Spouse threw away his one 'thin blue line' shirt. It was a freebie from a 5k run a couple years back. I spotted the shirt in the kitchen trash.

"Thin blue line not cool anymore?" I asked him.

"I saw a lot of insurrectionists with the shirts and flags," he said. "So no, not cool anymore."

I wasn't going to tell him to ditch the shirt. I am glad he chose to do it of his own accord. Since the George Floyd protests it just seemed ... gauche, even if he only wears it around the house for exercise.

Sounds like he will be working more through the next couple weeks, which is a bummer because he already was working more over the holidays. He's a little burnt out. Doesn't help that we've hopped the fence to democratic socialism and he works with mostly conservatives. He tells me about the political discussions he gets into with coworkers. His parents are hard red hats and his mom has been getting worked up because he won't talk politics with her and that's all she wants to discuss. She talks a big game about wanting intellectual debate, but she doesn't actually have an open mind. Anybody who genuinely wants the truth about major election fraud can google. What she really wants is to browbeat spouse with cockeyed alternative logic and get him back on the family team. Like, sorry, the republican party is cruel, lying, immoral, anti-science and now seditious. MIL, why are you still onboard the train of stupid liars? Are you stupid or a liar or in need of mental help? It's at least one of those options. I never wanted to snap judge people by their politics, but it is not possible to be genuinely compassionate and genuinely truth-seeking and wear the red hat.

I could probably bitch about this for hours. Sometimes I wonder if I have personally pushed spouse more left, away from his folks, because of my reaction to the covid response and the BLM protests. I wonder if his mom blames me. Have I skewed radical myself, just like a vulnerable person who desperately latched on to Qanon to try to make the world make sense again? Are my instincts trustworthy right now, or magnified? Am I receptive to opinions just because they are saying what I want to hear? It would be foolish to think I am invulnerable to propaganda. As I watch the events of the insurrection, it's easy to see how people get spooled up and turned into a traitor hunting mob. We don't want something like McCarthyism, no matter what the red hats did. Don't give the radical voices too much weight, even the friendly ones.

There is an AMA ongoing in r/QanonCasualties with a PhD talking about cults (and how to get family members out of them). He's talking about authoritarianism and why otherwise smart, capable people fall for cults. I remember stumbling across pizzagate after the 2016 election and sometimes I have wondered why it didn't stick with me when it grabbed so many others. I just found it preposterous, I guess. Astrology is fine but pizzagate was right out. How does that work? You would think I would be a sucker. I have an observation I want to get out about this but I will have to do a whole other post because it's going to rabbit trail off like crazy.

The fallout from the insurrection has been interesting. I see a lot of misunderstanding of law enforcement in the city. Capitol Police aren't the same as MPD or Park Police. They probably had nothing to do with the summer protests. There are multiple different federal agencies that have uniformed officers, like the supreme court and the mint, defending their own tiny patches of the city and mostly not collaborating. So I read a lot of "why weren't the police prepared" and it comes down to the jurisdiction and agency, because there is no monolithic Police entity. Spouse's bosses def knew something was coming down and had plans in place. There are articles saying they were caught unawares and that is def not true. I dunno why capitol police weren't paying attention. Spouse says that since capitol police deal with protesters in the building as a routine everyday thing, they may have been complacent or conflicted about how to handle the crowd. If anyone tries to get into the building where spouse works, they are FOR SURE Bad Guys and there's no weird grey zone of let's tolerate their yelling for a bit, then escort them out because they're exercising their constitutional rights. At the capitol there's also accidental damage to priceless art to consider with any forceful action. They may have been restrained to keep artworks intact (which brings up a very interesting point that aggressive law enforcement clearly results in a more aggressive crowd - red hats saying "oh it was so peaceful, we're so much better, we don't burn things" but maybe BLM would have been less agitated if not gleefully teargassed and shot at every opportunity). But the situation clearly got away from capitol police, by design or by accident.

Trump and red hats/Qanon getting banned from their social media hidey holes is interesting too. I read an article about why group beliefs become stronger after confronted with counterevidence and I wonder which way the red hats will go when they can't easily communicate with a large likeminded herd. Will they run out of steam, or fester like a peat fire? If most common social media apps are banning them, parler is kicked off amazon cloud services, what's next? Mastodon instance, perhaps? Seems likely. There's already gab. Will Trump try to brand his own? It's a fascinating fork in the road for the internet. A large group feels entitled to a free, unmoderated communication service that requires little to no technical skill and works on mobile. I am curious what will fill that void and how awful it will be. (God I hope the small internet has a high enough barrier for entry that they stay away.)

Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs

It's also very interesting to see people's social media postings used against them. Blatantly planning things in public posts, making threats, posting the video and photo evidence. Now identities are being tracked down and people are being fired, getting arrested. I mean, shockedpikachu, but I wonder how these people will seek to change laws in response. After wielding the club, how will they react when it's used on them. Because they are from the strata of people whom lawmakers will cater to and try to make nice with.

So many very interesting reactions are playing out.

I have been occupied with a major reorganization of the house since Christmas and it's ... going? I'm in the middle part where I've made the mess worse and visual progress is slow. :-/ Frankly it looks awful. Art shit is everywhere. Piles of random things to be sorted. Now I really have to finish it before I can do anything. It'll be good, it's just ... slow. I'm terrible at organizing because there are so many ways to organize. By project? By type of craft? Tools vs supply? It's not very much fun right now and I am dragging myself through with the promise of feeling energized when it is done.

My thyme cuttings have sprouted roots!! It's very exciting. I got some sage and mint bundles from the grocery store and am trying to root those too. Supposedly you can use crushed plain aspirin to encourage root growth instead of expensive growth hormone. I must have used too much because I killed a couple mint sprigs and one sage sprig is not looking good. Fingers crossed for the rest. Looking forward to getting the seeds and starting some seedlings. I dunno if I will break even on cost of supplies vs usable product, but I'm telling myself I am investing in the skill of gardening, not so much in the harvest. It is good to know a bit about how to grow things.