Quiet the Megaphones of Facebook, Google and Twitter.” Wall Street Journal, February 12, 2021, sec. Life. https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-quiet-the-megaphones-of-facebook-google-and-twitter-11613068856.

magazine, C. A., Nature. (n.d.). COVID-19 Herd Immunity Strategies Could Bring ‘Untold Death and Suffering’ Scientific American. Retrieved 18 February 2021, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-19-herd-immunity-strategies-could-bring-untold-death-and-suffering/

Structural racism led to worse Covid impact on BAME groups – report. (2020, October 27). The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/27/structural-racism-led-to-worse-covid-impact-on-bame-groups-report

Taylor, J. (2021, February 17). Treasurer says Facebook has ‘damaged its reputation’ with Australian news ban. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/18/facebook-to-restrict-australian-users-sharing-news-content

Davies, R., & Elgot, J. (2021, February 17). Air systems in some UK quarantine hotels ‘risk spreading Covid’. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/feb/17/air-systems-in-some-uk-quarantine-hotels-risk-spreading-covid

not quite sure how this is politics, but interesting example

Fake News and Conspiracy Theories. (2021, February 16). American Purpose. https://www.americanpurpose.com/blog/fukuyama/fake-news-and-conspiracy-theories/

Bavel, J. J. V., Reinero, D. A., Spring, V., Harris, E. A., & Duke, A. (2021). Speaking my truth: Why personal experiences can bridge divides but mislead. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/9jcem

El cerebro humano está diseñado para favorecer la redistribución, pero la desigualdad genera prejuicios que ayudan a justificar actitudes más egoístas

Sharpe claims that Englishmen “were able to…constitute themselves as political agents” by reading, whether or not they read about state affairs; for politics was “a type of consciousness” and the psyche “a text of politics.” “The Civil War itself became a contested text.” So reading was everything: “We are what we read.”

The argument here is that much of the English Civil War was waged in reading and writing. Compare this with today's similar political civil war between the right and the left, but it is being waged in social media instead in sound bites, video clips, tweets, which encourage visceral gut reactions instead of longer and better thought out arguments and well tempered reactions.

Instead of moving forward on the axis of thought and rationality, we're descending instead into the primordial and visceral reactions of our "reptilian brains."

Trying out the public note feature

Baker, M., & Saldanha, A. (2021, January 21). A year after the U.S. recorded its first virus case, the outbreak has ravaged the nation and deaths remain high. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/us/a-year-after-the-us-recorded-its-first-virus-case-the-outbreak-has-ravaged-the-nation-and-deaths-remain-high.html

Ward. J., Alleaume. C., Peretti-Watel P (2020) The French public’s attitudes to a future COVID-19 vaccine: the politicization of a public health issue. SocArXiv Papers. Retrieved from https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/xphe9/

Page. S. E. (2020) The Coronavirus and Innovations. Items. Retrieved from: https://items.ssrc.org/covid-19-and-the-social-sciences/policy-models-in-pandemic/the-coronavirus-and-innovation/

In the time period the translation, you can tell that they had just begun to create labels on relationships, people etc to understand what they were feeling or to just recognize different people. In the text chosen, there are many different area's in the highlighted portion and throughout the text, where Gilgamesh uses labels which created for a clear story. It is however conflicting because of the translators and them maybe having included different sections so that the story makes sense. Nonetheless, when he said that he loved him like he would a woman, that shows how the language at the time was advanced, closer to the current 21st century, enough to realize that Gilgamesh had romantic feelings for Enkidu. Also with the piece when the translators described him as sitting near the hierodule. The slave, prostitute (both) was able to be identified no matter of the gender. Looking back at the time, it is still demeaning when thinking in our 21st century mindset and what we consider normal. However looking back, it is interesting to see how advanced the ancient Iraq civilization operated. It is also amazing seeing where the women of this country came from as in today's world the women now being able to be involved with the government, they are making it a mission so Iraqi women know their rights (Calabrese, John, et al).

CC BY-SA

Calabrese, John, et al. “Constitutional and Legal Rights of Iraqi Women.” Middle East Institute, 8 Dec. 2020, mei.edu/publications/constitutional-and-legal-rights-iraqi-women.

Underlying emotional drivers of Trump supporters, conspiracy theorists, and Republican psychology

Solutions to divided political landscape -- it can't be done head-on just by winning arguments through logic -- but instead will require community work, personal relationships, and educational policies

How We Can Stop the Spread of Coronavirus by Christmas. (n.d.). Time. Retrieved December 17, 2020, from https://time.com/5912705/covid-19-stop-spread-christmas/

Ed Yong [@edyong209] (2020). One amazing way to do this would be to control the pandemic; Venmo me. Twitter. Retrieved from: https://twitter.com/edyong209/status/1300588785634340864

KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) @KFF (2020) RT @KFF @DrewAltman discusses two fundamental policy decisions made by the Trump administration that set the U.S. on the controversial an…

Cargnino. M., Neubaum. G., Winter. S., (2020) We're a Good Match: Selective Political Friending on Social Networking Sites. PSyarxiv. Retrieved from: https://psyarxiv.com/9dmgf/

Serhan, Y. (2020, December 8). Vaccine Nationalism Is Doomed to Fail. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/12/vaccine-nationalism-doomed-fail/617323/

Drivers of the current state of democracy and psychology of America.

A view that is very similar to David Brooks'.

Not just in the US but increasingly seen around the world as part of the anti-intellectualism associated with the Wokeness.

Would a tit-for-tat strategy be a useful one for Biden? Perhaps leveled at individual people if not the Republican party as a whole?

John Glubb was an English Army officer who created a theory called the "Fate of Empires", which catalogues the typical rise and fall of hegemonic orders and attempts to explain why they fall. He wanted to understand where the North Atlantic European Hegemonic Order is in its cycle, in the hopes that we could avoid making the same mistakes as those before us.

This is the typical cycle of empires:

1. Age of Pioneers

A small and insignificant nation on takes over its more powerful neighbors. This new nation is driven by a need to grow and improve, to become the power they took over. This phase is characterized by an optimistic sense of improvisation and initiative.

1. The Age of Commerce

The new empire has a lot of new territory, which is safer due to recent military successes. This sets the stage for economic growth. The conquering class benefits from the merchants but aren't motivated solely by material gains.

1. Age of Affluence

The ruling class look for ways to spend their new-found wealth, and because they still feel an idealistic sense of noble nationalism, they spend their money on large-scale civic and building projects and invest in art and culture.

1. The Age of Intellect

Gradually this material success corrodes the values of the ruling class and material wealth replaces nationalism as the primary virtue. This phase is characterized by a defensiveness and the need to protect what they have. Wall building comes at this phase.

Often seen as a golden age, this is the phase that often comes before its downfall.

1. The Age of Decadence

The ruling class is completely disengaged from the issues of the state and are focussed almost completely on sport, entertainment, and personal gain.

it happened again in 2016

Maia, H. P., Ferreira, S. C., & Martins, M. L. (2020). Adaptive network approach for emergence of societal bubbles. ArXiv:2010.08635 [Nlin, Physics:Physics]. http://arxiv.org/abs/2010.08635

Face Masks, Voting, and Social Media | Human Resources | The University of Texas at Austin. (n.d.). Retrieved October 27, 2020, from https://hr.utexas.edu/learning-development/programs/face-masks-voting-and-social-media

Centola, D. (n.d.). Why Social Media Makes Us More Polarized and How to Fix It. Scientific American. Retrieved October 25, 2020, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-social-media-makes-us-more-polarized-and-how-to-fix-it/

Health, T. L. P. (2020). COVID-19 in Spain: A predictable storm? The Lancet Public Health, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(20)30239-5

By the time I met Tim, he loathed the Clintons and the Democratic Party. Democrats had gotten in bed with the corporations, while no one was looking. Tim felt betrayed, and politically abandoned — until Mr. Trump came along.

+1

Democrats were already on the trajectory of losing blue-collar whites by the end of the 60s.

David Rothschild on Twitter. (n.d.). Twitter. Retrieved October 17, 2020, from https://twitter.com/DavMicRot/status/1316429651988877312

LOLGOP

Jackson, A. S., Ingrid Joylyn Paredes,Tiara Ahmad,Christopher. (n.d.). Yes, Science Is Political. Scientific American. Retrieved October 13, 2020, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/yes-science-is-political/

The HOPE-project (http://hope-project.dk ) tracks public opinion during #covid19, sharing findings with the public & authorities. This graph is the most concerning yet: The # willing to use an approved COVID-vaccine recommended for them

Times info@bylinetimes.com (https://bylinetimes.com/), B. (2020, October 9). Climate Science Denial Network Behind Great Barrington Declaration. Byline Times. https://bylinetimes.com/2020/10/09/climate-science-denial-network-behind-great-barrington-declaration/

Feldman, J. (2020, October 11). The “herd immunity strategy” isn’t part of a scientific debate about COVID-19. Medium. https://medium.com/@jmfeldman/the-herd-immunity-strategy-isnt-part-of-a-scientific-debate-about-covid-19-abddf6bc7c13

Abraar Karan: Politics and public health in America—taking a stand for what is right. (2020, October 9). The BMJ. https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/10/09/abraar-karan-politics-and-public-health-in-america-taking-a-stand-for-what-is-right/

Is this because it makes it easier for misdirection and outright lies to reach an audience without being checked and verified? Very likely.

I feel like this word captures very well the exact era of Trumpian Republicanism in which we find ourselves living.

Knowing a little of what is coming in advance here, I can't help but thinking: How can this riot theory potentially be used to influence politics and/or political campaigns? It could be particularly effective to get people "riled up" just before a particular election to create a political riot of sorts and thereby influence the outcome.

Facebook has done several social experiments with elections in showing that their friends and family voted and thereby affecting other potential voters. When done in a way that targets people of particular political beliefs to increase turn out, one is given a means of drastically influencing elections. In some sense, this is an example of this "Riot Theory".

Here's where OER textbooks might help to make some change. If free materials with less input from politicians and more input from educators were available. But then this pushes the onus down to a different level with different political aspirations. I have to think that taking the politicization of these decisions at a state level would have to help.

The Republican party will never stop claiming the media is bias, so I am surprised they are claiming they have resolved this issue. I would think they would want to keep acknowledging it as an issue.