We’re treating each other like crap

It’s not just the lunatic at the Trader Joe’s in California who doesn’t want to wear a mask. It isn’t just Karen. It’s Kyle and Dave and Donna and Maureen.

And it’s not just Trader Joe’s or airplanes. It’s everywhere.

Customers demand their right to be right no matter what–to the point where businesses are starting to push back. They’re pushing back enough that the Wall Street Journal wrote about restaurants and other service industry businesses pushing back against unruly customers and defending their staff.

The Brewerie at Union Station in Erie, Pennsylvania now has a sign on the doors that says, in all caps, BE KIND OR LEAVE. Owner Chris Sirianni said the sign has helped curb the worst of the worst behaviors. But the biggest impact may have been for his workers, who don’t feel like they’re walking around on eggshells.

(It’s a freaking brewery. How can you not be happy there?)

Early in my customer service experience, a guy I worked with told me that the customer is always important, but isn’t always right. This was after a customer demanded that my hair–which was never that long–be cut to his satisfaction the next time he came in to shop at the small supermarket I worked for.

There’s a huge difference between that and someone screaming at you because you didn’t anticipate their desires or because you’re short-staffed and you don’t turn around their breakfast sandwich as quickly as you did when you were fully staffed.

Somewhere along the line, we decided we were entitled to what we want, exactly the way we want it, exactly when you want it. Or some of us did.

Maybe it’s an extension of a world that tells us we should always get what we want, when we want it, in a way that’s customized to our whims. Or maybe it’s that we live in a world that’s so big and complex that some of us have to grab hold of what little bit of power we have and exercise it regardless of cost. Or maybe we’ve always been awful, it’s just that people aren’t putting up with it any more.

Whatever it is, people are fleeing the service industry. It’s not just enhanced unemployment. It’s not just greedy restaurant owners (who actually subsist on a tiny margin and generally aren’t eating bon bons on their yachts).

It’s customers. It’s us–or some of us.

The fact that businesses need to post these signs is a mirror we should all look in. Everyone has bad days. Everyone’s had interactions they regret. But maybe now’s the time to pause on those bad days and understand that everyone else has bad days. And to remember the time we were overwhelmed at work because someone demanded that we do something impossible.

Unfortunately, the people who’ll do that are most likely the people doing it already.

We have to do better because we deserve better (starting with myself).

What happens if our coming government expansion doesn’t produce results?

There was a period in our recent history when the percentage of black families living in poverty fell by 40% over a twenty-year period. When black male homicide rates fell by nearly a fifth for two consecutive decades. When the income gap between white families and families of color converged at their greatest rate.

Many would expect that pattern to have occurred following the introduction of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. According to a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece, that pattern actually took hold in the 1940s and extended into the late 60s. The trends changed starting then, coincidentally or not, at the start of LBJ’s Great Society.

Let’s assume for a minute that the aimed of people who want to expand government-based entitlement programs are entirely benevolent. Most liberals believe that government should be the primary force for good and that if there’s a problem that affects a lot of people, the government ought to solve it for the betterment of all.

But what happens when those programs don’t produce the desired results? What happens when data shows the possibility that they’re actually counterproductive?

This isn’t a call to return to the halcyon days of segregated drinking fountains and baseball leagues. It’s not a call to return to separate-but-equal.

Instead, it’s a call to clearly look at cause-and-effect. It’s a call to put aside ideology and take a hard look at what works and what doesn’t.

No matter how the legislative process works itself out, in the coming weeks, we’re getting ready to massively expand government largess with the assumption baked in that the programs will work–and that if they don’t work, the reasons will be rooted in institutional inequities and the fact that we didn’t do enough.

But what if what we did, didn’t help at all? What if it hurt?

What if government largess to get us through a crisis, like the Depression, World War II, or the Covid, is a good thing, but ongoing largess is actually counterproductive? What if it actually increases the problems it’s aimed at fixing?

In the current political environment, such a conversation would immediately be polluted with charges of racism and a poorly hidden vindictive desire to hurt people of color. But what happens if we expand government and, rather than giving people a hand up, we create a trap that preys on human tendencies?

Whether it’s climate, the Covid, or socioeconomics, data’s data. And if there’s data to show that a certain period closed inequities faster than any time since, maybe we should look a little at what was done during that time, and why what’s been done since doesn’t work.

You can’t talk to someone who wants to kill you

I saw my first all-black American flag on a house about a mile and a half from my parents’ house on a well-traveled county road. It wasn’t a state road, a major highway. But it wasn’t a minor country road, either.

I saw another one during a drive someplace in upstate New York. It was interesting and unique–and to the twelve-year-old boy in me–kind of bad ass.

Then I looked it up.

The black flag gained popularity in the Civil War as a counterpoint to the white flag. According to whatever I could find–and there’s not a ton–the black flag means the opposite. It means no quarter given. In the event of a war, someone flying the black flag is signally that they won’t give up, they won’t surrender, and–most bone-chilling–they don’t take prisoners.

In short, it means if you oppose them, they’ll kill you.

It’s easy to get a black American flag. You can score one for about ten bucks at a major retailer. For obvious reasons, I’m not linking to it.

Back when Islamist terrorists were making threats against the US, I always figured when someone tells you who they are, you should believe them.

The same applies here.

To be clear, these aren’t rank-and-file Republicans. They aren’t most of the people people flying a Trump flag or wearing a MAGA hat. For now, they’re the extreme of the extreme. I saw several dozen Trump flags and signs while I was away, but just the two flags.

But they’re out there, even in a small number. And if you believe what they’re saying about themselves, you can’t sit down and have a beer with them. They want to kill anyone who opposes them. No quarter given. No prisoners taken.

These are American citizens telegraphing their intent to kill other American citizens.

It would be good to let that sink in.

On a well-traveled county road in a rural area that’s becoming suburban, someone’s flying a flag saying they’ll kill American citizens they disagree with.

When people tell you what they are, believe them.

The next sports-gambling scandal is inevitable

The year Pete Rose was rookie of the year, 44 years had passed since the 1919 Chicago Black Sox scandal. In baseball terms, though that’s a long time, it’s not forever. In 1963, Rose’s rookie year, there were still people around the game who remembered the year baseball almost died. In August 1989, he accepted a lifetime suspension for betting on Cincinnati Reds games while he managed the team.

Baseball, along with most other sports, seems to have forgotten about the risks of gambling. The 2018 Supreme Court ruling striking down a federal ban on sports betting, along with deep revenue cuts because of two seasons of Covid have led all four major North American sports leagues, along with the WNBA and some college programs to sign deals with hugh sports books.

Of course, athletes today make more money than they made in 1919, when Charles Comiskey’s tight fists became part of the official story of the Black Sox scandal. But they’re still competitive. Michael Jordan made more money than any athlete of his era, but his love of competition and gambling is mythical. There’s a theory that his first retirement–and his foray into baseball–were part of a secret suspension for gambling. (Although the theory has never been validated, the words double secret probation are guaranteed to set off any 1990s Bulls fan.)

Except it’s not the late 80s anymore, either. You don’t have to call a bookie to make a bet. You can do so anytime on practically anything from your phone. You and I, and presumably athletes competing in games, can make bets on those games. At this point, you can’t bet on, say, what the next pitch will be. But if you could, how hard would it be for a pitcher to tip off the next pitch so a willing accomplice in the stands can bet on that. Or for a player to take a strike and bet that he’d do that. To use the argument of Pete Rose’s defenders, it doesn’t change the outcome of the games, so what’s the problem?

The problem is it destroys the integrity of the game. In a slightly larger context, it’s called point shaving–changing the score of a game but (presumably) not the outcome.

College basketball had point-shaving scandals in 1950-51, 1961, 1978-79, and 1985-85. Former NBA ref Tim Donaghy pled guilty in 2007 to two felonies related to his placing bets on games he refereed. His actions caused more points to be scored than with otherwise be scored.

To cynical eyes, Rose’s lifetime suspension is actually about money. Those eyes are probably right. If the integrity of the games is compromised, why bother watching? Why bother betting? Why bother shelling out for the $100 shirt and the TV package where you can watch all the games at any time?

That’s a powerful incentive for the leagues and the sports books to keep things clean. It’s an equally powerful incentive for others to find ways to make money trying to influence the games.

The next gambling scandal might involve a Major League manager or an NBA ref. As a recent story in The Atlantic indicates, it might involve a college volleyball game.

The allure of big money is strong. The question is how long until it’s too strong to resist in a way that casts the games in doubt.

We aren’t that far apart from the people we disagree with. Why is it so hard, then?

I just got back from upstate New York to Tampa. In rural upstate New York, where my parents and family of origin live, it’s Trump country. Along with the customary Trump flags and yard signs, there were one F*** Trump and F*** Cuomo sign each, except the actual word was there.

You can get this beauty from a place called the Saratoga (NY) sticker company.

This is the area where I grew up, where the malaise of the Carter years helped Ronald Reagan make sense to me. I actually worked for a conservative member of the New York State Legislature for a couple of years. He was a conservative Republican–a Reagan devotee who went with Bush at the end of the Reagan years. He was a conservationist who helped establish the Adirondack Park Agency, and watched in frustration as it turned into a hypervigilant zoning board on steroids, set on denying people the right to put up sheds on their property (among other things).

Ronald Reagan wasn’t perfect–no politician is–but he made sense to me on some things. Looking back, he was wrong on AIDS and some other things, but right on other things, too. And the vision he painted of a shining city on a hill showed us equal parts responsibility and promise. We weren’t a perfect country, but we were pretty good had the potential to be amazing. For everyone.

I’m not sure exactly how we got from that optimistic vision to the dark, narrow brand of what passes for conservatism painted by Donald Trump. But a lot of people I agreed with in the 1980s have adopted that vision. Donald Trump is their hope. He is the person to save this country from the liberals. He is the only route to the city on the hill, and we need strict regimentation and strong rules for everyone to get there.

That’s not my vision of conservatism.

I’m no fan of Andrew Cuomo. I think he’s a thug–a guy who views the world as his. If you forget that basic fact, he’ll make it hurt a lot when he reminds you, so you never forget again. And though I voted or Biden, I’m no fan of his, either. He was simply far less harmful (in my view) than another four years of Donald Trump.

What happened on January 6 proves that. It would’ve been unthinkable to the conservatives I came of age with back in the Reagan years.

This would’ve horrified my conservative brethren in the 80s. It seems forgotten now. (Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg)

I moved out of upstate New York in 1988. Though my trip up reminded me of how breathtaking it can be and how some part of me will always consider that home, it also reminded me how close I am to that Trumpian vision of the world.

On one hand, I’m glad things didn’t fall that way. I’ve gotten to see and appreciate things I don’t think I would’ve up there. It’s a parochial place, one that can tug at you even after decades of being away. It makes you come home and stay.

It’s damn beautiful where I grew up.

My tastes and viewpoints, and by extension, those of my wife and kids, are far different than if I’d lived there.

On the other hand, the closeness reminds me how paper-thin the walls can be between people who disagree.

The people I interacted with up there are generally decent. They want to live their lives unhassled. They want their kids to do well and they enjoy social occasions where people gather. To the best of my knowledge, there were no Klan rallies.

There were just people who saw world differently.

Though I didn’t talk politics, I think I could’ve. I think I could’ve asked questions and answered them. At the end, I might not’ve changed any minds. But I might’ve shown that we can disagree and still be decent people. Maybe it was a missed opportunity.

We have enough people who can’t see beyond their own view of the world. It’s easy to be orthodox and demand orthodoxy from those you watch, listen to, and interact with.

If we want to pull ourselves back from the brink, it means we can default to the easy thing.

We have to do the hard thing. The demanding thing. We have to put our position out there, firmly and without apology. But then we have to listen and to understand that the people who disagree–most of them–are decent people, too.

We have to remember that they aren’t the people who invade, riot, burn, and pillage.

They just see the world a bit differently.

There’s no issue renaming Squaw Valley

To sports fans of a certain age, Squaw Valley holds a history, having hosted the 1960 Winter Olympics, where the American men’s hockey team won gold. As of the end of the 2021 ski season, it won’t exist under that name. It’ll be known as Palisades Tahoe.

Squaw Valley Olympic logo.

The action was taken because the word squaw is considered by most of the Native American community as both sexist and racist. Unlike the discussions about sports team names, there isn’t much ambiguity in the community about this word. Effectively, it means the c-word, but only for native women.

The resort worked with several Native American groups, including the local Washoe Tribe, before making the change.

This change is appropriate. Given the fact that Native Americans are almost completely united on this, there’s not much reason not to change.

And, to be honest, as much as I opposed the Washington Redskins team name change and don’t see anything wrong with Indians, nothing horrible happened when the Redskins changed and nothing horrible will happen for the Indians when they become the Guardians (assuming the Cleveland Guardians roller derby team doesn’t sue the baseball team into changing it again).

Cleveland Guardians work mark. The dot on the eye sort of resembles an Indian head if you look at it a certain way.

Some demands that teams change names is paternalistic at best and racist at worst. (“The Seminole tribe is okay with FSU because they’re getting paid off, so that name need to change, too!” said the white guy sanctimoniously.)

This isn’t that. It’s not a threat to American culture. And it doesn’t invalidate years of being frustrated by the team of your choice.

It’s a private company making a business decision because it wants to do something it thinks is right.

In a free society, they get to do that.

It’s not just Gabby Petito

There’s no doubt the Gabby Petito story was a valid news story. She was pretty and could be the girl next door. But she and her fiance were living the dream, driving around the country in a van, seeing things. As many of us meet and exceed the middle age years, the story speaks of our regrets–of the time when we had no real responsibilities and didn’t take advantage of that.

Sure living in a van isn’t our current dream. There’s no wifi, no easy way to make coffee, and when you wake up, your back will remind you that you aren’t 22 any more.

Add the mental health issues and domestic violence and the dream life becomes tragedy written large.

If something good comes of this story, it might be attention drawn to other stories. Like the disappearance of black girls.

I’ll risk wrath by admitting that I’m not as immediately drawn to the story in the picture above. Desheena Kyle doesn’t remind me of my daughter or my neighbor’s kid. That’s okay. But her parents are no less a victim of her disappearance than Gabby Petito’s. They’re not sleeping, either. They’re worried to death. They’re finding it hard to take the next breath.

If you want to go one better, more than 700 natives have disappeared in Wyoming over the past ten years. Of them, 85% were kids and 57% were women. Only 30% of those disappearances made the news, compared to 51% of white people missing.

The intent of this post isn’t to shame anyone for not knowing or for not feeling as initially connected to these stories as stories like Gabby Petito. Emotion is emotion. It’s human nature to be drawn to people who are like you–who you feel a connection with.

But we have the ability to overcome that emotion and this is an opportunity to do it.

A lot of people feel the smothering agony of missing a child. That’s worth considering, worth pondering, and worth praying over. Demographics shouldn’t be part of the decision-making process.

Florida is stupid, part 3,520,000

Some of us try to be conservative, but then conservatives come out with moves that make a pile of dog crap look intelligent in comparison.

Governor Ron DeSantis’s new surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, has announced that going forward, anyone who’s exposed to the Covid and is asymptomatic does not have to quarantine. In effect, your high-school aged student could play tonsil hockey with their significant other, any other student, or Debra LaFave, and show up to school the next day even if their hockey partner has the Covid.

Dr. Ladapo–a proponent of hydroxychloroquine–says the new rule is designed to keep students in school, where they learn better and because remote learning isn’t as effective or conducive to mental health. It also helps working families keep the bills paid.

Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo with Ron DeSantis

It’s true that students do learn better in person and that social interaction is vital to school-aged children. It’s true that working parents struggle when they have to stay home with their children. But it’s also true that the DeSantis administration has stripped money for virtual schooling from school budgets. And it’s true that DeSantis has done everything possible to eliminate any mask mandates or vaccination requirements at the local level.

In short, for Florida schools, the Covid doesn’t exist. And as long as someone asserts that their kid is symptom-free, they get to go to school and lick every doorknob in sight.

Schools should be made available to any student capable of attending without endangering others.

But when there’s a worldwide pandemic that’s driven Florida to its highest death rates since the pandemic began, this might not be the time to eliminate all possible protections and give parents free rein to send kids to school regardless of exposure.

For the record, while Covid cases are declining in Florida, death sare still increasing. On September 20, the last day for which data was reported (as I wrote this), the 7-day average is 445. That’s nearly twice the height of previous waves.

This doesn’t seem to be the time to strip protections in schools. Businesses and parents don’t benefit if the trend continues and all the tools available to flatter the curve are removed.

If data doesn’t convince people to get vaccinated and mask up, browbeating them will definitely work.

I’m vaccinated. In public indoor places, I tend to wear a mask. When I return to Florida this weekend, there’s a decent chance I’ll go back to last summer’s protocols of masking inside, eating outside (’cause September in Florida is an awesome time to do that), and generally staying home.

And yet, when I read the never-ending deluge of posts from those who want masking and vaccinations and safety, dammit, I can’t help but feel a little scolded, even though I didn’t do anything wrong.

A front-page editorial in the Detroit Free Press went so far as to place responsibility for unvaccinated Michiganders on the vaccinated population. We (the vaccinated) need to do more.

A local masking group took me to task over the summer for not wearing a mask while I run alone, outside, before 5 in the morning. In the summer. In Florida. Because we should all wear a mask whenever we leave home–not for science-based reasons, but to help reluctant people feel better. I was lectured to wear a mask running super early in the morning so sleeping people would feel comfortable.

Science and data be damned. We’re talking about COMFORT here!!!!

I’m vaccinated and generally wear a mask and it pisses me off.

Imagine if I were unvaccinated and wavering on what I should do next.

In general, continually lecturing people that they’re selfish idiots has never been a way to convince people to do something. It just pisses them off and makes them dig their heels in a little deeper.

If I call you a selfish asshole with no socially redeeming value, you’ll definitely do what I want.

Yes, the people who didn’t get a shot are stubborn. Yes, they’re ignoring science and data. Yes, they’re prolonging the pandemic.

Earlier this year, when the CDC announced that vaccinated Americans didn’t need to wear masks, a loud and very vocal minority essentially screamed “But they’re going to cheat,” in reference to the unvaccinated.

I reminded me of when my mom had to measure the Kool-Aid in each glass to the millimeter, lest someone get screwed.

But they’re gonna cheat and go unmasked without a shot.

After you scream the same thing at the same people more than a couple of times, it becomes noise.

I don’t know how to convince people to take the vaccine if they haven’t. Two hundred million Americans who’ve taken it almost entirely without complication won’t do it. Statistics that show vaccinated people make up almost none of the deaths and hospitalizations won’t do it.

But the 436th condescending meme? That’s the difference-maker.

I agree with your points and I’m annoyed.

Imagine the people who don’t.

The greatest threat to the republic is the guy threatening elected officials

“I see you. I got something for you.”

That message was part of a video sent to Rep. Normal Torres of California, a Democrat. The video showed someone following her car, then panned down to a 9mm handgun on the seat next to the driver.

Stop for a minute. Consider how you’d react if someone did that to you. Your hand would go to your chest as your mouth hung open. You’d stare at the video, as if it were a mistake, something intended for someone else. Your breath would come a little harder.

Would you step away from windows? Call your spouse, just to hear their voice, to know that they’re safe? Would you gather your children and keep them in your sight?

Would you feel responsible for the threats that are now leveled against them, just by virtue of their relationship with you?

Would you retreat from any public life to make sure nothing happened to your loved ones?

According a Los Angeles Times article, in the first three months of this year, Capitol Police recorded 4,135 threats against members of Congress. Last year for the entire year, there were 8,613. In 2018, it was 5,206. In 2016, it was 902. In other words, we’re on track for more than a 1000% increase in threats against our elected representatives in just five years.

It’s not just Democrats being threatened. The most successful (if you want to call it that) attacks against sitting members of Congress were against Gabby Giffords-D in 2011and Steve Scalise-R in 2017. The Scalise shooting also may have been intended to target other Republican members.

It’s not just members of Congress receiving the threats. It’s school board members. It’s public health workers and officials.

Threatening elected officials at any level is nothing less than terrorism. It’s exactly the same as when any external party makes the same threats.

Worse than that, it’s an attempt to subvert the foundations on which this country was built. A free society can’t function when the basis of governance is giving in to whoever has the most guns.

Political rhetoric on both sides seems to center around the impending death of democracy. That death is supposedly driven by legislative initiatives that would limit voting or access to abortion, or by adding justices to the Supreme Court to retake control, or by judicial decisions that don’t follow the current orthodoxy.

Those may damage our freedom. Rule by terrorism will end it.

When a school board can’t hold a meeting as scheduled because it needs security present, we should all take notice.

Our country as founded on the concept of rule at the ballot box, not the barrel of a gun. More than a million people have died protecting that founding principles.

Twenty years ago, it was the Islamist terrorists who hated us from our freedoms. Now it seems like the guy down the street who didn’t get what he wanted from whatever level of government he’s pissed off at.

If you want to protect our freedoms, start with those threats.

For one thing, threatening an elected official of any type should be legally treated as terrorism. If you kill one, you get the same legal treatment as the Boston Marathon bomber. If you own guns and you’re found guilty of threatening an elected official, your right to continue that ownership vanishes forever. You have no more right to own a firearm, after you spend a bunch of time in prison.

And while we’re at it, we should be treating the people who showed up for the “Justice for J6” rally the same as we treat those who rallied in favor of those who perpetuated any other terrorist attack on this country.

This growing movement to political violence is the greatest threat to the country and needs to be treated as such.