The Weekend in Foolish Attention

Bit and bytes of the week

THE FIX WAS IN. The conservative majority of SCOTUS just handed Trump his most significant win against prosecution. Anything considered an ‘official’ act of the Executive is covered in a blanket of immunity. This decision has been in the makings since McConnell blocked Obama’s SCOTUS pick, rumbled on through when RBG decided she’d live forever and didn’t, and culminated with the sudden empowerment of both Thomas and Alito flexing their judge-y muscles to effectively remake the last 70 years of jurisprudence into a version that favors their worldview rather than the tenets of justice and fairness.

Like death, taxes, and the inevitability that every other phrase out of his gaping wound of a mouth will be a bold-faced lie, Trump was always going to get away with it.

Moreover, he will likely be the president again. I hope not and I’ll vote for anything but Donald Trump but it’s looking pretty dire. Perhaps, instead of losing our minds and jumping around like it’s the end of democracy, we on the other side get focused. You know, like the old school GOP who have built this reality one brick at a time, one justice at a time, one overturned Constitutional right at a time. We tried the hysterical hyperbole before and it didn’t work. Screaming, protesting, shunning our family members, doubling down on silly cultural conformism? Didn’t accomplish almost anything. How about a different strategy?

It won’t likely happen because those who are true believers—in anything—when their plans fail almost always decide that it wasn’t their strategy that failed but a failure to go further, to dig deeper into ideology and fealty to activism. It isn’t enough for the Far Right to abandon the Constitutional right to abortion, they need to completely eliminate it altogether. Compromise is not the path for the zealot.

BRILLIANT EXPERIMENTATION. I’ve said it before that The Bear is the closest to Off Loop storefront theater I’ve ever seen on TV. With the third season, the show continues its experimental nature by upending time in a series of continual nonlinear flashbacks of memories that underscore the deep rooted issues each character with which each struggles. We see Carmy wrestle with the fact that his most brutal and hateful mentor made possible his flourishing as a world class chef but also irrevocably damaged him in the process. We see Richie deal with being a father without the grounding comfort of being a husband. Marcus is set loose in the world as he mourns his only living relative’s demise. Tina gets an entire episode that illustrates how hopeless she felt before Mikey pulled her into his sandwich shop. Sydney contemplates whether she wants to be legally tethered to the restaurant and specifically to Carmy. In a brilliant episode, Sugar gives birth and her mother receives a most generous opportunity to show up and behave like a supportive parent instead of the poisonous drunk seen last season.

These are flawed and broken people trying to rise above the collective malaise of anxiety, sadness, rage, and despair through an imperfect family of choice. Just like Off Loop theater ensembles in many cases.

I love big artistic swings. The Bear delivers that and more.

THE FOURTH. What an odd time to be celebrating what most would agree is the greatest Constitutional achievement in the history of the civilized world. Sure, some will dispute that but they fetishize indigenous peoples in the comfort of their air conditioning, easy transit, freedom of movement, constant presence of food, and advancements in healthcare that allow them to survive the planet with shitty eyesight and asthma.

Is America exceptional? Goddamn right, it is. Does that make the country unaccountable for its past? Not a chance. Both things can be true at the same time and are. The United States is unprecedented in recorded history and extraordinary. It is also built on some horrifying acts of imperialism and an absence of rights for all citizens in the past. Do we need fireworks that traumatize dogs and babies? Probably not.

I’m not patriotic in any real sense of the word but I am pleased to be American. So Happy Birthday, Country!

CHANGE IS A PROCESS, NOT AN EVENT. Twenty years ago, I suddenly found myself weighing 265 lbs. Strike that. It wasn’t sudden. It was yet another twenty years in the making, one pizza and six-pack of beer at a time. I suddenly saw it for what it was and knew I had to lose that whole extra person attached to my bones. I also understood that the gains in weight came incrementally so losing them would likewise have to be slow and gradual. Two years later, I was eighty pounds lighter and a lot more fit.

That’s just how change works. It almost never happens overnight or at the insistence of people who really want change right-the-fuck NOW. Change happens slowly and with effort. Sometimes (most times) the source of the change does not meet the standards set by the most self righteous but change comes nonetheless. While the equal treatment of gays in America took a long time to come, it came more from the bland coming out of Ellen DeGeneres than it did the angry protests at Stonewall. Only a scant few years later, Gay Marriage was anointed in the land.

Attitudes and beliefs and biases are the hardest to change and require more patience and focus than activists want to give. It is a mistake that frustrates the kids and most of the screaming and blocking of traffic retards that change in the meantime.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg refused to resign, and we got Amy Coney Barrett as a result. Draw your own conclusions. — Stephen King

DO NOT REWARD BAD BEHAVIOR. The rules of the park, established after a sixteen-year old showed up with a pistol and killed another kid onsite, is two separate sets of security checkpoints. One set gets you into the west side of the park to see the Bean, the other gets you into the Pritzker Pavilion to see a concert. For guests, it can be infuriating. How you process that annoyance often determines the ease of access.

The very angry man stood beside his wife and small child. He looked square at my boss. “You’re a liar!”

My boss looked stricken. He’s a really nice guy and is the first to apologize to an upset guest.

“You told us we could just get a wristband and come in and you lied! Liar!”

I stepped in. “I’m certain it wasn’t a lie but a misunderstanding.”

“HE LIED!”

The wife looks at me and starts to pull the “I have a five year old” card. “Why can’t you just be human?” Her husband glared at me, waiting to see if he needed to call me something as well.

Most times, I’d relent. I don’t like kids much but I’m also not the kind of person who holds onto rules with an iron grip. But, the husband. He was a complete asshole. I will not reward him for being a juvenile unable to control himself in public and to a stranger he decided was in service of his needs.

“If you want to come in, you need to go through security. No exceptions.”

Not five minutes later, another couple with two kids comes up. One kid has to pee. They are calm and ask if it’s possible to avoid security because the kid needed to pay his water bill. “Sure, come on through.”

When we grease the squeaky wheel, we train that wheel to squeak. We are currently an entire society of squeaking wheels and I’m all outta grease, baby.

REMEMBERING KAMALA. Before she became Vice President, Harris was widely known and seen as a badass. The Biden team seriously sidelined her, effectively taking a pitbull and dressing it up like a clown. I don’t know that she could beat Trump, but I’d vote for her in a flash.

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That’s the week! Stay cool, stay calm, be helpful!