Monday Miscellany, 9/4/23

The numbers for Trump supporters as a whole are 71% trusting him to tell the truth; 63% friends and family; 56% conservative media; 42% religious leaders.

Among Republican primary voters as a whole, the pattern is different:   64% trust their  family and friends;  56% trust conservative media; 55% trust religious leaders;  55% trust Trump.

These numbers also bode ill for religious leaders, presumably including their pastors!  So many Republicans don’t think their pastors are telling the truth?  And Trump-supporting evangelicals are the most skeptical of these groups, with only 42% saying they trust their religious leaders.  One media narrative has been that overly-politicized Christian nationalist preachers have been leading their flocks to support Trump, but this would suggest that the flocks support him more than the preachers do.

At any rate, a person may have legitimate reasons to support Trump, but his truth-telling is surely not his strong point, is it?  Should evangelicals believe in the inerrancy of Donald Trump?

Efforts to Bring Back COVID Masks

The city health department has told New Yorkers to wear masks over Labor Day for fear of a new strain of COVID.  Other health departments are following suit.  Some hospitals, colleges, and businesses are telling people to mask up again.  And we see more and more people out and about wearing them.

I’ve heard of research that shows that masks were ineffective in stopping COVID, but those researchers are saying that this was a misinterpretation of their study.  What they found is that interventions to get people to wear masks, such as rules making them mandatory, were ineffective, or, at best, the results were inconclusive.

Still, the editors of National Review are saying the public should Just Say No to New Mandatory Covid Restrictions.  What do you think abou that?

The Bud Light Syndrome in Politics

Charles C. W. Cooke discussed the Bud Light fiasco and his fellow columnist Noah Rothman’s analysis:  “Bud Light’s customers ditched the beer because the firm’s marketing campaign communicated in no uncertain terms that they were no longer wanted.”

Cooke goes on to say that both political parties are doing the same thing.  Republicans are saying that anyone who won’t support Trump is to be despised, and Democrats are saying that anyone who questions any tenet of the woke agenda is to be demonized.

He concludes, “There are many reasons that the number of independents is growing as fast as it is, but an important one among them is that the traditional coalitions have begun to tell anyone who they deem impure that they ought to go away. So they are.”