The Weekend in Foolish Attention

Bits and bytes of the week

THE NO SO LEFTS. The term that came out a few years ago was ‘heterodox.’ As that became slanted to mean right wing, the term ‘centrist’ was born. Now, the label ‘Not So Left’ is being tossed into the word salad.

A heterodox person is just somebody who thinks every issue through on its own merits and therefore whose opinions are not predictable based on their opinions about other things. I’d suggest that centrists comprise those choosing to avoid picking a side as the very concept of sides is juvenile and silly when it comes to issues governance. Not So Left feels like those who were once considered Classic Liberals but have been completely disaffected by the often stupid ideas of the Far Left.

A (sort of) joke I tell is that in 2019 Chicago, there were those who would classify me as a David Mamet wannabe, formerly liberal but slowly converted into a goose-stepper. In Vegas, as I worked among Bernie Boys with sidearms and MAGA Moms with #BLM t-shirts, I was seen as relatively center with my NPR street cred combined with pro-abortion glee. In Kansas, the locals framed me as a dyed-in-the-wool, full-on Libtard ready to look aghast as the very conservative population.

As Bill Maher frequently intones, I haven’t moved much any all from my liberal beliefs, the Left moved further into cult territory. So I suppose I am Not So Left now.

There’s something grotesquely liberating about standing in the political space just shy of the tofu-scented gulag of the modern American Left. I’m not swaddled in the goose-feathered comfort of conservative delusion, but neither am I locked in the ideological chokehold of the professional Offended Class. I exist in the DMZ, ducking cancel attempts like Molotov cocktails thrown by people who still live with their parents and think “emotional labor” should qualify for health insurance.

I am Not So Left. Not quite center. Not radical, not complacent. Inconvenient. Suspicious. Free.

And that is a terrifying gift.

Being Not So Left means I can actually say “I don’t know” without getting banished to the Shame Mines. Free from the masochistic ritual of performative apology—those trembling, hostage-video-style social media statements where someone begs forgiveness for a 2011 tweet that said “guys” when addressing a mixed group.

The modern Left treats personal growth like a public execution. They don’t want improvement. They want scalps. But when you’re Not So Left, you’ve already made peace with being disliked by people who write “cishet” like it’s a racial slur.

No one gets out of this alive, so why die sweating under the klieg lights of ideological purity?

Try saying this out loud: “I believe racism exists, but not everything is racism.”

If you’re Too Left, you’ve just excommunicated yourself from the cult. If you’re Not So Left, you just said a basic truth—out loud—and then went on with your day, possibly even eating a cheeseburger without checking to see if the cow identified as non-binary.

There’s a sublime benefit in being able to call bullshit without being accused of betraying the cause. Because once you are Not So Left, you are no longer in service to the cause. You are in service to truth, to contradiction, to the messy, bruised reality of human behavior that doesn’t fit in a TikTok infographic.

Parts of the Left have become a religion with all the worst parts and none of the incense. The purity tests, the symbolic language, the sacred texts written in hashtags and academic gobbledygook. You know you’re in a cult when you’re terrified to speak an obvious truth for fear of ideological exile. Or when every sentence starts with “As a [insert identity]…”

Being Not So Left is like leaving Scientology but keeping the parts that made sense—like maybe Tom Cruise has some valid points about running really fast.

You get to deprogram. You get to think again. You get to use the phrase “men and women” without a panic attack.

There’s no comedy in orthodoxy. There is only reaction, followed by guilt, followed by correction, followed by a resignation letter. When you’re Not So Left, you understand that jokes are meant to pierce, not pacify.

You remember when South Park offended everyone, and no one sued. You remember when comedians weren’t afraid to tell the truth—when George Carlin didn’t have to end every special with a disclaimer and a GoFundMe link for transracial elk handlers.

I’m too queer for conservatives, too straight for progressives. Too masculine for academia, too feminist for barstool bros. It’s magnificent.

Free from dogma. Immune to cult think. I stroll through the fire of controversy and come out smoking—but not sorry. I will offend. I will be called names. And I will laugh, because I’m not anyone’s pawn, slogan, or mascot.

Happy to avoid being easily summarized.

And that, in this absurd, angry, algorithm-fueled age, is the most radical thing of all.

THE NEED FOR SPEED. I loved Top Gun: Maverick in part because it was fun and fast and full of nostalgia for a time when Tom Cruise was young and still forging his screen legacy. Also because it was a movie about a guy in his late fifties who still had it. Could still get up and show the kids how to strut.

Same for F1. Brad Pitt (61 years of age), barreling down a track at 180 miles per hour and reminding me that, while I get up in the morning sometimes with lower back pain and dry feet, I can also (after a cup of coffee and a coupla Extra Strength Tylenol) go out and kick some ass.

Sure, it’s fiction. These guys are actors and even, in what seems on the screen, they are on the precipice of imminent death, they aren’t really. It’s a fiction but it’s a fiction that inspires.

In the end, we are all just apes who read trying to give meaning to the blinking cursor of existence. We invent gods, write manifestos, tattoo quotes on our ribs because we cannot accept the blankness of the void.

That’s not a flaw. That’s the feature.

We need the lie.

We need the myth.

We need to believe, if only for the length of a breath, that this all goes somewhere. That what we do isn’t just sandcastles before the tide. That, if given the chance, one of us oldsters with a daily need for more fiber and an extra few hours of sleep can get in the cockpit and blast out of the gate like an aging lion going for one last antelope.

Because the alternative is paralysis. The alternative is a beige life of half-choices and safety rails. The alternative is surviving but not thriving.

And who wants to be the guy who survived the world but never actually lived in it?

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”

—Carl Sagan in 1995 (via Charlie Newman)

BEARING DOWN. FX’s The Bear dropped into my viewing lap roughly six weeks after my third divorce. At the time I was living approximately 25 feet from the sublet she took and, after a few instances of leaving the Las Vegas apartment to get mail or take out the trash only to be faced with her and other men on the property, had become almost agoraphobically incapable of leaving the building except at 3:00am to get groceries and whiskey.

The first season managed two things aside from being incredibly well written and fun—it made me long for my home of thirty years in a way I hadn’t thought possible and danced around the issues of dealing of extreme trauma that felt familiar. Every character was on the edge of deep depression due to family issues, failure to launch, an inability to grow, and, of course, the suicide of a revered brother. No marriages blown all to hell in a rain of deceit but devastation is devastation even if there are degrees to measure.

The second season came to me while in Wichita, leaning heavily on my family, feeling like I had failed in life, and living solo in a loft apartment. Characters bend under pressure and shift who they are. Tina finds a voice, Richie admits vulnerability, Syd and Carmy balance self-worth with chaos. It’s a season about stepping into a new role. I could identify.

Season three. I’m in Chicago, faced with the fact that I could not reclaim who I was—Chicago was different, I was different—but that I was here and needed to figure out who I would be. This season slows down, trading high-pressure crescendos for introspective exploration. It’s a chapter about digging through emotional rubble to uncover what truly sustains you—your people, your past, and your capacity for empathy. It feels less like “cooking a meal” and more like “inventing a recipe from the ashes.” Again, a parallel to my own existence.

I’m at another odd place in my life and, of course, there is another season. I’m holding off watching it because—

A JOURNEY CONCLUDES. My mom and I came to a conclusion on my trip to Wichita. She prays for clarity and perspective. I write. The surprise that came on this trip to Oz that required both was wrapped in the gauze of hospice care. My dad met with a hospice nurse on Tuesday, signed all the legal documents, and started the home care on Wednesday. I’ll be in Wichita until he checks out of the Hotel du Life. And, of course, I’m writing about this experience while Mom prays.

As of this SubStack, he’s still working his way to the desk to pay his bill and turn in his key. I’m hit by the idea that death isn’t a thief. It’s a debt collector. And we all live on borrowed time.

Watching dad decline doesn’t make me fear death. It makes me conscious of wasting life. How much of our time is spent pretending we’re invincible—scrolling, arguing, numbing out—when the truth is, we’re all headed to the same quiet room, the same morphine drip, the same final breath.

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I hope your week has gone better than mine! Happy Birthday, America and all that shit.