My Favorite Tweet
At last count, I've published around 21,100 tweets since April 2013. At some point, I'll need to review them to compile lists of my personal favorites, my most popular (impressions, engagements, etc.), my humorous tweets, topics (e.g., immigration, libertarian, etc.), and so on. Now I can't say for certain this is "the best" one (I've published a number I'm very proud of), but this deals with a popular meme among libertarians, and I put an imaginative twist on it.More like:— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) March 14, 2020
Democrat: Your taxes need to help our neighbors.
Republican: God will help our neighbors.
Libertarians: We choose to help our neighbors.
To provide the context, libertarians often disdain the distinction between Democrats and Republicans; they consider them basically different factions of the Statist party. To a certain sense, libertarians take particular exception to the Republicans for the pretense of championing the free market, while often embracing Big Government law and order and the military, spare no expense, civil liberties be damned. (Note: there have been some libertarians who don't fit this stereotype, like Ron and Rand Paul, Justin Amash, and Tom Massie, and were, at one point, registered Republicans.)
Under Trump, and key factors in my leaving the GOP in 2016, we've seen an embrace of immigration restrictionists and protectionist policies. For the most part, this departed from more recent trends in the Goldwater-Reagan era in favor of free trade and immigration reform, although for instance Reagan embraced quotas on Japanese cars and George W. Bush unsuccessfully put tariffs on foreign steel. Media conservatives, like Rush Limbaugh, of course, opposed unauthorized immigration basically as an extension of their law and order perspective. But certainly Trump could point to GOP precedents in championing tariffs (notably Hoover) and immigration (Coolidge signed immigration legislation which put into place a quota system which persists (with some changes) to the current day.
The parent tweet, which should be displayed above, made a subtle distinction between Republicans and libertarians, more of a GOP collectivist concept of helping one's neighbor vs. an individualist perspective for libertarians. It really wasn't obvious to me where the author was going with this, other than to make some allegation of hypocrisy in personal commitment, paying lip service to private sector charity. Maybe it's the subtle distinction of, say, providing an incentive for religious or personal charity vs. direct government funding. But I think most libertarians would welcome an opportunity to reduce one's taxes, regardless of the rationale. And also, most libertarians consider freedom to associate as a fundamental aspect of individual liberty. I might be able to leverage my contribution in a voluntary association. Of course, it's possible that the author is simply making reference to this concept, mentioned above, that Republicans and Democrats are part of one Statist Party, i.e., we are doing our part by compelling government assistance, and the contrast is "we" the government vs "I" in the private sector.
What my tweet does is point out that the Dems are historically linked to the social welfare net and the GOP has been linked to a social conservative constituency since at least the 1980's, e.g., the evangelical Christian base. So I'm trying to contrast the compulsory redistribution schemes of the Dems and explain GOP opposition as reflecting a religious conviction that God will provide vs. individual action. I then contrast the libertarian position by emphasizing voluntary commitment (because the parent quote seems to imply the individual is compelled to act).
In the past, I've sometimes tried to explain my jokes in a similar manner. One probably doesn't want to see the sausage making of jokes; it certainly isn't that humorous a process. And I certainly don't want to imply creative output is that detailed in analysis or conscious in practice. I knew the original tweet bugged me, and my tweet involved rewriting it with my edits. The above discussion simply describes the context for my reply tweet.
Various Notes During the COVID-19/Coronavirus Crisis
It's not so much I'm squeamish over blood tests (and needles don't seem as scary as they seemed when I was a little kid. But there was a period of time I seemed to be doing blood work every few weeks, e.g., when my doctor was testing dosages for a thyroid deficiency.I think I earlier wrote how my personal doctor dropped me about a dozen years back; he had scheduled me for a noon-hour appointment to review blood workup results. I basically hadn't driven on the Baltimore loop in the noon hour and found myself in bumper-to-bumper traffic to Towson. I arrived about 15 minutes late, and it's not like I was the only patient scheduled. Usually there's a round robin suite of patient rooms and typically it was 20-40 minutes before the doctor would poke his head in the door. And usually then it was 5 minutes or less of contact time. There was nothing he couldn't have said over the phone, but my visits were like his ATM card. So anyway, they refused to see me because I was late and basically rubbed my nose in it by demanding I reschedule then and there. I generally did not work in the Baltimore area, so I had to work arrangements through work--and I told them I would contact them later. Apparently that must have pissed off my doctor. I had a painful condition that required outpatient surgery. I had been referred to a local surgeon; I was scheduled and was told that I should be getting a packet in the mail from the hospital the weekend before that Wednesday. No packet. I call the surgeon's office; the assistant said basically she didn't know what the hell I was talking about since I wasn't on the schedule (any more). The surgeon later called me back, saying in her self-righteous way that she didn't operate on patients who didn't have a personal doctor. That's literally how I found out the idiot doctor had dropped me. (There are other reasons I considered him an idiot. I once mentioned to him I frequently ate sardines, and he acted like it was a major revelation, probably wrong assumptions about salt intake.) But I was seriously pissed at the surgeon, too; even assuming I knew about the doctor dropping me, why hadn't she contacted me for contact information on my new doctor? She lacked common courtesy and common sense. (I had a condition that resulted in periodic excruciating pain for 15 minutes or longer, and it took another 3 months or so, and multiple episodes, before I could get a repair. I think I had a grandaunt who had had the same condition. My new doctor, much closer than Towson, referred me to an alternate surgeon.)
Usually the clinic where my personal doctor works has done my blood workups, but he had referred me to a specialist. Apparently they didn't do blood drawing in advance of a 3-month follow-up, so I had to call up my insurance provider to find out what vendor they worked with (there's a duopoly: Quest and LabCorp). So the follow-up was scheduled for today; I went to the lab on Monday, only to find out I hadn't brought the specific paper they wanted (I brought a page with a test summary on it), so I had to call the doctor's office and have them fax a replacement.
It turns out there's been a change in protocols over the past week or so. The doctor herself called me to briefly discuss the blood work and basically to cancel my visit today with the nurse-practitioner. It seems they are discouraging less than chronic issue visits over the short term. I had recently received a note from my physician's office suggesting I needed to have other (non-described) blood workup. So I called their office to report what this doctor mentioned over my blood workup this week; the nurse mentioned it was other blood work they needed, but again, unless I have a chronic issue, they are discouraging routine visits under the coronavirus guidelines.
A second item has been a Twitter kerfuffle about COVID-19 being the "Boomer Remover", apparently very popular among middle-schoolers. Now technically I'm a Baby Boomer, although my parents didn't reach their teens during WWII, never mind serve in the military (my Dad's USAF career started during the Korean War, before he married Mom). Now I was fairly young (a 19-year-old college graduate and a 30-year-old college professor), but any familiar reader could make a good guess I was a Boomer when, e.g., I described being a young volunteer for Carter's first POTUS campaign.
I'm modestly amused (yeah, I get it: "remover" rhymes with "Boomer": how "clever".) I realize half of Boomers now qualify for senior entitlements (not me yet). I personally don't like joking about the elderly's approaching demise; I've never done it myself. But more to the point: my Mom, her cousins, and several in-laws' folks are still living and much more vulnerable to related issues. (For example, my Mom recently dealt with a bout of pneumonia.) So to my siblings and myself, joking about the virus' affect on elderly people just isn't funny; we worry about the virus affecting our loved ones.
I'm not going to rant about the thoughtless actions of young people; not all of them are doing it, and I had my own issues to deal with when I was young. But I want to point out that the virus can kill young people, too, especially those with immune system and other challenging health issues.
Finally, for a more positive perspective of addressing the coronavirus crisis, see Altucher's post: https://jamesaltucher.com/blog/good-news-coronavirus/.
