BLUE BAYOUS: Red tribe viewers spoonfed Teslas!

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2024

Our blue tribe instructed in "woke:" We've been surprised by one persistent talking-point as we've come to watch more and more of the nation's red tribe "cable news:"

We've been surprised by the persistence with which red tribe stars pound away at electric vehicles. 

It's a persistent theme on Fox, with all the employees reciting. This morning, they got to recite about an actual news event, reported here (without a paywall) by NPR's Bill Chappell:

It's so cold, Teslas are struggling to charge in Chicago

The Arctic air gripping much of the U.S. put Tesla drivers in Chicago into a pickle on Monday. Many of the cars sat in long lines at Supercharger stations, their owners saying the cold sapped the electric vehicles' normal ability to charge—and keep a charge.

In some cases, tow trucks were called to move the cars, in scenes that were relayed by local TV news. The Tesla owners' plight became an emblem of the misery extreme cold is inflicting on wide sections of the U.S. (more on that below).

"I've been here for over five hours at this point and I still have not gotten to charge my car," Tesla driver Brandon Welbourne told CBS News Chicago, as car horns blared nearby. "A charge that should take 45 minutes is taking two hours."

[...]

On Monday, the local National Weather Service office recorded a rise to 1 degree Fahrenheit at Chicago-O'Hare Airport at 1 p.m. local time, adding, "This means that Chicago's climate site spent about 35-36 hours below 0°F."

How cold was it? In Chicago, it was extremely cold as judged by American norms. In his lengthy report, Chappell paints an embarrassing picture of the current state of electric vehicles in the face of such frigid conditions.

Chappell was perhaps a bit naive concerning one basic point. To Chappell, this gruesome situation "became an emblem of the misery extreme cold is inflicting on wide sections of the U.S." 

As Hector once said, "Strange man!" On Fox, the situation became an emblem of the appalling way our blue tribe elites are supposedly trying to force our nation's real Americans to surrender their internal combustion cars.

This theme is remarkably common on Fox. But so the discourse tends to go in a journalistic universe built on "segregation by viewpoint." 

Over on today's Morning Joe, viewers from our own blue tribe were being consigned to one of our tribe's "Blue Bayous" as two guests seemed to say that it's only been Republican women who have dared to challenge Donald J. Trump.

Everyone agreed with this formulation. Nothing will turn on what was said, but it was classic "woke." 

Let's be clear! By now, everyone within our landlocked blue tribe knows what we should say when that troubling term is employed:

We're supposed to say that the term has no actual meaning—that partisans of the hapless red tribe don't even know how to define the term "woke."

Sad! No one can define such terms as "liberal" or "conservative" in the precise way these thought leaders mean, but those terms are used all the time—and people have a working idea of what is being referenced.

At any rate, the year was finally underway as of this past Monday night. A small percentage of Iowa's Republican voters were willing to turn out, after nightfall, in very dangerous weather conditions, to play their role in the nomination of the next Republican candidate.

This part of our system makes almost no sense, but those voters should be praised for their desire to participate. That said, the election year will now unfold in a nation where two warring groups of voters are propagandized around the clock by a pair of thoroughly segregated journalistic elites.

We're prepared to admit it—we're flashing on President Lincoln again! In his second inaugural address, he described the state of play four years earlier as a brutal war drew near. 

It was Lincoln's second inauguration. Early in his short and astounding address, he thought back to the first:

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it—all sought to avert it. 

While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. 

Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

And the war came, the president famously said. Six weeks later, at Ford's Theater, it claimed its most famous victim.

President Lincoln described a nation which had divided into two wholly separate camps. As his short, astounding address continued, he described that division:

One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the union but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. 

All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen perpetuate and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war, while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. 

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding.

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not that we be not judged. 

Each region prayed to the same God, the president said that day. The confederate viewpoint may seem strange, he explicitly said. But, for whatever reason, he instantly added this:

Let us judge not that we be not judged. 

Once again, Strange man! As we noted on Monday, Lincoln's address became more astounding as he continued from there.

Candidate Trump recently suggested that the war could have been avoided by skilled negotiation. We thought of the sheer stupidity which had arisen when the gentleman asked, way back when, if some sort of ingestion of liquid bleach might cure a case of Covid.

On this, the second morning of our new election year, the two warring "cable news" tribes stood in rank separation. Each corporate ownership group had assembled teams of analysts who would completely agree with each other while denouncing or disappearing the claims of the rival tribe. 

No overstatement, no matter how silly, would ever be questioned on the air. Viewers would hear their own tribe's perspective again and again, and they'd hear nothing else.

So it was on this second morning of this new election year. On Monday evening, a CNN reporter had spoken with one Iowa voter at one of the state's many caucuses.

The voter had braved life and limb to arrive at the scene, then had come in from the old. We were struck by some of the things he said.

We'll plan to start there tomorrow. Meanwhile, what does the term "Blue Bayou" mean? 

That strikes us as an important question, though the die has almost surely been cast for this year's war of the worlds.

Tomorrow: A CNN anchor was somewhat surprised by what that voter said

Yes, we'd call it woke: No, it doesn't really matter—but what was said on Morning Joe? 

At some point, we'll be able to show you. We'd call the statement unhelpful and silly, and we'd also call it woke.