The Waiting Man

So Trump has infected the USA with another disease... as if Covid19 isn't enough

Now there are many people displaying worrying symptoms of sophophobia - a fear of learning, or education

Combine it with the sexism that the outgoing President has normalised during his entire 4 year term & you have the current kerfuffle over First Lady-Elect Jill Biden's use of the word 'Doctor' in front of her name, as she has a doctorate in, of all things, education!!

The manufactured outrage over someone who dared to study further & has the audacity to use the word 'Doctor' "when she hasn't even delivered a baby!!" is also reminiscent of what I thought was a peculiarly Australian tradition - Tall Poppy Syndrome - the tendency to cut down those who stick their head above the common crop. "What makes you think you're so special?!? You're no better than the rest of us!!!" - an ugly result of our convict & working class origins... well those of us who are of Anglo-Saxon descent anyway (Let me tell y'all what it's like, being male, middle-class & white!!) - now spreading globally like a... well, like a virus

Given that the kerfuffle started with an 'opinion piece' in the Wall St Journal & has since been backed up by an 'editorial' from the same newspaper, it can be argued that it's just an exercise in that all-American pastime 'Free Speech'... the same supposed right that all bigots, sexists, fear-mongers, racists & conspiracy theory loonies hide behind when they spray their bile in public. But freedom of speech is NOT freedom from its consequences, which is why those on the aforementioned list howl in such outrage when someone disagrees with them & takes them to task for their inflammatory oratory. To those people, freedom of speech shouldn't be granted to anyone who disagrees with them. From there, it just dissolves into name-calling & abuse, based on & fuelled by the aforementioned list. Then the street protests... then the rallies.... then... you wind up with a President who does & says these sorts of things with impunity, which, of course, then emboldens those with similar views to express them even more loudly & vehemently. Repeat the cycle until your country loses its respect around the world, your population dies in massive numbers from a disease whose spread can be mostly managed with simple, preventative measures, which the aforementioned list politicise & demonise to the point of ineffectiveness, all the while claiming it's a hoax as the bodies pile up & your economy wobbles towards collapse

That's not a long bow to draw, it's a simple game of falling dominoes... you know - the things the military were so afraid of during the Cold War. Funny how that's so credible when you can point at an enemy who's "over there", but is apparently nonsense when the enemy is within your own society...

As for the whole Dr Biden outrage, I think it was best summed up by Doug Emhoff, who tweeted the obvious "This story would never have been written about a man"