Will Congress Succumb to Myopia Again This Session?

You don’t suppose that folks in Congress really do not understand that communication requires an exchange of information, do you? I’m curious about how folks with a myopic point of view can possibly communicate. If all one can see is that one-eyed focus thingie, it would be challenging to have even the slightest chance of actually exchanging information. Usually what happens after a myopic attempt to communicate is a spate of “I told you’s.” Think of an old-time fax machine. When you dialed the number of the receiving fax, there was a series of squawks and squeaks that signaled to one computer that the other computer was ready to send and receive. That way, the receiving computer could keep the sending computer abreast of what was received and what was being received in an order that the sending computer could know when the communication was complete, received and printed. Otherwise, the sending computer might well send a burst of signals that overwhelmed the receiving computer, and no information exchange could take place. In other words, the sending and receiving computers had to stop and listen. “I told you’s” never sent a fax.

This so-called myopic virus that has served to freeze the collective Republican mental capacity, which in turn limits the size and number of abstractions which can operate in one event, seems to be most prevalent in the ranks of MAGA leaning Republicans. In defense of those folks, the only place they’ve erred is to have assumed that being good was equal to conforming with a local pastor’s concepts of coerced compliance with his flavor of biblical interpretation. They can not be blamed for that. It is limiting for them, but they, perforce, have invested much of their life in voluntary compliance with the parochial flavor of their hometown interpretations of the hometown orthodox litany of acceptable belief. There’s nothing wrong with that, but then back home there ain’t a whole lot of international intrigue.

It would not be hard to imagine anyone from Maga Mike’s district, for example, to react to an imaginary reporter’s question about Mikey’s religiously-related baggage with, “Oh hell…What with Friday night football and the price of corn, no one has the time to worry with Russia and Ukraine. As for that other thing, women are getting too uppity lately. Keep ’em barefoot and pregnant is the word ‘round here.”

Yeseree Bob, that Johnson is second-in-line for the presidency behind Kamala. Should Joe meet his appointed time and Kamala were to take the wheel, there certainly would not be a way that the likes of Redline Mitch and Cancun Cruz to team up with the likes of Maga Mike, Shirtsleeve Gym, that Georgia Peach Space Laser Marge and the whole MAGA Clan to usurp the seat Kamala would then hold, only to then bestow it on Maga Mike. Would they?

As juicy as that idea would be, I’m afraid such an idea would fail and do so spectacularly. Myopic minds are not given to communication of information. Is it any wonder that the current Congressional make-up cannot accomplish anything? I’m pretty sure history indicates that communication is a marker for advanced civilizations. Communication on a civilizational scale requires a written language. More often than not, when we encounter a forgotten society, we find their written history. That history is a communication, but I have to also consider that there had to have been coherent communication of information to plan and execute the marvels which were so important that they were recorded as significant history for that civilization. When our history is written do you think it will read, “The United States achieved the greatest technological advancements of their age. They had achieved all that could have been expected and much more. Their demise came about due to an inability to continue to communicate information due to a decided religious myopia?”

There is a common Republican belief which defines reality as a burden which the entire society must pack into some eminent dystopian future. Therefore, rejecting ideas and concepts which could so much as entertain any ideas which were not self-generated is at the parochial heart of right-wing confusion concerning a host of diverse subjects. Subjects such as woke, antifa, women’s personal and social issues, why people of color can vote, and most especially, the idea that guns kill people. None of these myopic ideas and concepts can exist if one is to communicate information. Can you blame MAGAdoodles for covering their ears when anyone brings up ideas that are generated through the incorporation of as many points of view as possible? Lots of people call the outcome of such a process an agreement. Nothing grandiose, just an agreement. Myopic people just do not have the mental wherewithal to process a complicated concept like agreement. Myopics are limited to that one point of view they found in a toy box up in Grandma’s attic back in the day when they were learning all they would ever need to know.

I suspect that the definition of information as data received computed and in the ready state to transmit through a similar set of signals would be just way too complicated for myopic minds to digest. Or maybe it would simply be inconvenient. In either case, information requires all of its facets be included or the exchange is gossip as opposed to information. An illustration of this concept would be the MAGAverse position of denying further aid to Ukraine. The resistance is based on a belief that Ukraine is way off on the other side of the world and is none of our business. The only problem is that Ukraine is an international player in the world economy. But that would be just too difficult for the myopia infected to grasp. Too big of an idea, I guess. Is it any wonder that the just plain folks caucus in the Congress treats war in far-off lands as just gossip and nothing to worry their pretty little ole heads about? Folks down at the church social just don’t want to get involved is all.

It’s easy to get fooled when you want to hear information, but you hear what someone feels instead. It’s even more confusing if what someone believes is passed off as information. The problem is that feeling and belief are both subjective to an individual. No one can verify that those feelings or beliefs actually exist. Well you can, but that would bring us back to square one. Should you treat your feelings and beliefs as real, it is totally appropriate and just as totally myopic.

The Republican murmurings on subjects such as reacting to a mass murder, gerrymandering voting districts, claiming state ownership of female reproduction, banning books, repeal of social safety nets and health care as a right, are really telling when it comes to their ability to process adjustments to their political positions. Kind of an anti-political stance which is marked by demands that the world conform to their ideas of correctness.

I don’t think I want to be represented by a myopic Johnson and I damn sure don’t want such a myopic speaking for me. Do you?

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