“When Sanders says that accepting corporate money is corrupting, they feel attacked. It’s not just that most of their paychecks come from giant corporations, it’s that their Washington is awash with corporate money. It funds their spouses and their friends. It buys them drinks.

When Sanders speaks in moral absolutes and refuses to compromise on core values, they respond with contempt at his inflexibility — because they feel remorse over their own moral flexibility.

[…]

They don’t hate him because their corporate masters tell them to. They hate him because he is a walking, breathing, sometimes yelling reproof of the sacrifices they have had to make to succeed in their chosen profession.”

https://www.salon.com/2020/03/11/political-journalists-are-eager-to-kick-bernie-sanders-on-his-way-out-the-door/

Liz Specht at StatNews with some back of the envelope math about healthcare resources:

Individuals and governments seem not to be fully grasping the magnitude and near-inevitability of the national and global systemic burden we’re facing. We’re witnessing the abject refusal of many countries to adequately respond or prepare. Even if the risk of death for healthy individuals is very low, it’s insensible to mock decisions like canceling events, closing workplaces, or stocking up on prescription medications as panicked overreaction. These measures are the bare minimum we should be doing to try to shift the peak — to slow the rise in cases so health care systems are less overwhelmed.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/10/simple-math-alarming-answers-covid-19/

Good summation of research work done on one of many roadblocks we face, and also why Elizabeth Warren gained so little traction despite her strengths and accomplishments.

“Could Warren’s political fate in 2020 turn on voters who think she would make a great president choosing another candidate because they think that’s what their neighbors will do? I’m inclined to say yes because of a social psychological concept called pluralistic ignorance.

Pluralistic ignorance is a discrepancy between one’s privately held beliefs and public behavior. It occurs when people assume that the identical actions of themselves and others reflect different underlying states.”

http://m.nautil.us/blog/this-psychological-concept-could-be-shaping-the-presidential-election

“The problem with the notion of “cancel culture” and its detractors is that two things can be simultaneously true. Agnew was definitely wrong for typing that stupid, reductive shit into what one can only assume is his ethical smartphone that probably runs on the Android platform. (Everyone knows that Bernie supporters would never use an iPhone.) And it is also possible that the Twitter rantings of a 23-year-old might not completely embody the positions of a 33-year-old man.”

https://www.theroot.com/bernie-sanders-senior-adviser-said-some-very-stupid-thi-1842216172

“Warren is hardly the only woman professor to be diminished or overlooked on the political stage lately. Remember psychology professor Dr. Christine Blasey Ford? She of the impeccable, detailed testimony against Brett Kavanaugh? On the witness stand, Blasey Ford was learned — drawing from her professional understanding of the brain and memory to describe Kavanaugh’s alleged assault on her years ago. She spoke like the professor she was and in return she got … ridicule and death threats. Think of Trump impeachment witnesses Marie Yovanovitch and Fiona Hill who, while not technically professors, evinced great scholarly expertise in their remarks before Congress, only to be mocked, their testimony largely ignored.

Or think of the many women professors who regularly appear on even liberal TV political stations, such as MSNBC, who are virtually always addressed casually by their first names — as Maya (Professor Wiley), Joyce (Professor Vance), or Mimi (Professor Rocah). Male on-camera professors, on the other hand, receive exaggerated deference. Who has ever dared call Professor Tribe “Laurence” or Professor Dershowitz “Alan?” It’s almost unthinkable. But why?

Because the archetype of the learned man looms large in our cultural imagination as an authority figure deserving of respect. But a learned woman remains an aberration, an unnatural creature to be diminished and implicitly sent back to the appropriate realm for women: the care and education of children. And with its connotation of prudish virginity, “schoolmarm” reminds us that women are still defined by their relationship to men. A schoolmarmish woman has no obvious sexual “owner,” no husband to confer the status of wife or mother. (By contrast, consider the wives and girlfriends of Trumpworld and their endless parade of mute, hypersexualized adornment. They are the anti-schoolmarms.) Unadorned and “unattractive,” the schoolmarm is deemed unworthy. This is the only archetype we seem to have for the woman intellectual.”

https://www.thecut.com/2020/03/elizabeth-warrens-schoolmarm-qualities-are-why-i-like-her.html?utm_source=fb&fbclid=IwAR1ft4g8yeC-t0XMfGeEVYgCgKNn9njKkY1HOLXDb-X8dIQkG0qc1mxdY5o