Category Archives: American Dysfunction

Sheeple Speak

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The sheeple have spoken. It is deemed correct. We must all cower in fear, wear masks, and wait for Armageddon.

My faith in humanity has been sorely tested over the past three years. I am all but done done with my fellow humans. The exception comes when it becomes absolutely necessary to interact with them: work, and some rare exceptions I’ll decide on.

People who I thought might have some redemptive qualities have come unglued over the past six to eight weeks. I can’t spend any time on Facebook, since it resembles a catalog for bad-looking masks that won’t do shit other than signal the wearer’s virtue. That’s the platform at it’s best these days.

A couple of articles I read this week made sense to me. Ironically, the first one comes from a Catholic, which is rich for someone like me, an agnostic at best. There are things to fear more than death. Ironically, so many progressives are pretty fucking selective on the lives they value.

It doesn’t really matter what I post in this space anyways, since no one appears capable of reading anything longer than 250 words, especially here.

I’ve been a fan of Andrew Sullivan for quite some time. When he writes, I usually read.

Perhaps some sanity and reasons for hope present, soon.

That rare person I still harbor some respect for posted this on his Facebook page (perhaps the only thing of value I’ve found there during Krona, except Bob Marley videos).

I’ll end with this musical non sequitur.

I saw the late Scotty Weiland and STP at the old CCCC in Portland. Melvins opened up for them, which was awesome!

Weiland and the boys were late coming on and the crowd was restless, waiting. Then, STP came out and they ripped it up. I can still hear Scotty singing “Crackerman.”

This is my favorite from their catalog. I got out the electric this afternoon and worked my way through the song’s chords and riffs. It was a healthy diversion for me.

Data Set

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I keep hearing calls for data, data, data. Then, there are the data plotters on Facebook, keen to jockey and posit their own political agenda under the guise of scientific neutrality.

For the purposes of full disclosure: I am not a scientist–I am a writer with experience as a journalist. The kind of journalism I cut my teeth doing didn’t consist of culling stories from Twitter feeds, either.

With that said, how would you rectify my very primitive spreadsheet comparing previous flu season data from the CDC with the Covid-19 numbers?

Flu virus by the numbers

Then, read what I think is a reasonable thought piece from an actual doctor, on balancing the needs to keep people safe overall, with the hysteria that’s been whipped up by members of the media and many of you on Facebook. He certainly has more legitimacy than most of you projecting holier-than-thou screeds about masks, distancing and a host of other things. Like, why do you have such a need to virtue signal with your unproven call for everyone to don a mask?

Someone tossed their dirty Crona mask on our front lawn.

What sayeth all you Einsteins and fear-foggers out there?

Tough Times

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Resilience:
That ineffable quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back at least as strong as before. Rather than letting difficulties or failure overcome them and drain their resolve, they find a way to rise.

Resilience Road Sign

They say that adversity is a fact of life. A rabbi once wrote a book about “bad things happening to good people.” It would go on to become one of those best-sellers that people turn to when the floors of their lives disappear beneath them.

According to a well-known psychology publication, resilience is that quality that some people possess. They have some kind of inner resolve and strength that helps them climb out from the wreckage of caused by events that turn their lives upside-down.

Then, there are those who are forced to come to terms with one of life’s truisms: causes have effects. I won’t go into all the elements of why the current pandemic was long overdue other than to say that we’re collectively experiencing the effects caused by living as one of the most narcissistic, self-centered cultures that’s ever inhabited the planet. Continue reading →

Stuck in a Nightmare

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I came home from work on Wednesday. My guitar lesson was cancelled for the third successive week. Not to be deterred, I wrote “Stuck in a Nightmare” in the span of about 45 minutes. A few edits and I had a playable song be the evening.

The song touches on our current belief that staying at home and “sheltering in place” will somehow deliver a magic result. Somehow, we’ll avoid harm and in a few weeks (months?? years??) all will be well and we can go back to our lives of buying junk we don’t need.

The fear-fogging line is one I had to laugh about. Other than my sister, I’m the only other person that I know who has appropriated this excellent phrase that captures what the media does best.

I wrote a paean to Rachel Maddow late in 2019, but she’s become one of the biggest fear-foggers out there. As a result, I’ve stopped watching her show.

For me, who knows better than anyone (other than my wife), some things are beyond our control. In fact, Choice Theory is something I now understand and try to frame how I view the world. Yet, I see the disavowal of something that’s clear—we can only control ourselves. The other stuff we need to let go.

I’m still trying to find a way to up my fidelity on these home recordings. At some point, I’ll figure all this out. Maybe then, we’ll be released from “house arrest” and be allowed to go back to bars, clubs, and other venues and actually play real, live music again.

Continue reading →

F*ck Feelings

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Feelings. They’ll deceive you every time. Yet people project them like projectile sneezes. Can we please enact some social distancing to this kind of BS?

As Radiohead sings, “just ‘cos you feel it, doesn’t mean it’s there.”

Daily, we are inundated with these projections. The morning news is pregnant with stories, all designed to touch our feelings, but almost never does it appeal to our intellects—our capacity to think. “Stupid news” I call it.

Coronavirus-related news seems to be tracking in a narrative rut. The talking head says, “there are now _______ confirmed coronavirus virus cases in ________.” Fill in the number and fill in the state. They’re all the same.

If we asked better questions, would we have better answers? I think so (regardless of what you feel).

From this article on “smarter” testing, I liked this because it gets at what kind of information we need:

Epidemiology is a bit like baseball. Knowing that a ball player has gotten 134 hits isn’t that informative. What is informative is knowing that those 134 hits were made during 335 at-bats, which translates into a batting average of .400. But we can only know the batting average if we know the player’s total number of at bats and hits. It’s the same thing for the coronavirus: We need to know the number of all tests in in each age group and each locale, as well as the number of positive ones.

Merely reciting the number of cases in a state, a nation, or the world, along with deaths, is a litany that lacks any real context. It does elicit fear and even hysteria. Perhaps that’s what’s pushing the uniformity of the current narrative, I do not know. It’s maddening to me, someone who, as a writer, truly believes that words do matter.

On Facebook, someone posted some absolute balderdash, equating what people are feeling societally as “grief.” Unless you’ve truly gone through the depths of despair and hopelessness that grief and loss visits on you when you lose the dearest person in your life, someone you loved more than your own life, then you can’t talk about grief with authority. And if you can’t then shut the fuck up! In fact, if you’ve ever experienced the kind of grief that my wife and I have been living through for 3+ years, you’d have never posted such bunkum. It’s hurtful, triggering, and it makes me like you even less—and I don’t like humans much at all.

Yet, despite my never-ending disdain for humanity, I’m cursed with empathy for them. What the fuck! Caring about others, even when you don’t particularly like them is akin to a curse.

The only place I find solace and relief is when I have my guitar in hand. Who knows when even that won’t suffice, as we’re forced to endure the equivalent of house arrest forced on us by a bunch of so-called experts who are rarely ever right. But we trust them. And the sheeple enable it.

Note: I actually stole the title of today’s blog post from this book, one I just learned about and plan to read.

Certainty in Uncertain Times

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These are uncertain times. During upheaval, decision-making can be affected. Formerly easy choices become more difficult: for some, paralysis sets in. Of course, if the height of choice difficulty for you is deciding what over-priced, foodie establishment to eat at, you are in luck—you won’t have to contend with that dilemma today (or for the near future).

Doubts about what may happen tomorrow can lead to hearkening back to the familiar—those places where we’ve found answers or solace in the past. Insecurity causes dissonance and discomfort. Fear in turn forces us back to places of familiarity.

The internet can be a source of trusted information. It’s also a breeding ground for the dubious and even fallacious.

I’ve been a blogger since 2003. Over that period, I developed go-to sites. These were written by fellow blogging travelers I developed trust in. When lost without answers, I could go back to them by default. I also incorporated ideas and ideologies from them.

Many of these sites are now shuttered. If still online, it’s been months (or even years) since they’ve been updated with a new post. Disappointing for sure, I simply moved on. Meanwhile, I’ve stayed with it, even following the floor of my life opening-up. I’ve shared with readers from a place that at times felt like freefall. Persisting in the face of dissonance, upheaval, and even tragedy is what resilience looks like, especially if you fancy yourself a writer. Continue reading →

Triggered

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A week ago, the world seemed fine (or normal) for most people. The day here in Southern Maine was warm for early March. The winter of 2019-20 hadn’t been a particularly harsh one, as Maine winters go. There was a sense common in northern regions that signal spring and that place-based “rebirth” that many of us hearken to and anticipate during the dark days December and January.

For people living on the other side of grief and loss, the past three years have been a journey of darkness, sadness, and pain. But to remain here in this life, there must come a time when you get back to “living life.

For me, having lost a son in January, 2017, so much of the past three years have been lived inside-out. By that I mean, grief for me turned me inward. I lost my usual gregariousness and the ability to feel joy. I didn’t want to be around people. I was becoming a misanthrope.

Late last summer, after conversations with my better half, the mother of my son, we made a decision for me to leave the house where I’ve been barely existing as a freelancer and take a job outside. Not some evening tutoring gig or part-time sub teacher stint, either. No, applying for and being hired by a firm that provides healthcare to Mainers and patients just across the border in New Hampshire.

This new role placed me in a new contact center just shy of being open for a year. The woman who interviewed me and subsequently hired me was the sister of someone I graduated from high school with. Continue reading →

Wash Your Hands and Hope for the Best

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Fear is a powerful emotion. The threat of harm, pain, or even death is a motivator like few others.

Those in power know how to stoke fear. So does the media. That doesn’t mean that fear has no purpose, or that fear isn’t valid.

To live in our time of technological ascendancy, the temptation to believe that all things can be fixed with just a little more tech is a default temptation. “It can’t happen here,” or “now,” or “we’ve evolved beyond that” are all common refrains that technology has empowered.

The facemask as daily wear.

On New Year’s Eve Day, we first learned about several flu-like cases in Wuhan, the capital city in the nation’s Hubei province. The city has a population of 11 million. People were being quarantined and Chinese authorities were trying to parse the source of the outbreak.

One week later, investigations ruled out that this was bird flu, a type of seasonal flu outbreak, or even SARS and MERS. The number of suspected cases had grown to 60 people, with seven Chinese citizens in critical condition. Health officials hadn’t confirmed human-to-human transmission. Continue reading →

Move Beyond the Usual (Politics)

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After last week’s debacle in Iowa, where nearly a week later, we still don’t know if the results are in fact valid, the chattering classes are asking, “why Iowa?” and even, “why New Hampshire?”

The horse race to November’s presidential election has begun in earnest. And as it’s been done now since 1920, presidential wannabes, political insiders, and self-appointed front-runners are forced to trudge through the cold and chill of a New England winter writ large. Running the gauntlet of retail politics is still being done in the age of Twitter—as it should be—in a very white state that doesn’t always mirror the rest of America. But to New Hampshire they all come.

During past campaigns, both my wife and I have traveled to Maine-based events together or on our own. I’ve seen Democrats like the Clintons, John Kerry, John Edwards, and Dennis Kucinich in-person. When I was a Republican, I attended events for George Bush. There’s something about seeing candidates in live settings that surpasses merely seeing them pixelated on a television screen.

On Saturday, we decided to make the 35-minute drive from Southern Maine and cross the border into neighboring New Hampshire to hear a long-shot candidate, Tulsi Gabbard. She was hosting a town hall in Rochester, at the Elks Lodge.

Why Gabbard? Both of us have been intrigued by her commercials running on the Portland station where we consume our morning news and get our weather from. Like other candidates I’ve supported: Kucinich, Ralph Nader, and in 2016, Jill Stein, Gabbard projects something different than the typical business-as-usual politics common during DNC-influenced dog-and-pony shows passed off as debates. Continue reading →

Countering Contempt

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I’ve heard Arthur C. Brooks before. I apparently didn’t pay close enough attention.

Perhaps I saw that he was president of a think tank that tilted away from my ideological proclivities. Or, like often happens in life when you first encounter something that will later possess greater meaning—you pass on it once, or several times.

Book TV, which broadcasts on C-Span 2 each weekend, is what the network bills as “television for serious readers.” It’s 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors discussing their works. For someone like me who gravitates towards that genre, it’s a place I usually end up at some point each week.

After Words is a feature where one author interviews another nonfiction writer about a book they’ve written and it usually has a thematic orientation. This week, Senator Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) interviewed his friend Arthur C. Brooks about his latest book, Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt. Actually, I think the show was taped earlier and likely, I was viewing the rebroadcast.

Arthur C. Brooks’ new book about countering contempt.

Continue reading →