Tag: rant

It’s Us Versus Us

PavowskiLeave a comment

We live in a weird, weird world.

NASA is working on getting us to Mars, but most people can more readily tell you what’s going on in the Kim K. / Taylor Swift feud than what’s going on in space. We’re in the midst of the most insane presidential election — literally — but most people can’t even name their local representative in the state Senate — a person who has vastly more influence over your life than the president will.

We pay attention to the wrong things, and we do it in the most messed-up way.

The election is an obvious, easy-to-hand example. You’re either Pro-Trump or #NeverTrump. Either “I’m with her” or “Hillary for Prison.”

Then start down the list of issues. Gay marriage: Either you carry a bible in your front vest pocket and insist that homosexual unions will destroy the fabric of the country if not the world, or you literally vomit rainbows and gay pride all over all your social media. Gun control: You’re either Rambo, walking the streets with an arsenal enough for a small country strapped over each arm, crowing about the 2nd amendment when you stop to reload, or you’re a hippie living in a dream world, trying to take every gun away from every law-abiding person everywhere while you’re getting murdered by the host of murderers lining up outside your door. Black Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter.

Get away from the election, and things don’t change. Take any issue in our time. Abortion? You either care about all life and will fight against all sense and decency for every human cell that ever embedded in a uterus, or you’re a bloodthirsty baby-murderer just waiting to chop up some babies. GMOs? They’re either the way and the future and the necessary outgrowth of the world we live in, or they’re Frankenfoods engineered by Monsanto to control your mind and turn you into a gubmint drone. Pokemon Go? It’s either the literal best thing that has ever happened to you in your couch-hugging, socially introverted life, or it’s the bane of your existence and you hope it dies in a virtual electronic fire.

This is our world, now. It (and I’m not even 100% sure what “it” is — maybe the internet, maybe social media, maybe just media, maybe it’s actually the personified world we live in) seeks out the black and white like a vampire running from the sun, it eschews shades of grey the way I eschew Fifty Shades of Grey.

You’re either one of us, or you’re one of them. Republican/Democrat. Pro-gun/Anti-gun. Pro-life/pro-choice. Dog person/cat person. Waffles/pancakes. Go ahead, laugh. But you know you can think up some anti-waffle propaganda just off the top of your head. (Nothing but straight lines with those jerks, and they’re in bed with BIG IRON, right?)

We’re social critters. We long to belong. And while it’s nice to be able to bond over the things we love, it’s a lot easier to find commonality in the things we hate. In-group/out-group. Those people over there? They’re the enemy. They don’t think like you. They don’t believe like you. They don’t share your values. How can you let them have their way?

Think about it. Trump, possibly the most unfit candidate to grace politics since there was even a word for politics, might win, not because people love him, but because they hate Hillary. Clinton, one of the most hated and untrusted figures in recent memory, might win, not because people love her, but because they are terrified of Trump.

I know I post a lot about politics around here. Maybe (okay, probably) (okay, DEFINITELY) too much. But I’m writing about it because this stuff is weighing on my mind. I’m really scared of what’s going to happen in this country after this election, regardless of how it shakes out. Not in that aw, I’m moving to Canada if xxx wins way that everybody always talks about. But in that way where I actually dread turning on the television in the morning, or opening up a news website, because I know I’m only going to see some new horror visited upon this country by its own citizens. By people who are twisted up in knots by this us vs. them mentality that permeates every aspect of every issue.

I fear that we could see another presidential assassination. Regardless of who wins. People on both sides hate each candidate enough, and we get so riled up about it all. Certainly there are enough guns lying around. It’s not hard to imagine some nutjob going off the rails and killing either one of them. Hell, it’s not hard to imagine some guy down the street who you thought was normal doing it.

I hate to pick on the RNC, because I know the DNC is going to have its own idiocy going on as well, but, well, the RNC is going on right now. I look at the speeches and the people on the stage and it terrifies me. Otherwise ordinary people telling a room full of other otherwise ordinary people that some other otherwise ordinary people outside this room are lawless, lazy people that want to see the country burn. People with no more political sense than a goldfingered golf-course gopher insisting that they’re sure the acting president is working for the enemy. People holding mock trials for their political opponents and whipping the crowd into a tear-streaked, red-faced frenzy.

And I know the DNC is going to go the same way, just in the opposite direction.

What’s so easy to forget, here, is that those people? You know, the ones you don’t agree with? The ones whose viewpoints you can’t even fathom? The ones whose brains must not even be functioning properly, whose thinking is so backward it’d be better if they just died off and left the country to the rest of us, who are single-handedly flushing the country down the tubes?

Those people?

They are our neighbors. Our dentists, our doctors, our lawyers. They bag our groceries and change the oil in our cars and patrol our streets and teach our children and defend our country and and and…

They aren’t robots. They aren’t faceless soldiers in an enemy army. They didn’t get their viewpoints with the latest firmware update on their birthday. They thought about these issues. Weighed them. Cared a lot about them. Maybe not recently, but at some point, they engaged their brain and made the best decision they could based on the best information they had.

And maybe their information was bad, but that’s not their fault. And maybe a trusted source is giving them deliberately misleading information, but that’s not their fault either.

They are just, to use a really tired cliche, like you and me.

We need to remember that.

Image of the Earth from Apollo 17

We need to remember that when our parents are telling us, beyond all belief, that they like Trump. We need to remember that when our co-workers tell us they don’t see what the big deal is with the whole Black Lives Matter thing. We need to remember that when our kids tell us that they’re gay or straight or trans or whatever.

They didn’t just make this stuff up. They’re not crazy just because they take the other side of the issue.

They are human.

It’s not us versus them.

It’s us versus us.

If we want to heal as a country, if we want to come through this thing (and again, I’m not even sure what I mean by “this thing” — the election? the decade? life, the universe, and everything?) in one piece, we’ve got to stop demonizing the “other” and start seeing each other as equals. We have to start trying to understand one another rather than just shouting about how right we are and how wrong they are.

That’s not a race thing, not a gender thing, not a religion thing.

It’s a human thing.

And we need to start acting like it.

I’m going off the political posts for a while, because I really just can’t. I can’t with the plagiarized speeches, with the shootings of and by police, with the protests, with the terrorist attacks. Lighter fare in the days to come, I promise. Probably gonna write about American Ninja Warrior or something ridiculous like that just to clear the pipes.

Photo: “The Blue Marble,” property of NASA.

Things You Could Do Instead of Playing Pokemon Go:

Pavowski10 Comments

Literally anything.

Already a guy has admitted to crashing his car into a tree (and I mean totaling it) because he was playing while driving.

Police departments across the country (if not the world? International readers, help me out) have been issuing statements: exercise caution while playing. Do not trespass while playing. Do not play while driving. etc.

My Facebook feed (YES I STILL USE FACEBOOK DEAL WITH IT) is lousy with jokes and memes and “funny” pictures of Pokemon popping out of people’s pants.

And people I know personally have expressed anger — ANGER! — at being run out of graveyards late at night because they were playing the game.

The game might encourage people to get up off the couch. It might encourage them to get out and socialize. It might rekindle a long-lost love for a game that many people apparently enjoyed in their youth. (I never saw the appeal, but hey, it takes all kinds.)

But it also encourages loitering. It encourages wandering more or less blindly into unfamiliar places. It encourages walking around with your face glued to your phone screen — which is something we already do too much of.

It is TEARING COMMUNITIES APART.

This fad cannot run its course soon enough.

Now get off my lawn.

Your Kids Are Not My Kids

Pavowski2 Comments

The same thing happens everywhere we go.

Strange kids come running up to my wife and myself, imploring us to “watch me,” or “look what I can do,” or “check me out!” It happens everywhere. The playground. The neighborhood pool. The waiting room at the doctor’s office.

Your kids want US to watch them. Watch them climb up the slide backwards. Watch them do a crappy somersault. Look at this dumb toy with the detachable attachments. Watch them run around in circles and fall down. Basically, they want us to look at all the stupid kid stuff that they’re doing.

We’ve looked. We’ve examined this phenomenon. These kids don’t just go approaching adults willy-nilly. We’re not random targets. They seek us out. They find us. Like tiny heat-seeking missiles with grubby fingers and Cheetohs dust on their shirts, they abandon the swings and the slides to come get in our faces.

Swing, Playground, Children Playing, Park, Child, Play

Why us?

It certainly isn’t because we care. Well, I shouldn’t speak for my wife, but I certainly don’t care. I would be hard-pressed to care less about anything anybody’s kid does, anywhere, at any time. Hell, I can barely summon up enough Fargos to give when my own kids do something mediocre (oh, good job, you stacked some soda cans on top of each other! Oh, wow, look at that formless scribble you drew on the TV Guide! [just kidding, who even has TV Guides anymore] Wow, listen to that garbled nonsense that just poured out of your mouth!). The only reason I do care when my kids manage some dubious toddler achievement is because I’m biologically compelled to do so: some bizarre alchemy of genetics and instinct overrides my default response, transforming a gruff “leave me alone” into a half-hearted “aw, that’s great!”

But I have no such genetic hard-coding when it comes to your kid.

I don’t love him. I don’t hope for her well-being (outside of a general, future-of-the-species vaguery). And I double definitely don’t give a sharknado about your kid and the fact that he can spin around in a circle until he falls down, or that she can almost but not quite balance on one foot for two seconds. I just don’t. And the only reason I won’t tell your kid exactly that is because society frowns on shouting at children, unless those kids are your own. Instead, I will summon up an even more (or would it be less?) half-hearted smile than the one I give my own kids, show them my teeth, and hope like hell inside my head that they just go away.

But they keep coming. They keep approaching me. Showing me dumb things that nobody cares about, seeking my attention when my own kids have already used up all of it.

Why are they seeking out my attention?

Because they don’t have yours. The only thing I can count on just as much as a strange kid coming up to beg me for a few seconds of attention is that while said kid is bugging me, I can cast my gaze across the playground/waiting room/pool pavilion and see that kid’s parent completely ignoring him. You got your kid to the playground, cut him loose on the slides, and buried yourself eyeballs-deep in Facebook or Twitter or whatever the cool kids are doing these days. You took your kid to the pool, slapped some floaties on her, and dove into a real deep discussion with your neighbor about your nails or your hair or the way that other part of the neighborhood is really going to sharknado. You got to the doctor’s office, and doctor’s offices are BORING, Goldfingerit, so you picked up an issue of Sports Illustrated from three years ago and became real interested in the Packers’ midseason woes.

Meanwhile, your kids are looking for somebody, anybody to pay them an ounce of attention. Just a wisp, a hint, an inkling on a summer breeze that somebody gives a damn about who they are and what they’re doing.

And why are they coming to ME for this vindication?

Because my wife and I pay attention to our kids in public. We have to. I mean, what’s the alternative? We follow them around at the playground — mostly to make sure they’re not running up to other kids’ parents and getting on their nerves. We get into the pool with them, partially because it’s fun, but mostly because they could slip an arm floatie or overturn their dumb float in half a second, and we want to make sure the kids don’t waterboard themselves. We keep an eye on them in the doctor’s office because that’s bloody GERM CENTRAL, and we don’t want them bringing home more of the plague than they have to. We are there. We are present. We pay attention to what they’re doing, and as a result, OUR KIDS DON’T BOTHER OTHER ADULTS. (The unfortunate by-product is: your kids think I care about what kids are doing in general. Sigh.)

I get it. You’re tired. Every parent is tired. Every parent wants nothing more than to disconnect for a few minutes and not have to hover over every little thing their kid does. To just kick back and read for a minute. To sneak away and drop a deuce in peace, even. But you can’t do it at the playground. Ignore your kids at home, where the only other person they can bother for attention is the cat.

Not to be preachy, but when you’re out in public, that’s when you need to pay attention to your kids THE MOST. Not just because they’ll go up and talk to strangers (obviously they will), but because a few seconds is all it takes for somebody to make off with the little bundle of joy that you’re ignoring. And while that might not be a big deal if you’re the only people on the playground, when you’re there at midday and there are twenty kids flying around and a dozen parents on cell phones around the outside … I mean, really? How hard would it be for me to walk off with your kid? Or, let’s make it less sinister — how hard would it be for your kid to just follow me and my kids off the playground?

Look. I’m not out here trying to abduct your kid (as far as you know). The two I have already drive me up the walls six days out of seven. And those are kids that I love. That I’m required by law to care for.

I don’t care about your kids.

It’s your job to do that, so they don’t come looking for vindication from me.

 

God, Not More Preaching

Pavowski10 Comments

I turn on the news this morning, and I’m horrified. Over 100 casualties in a club in Orlando. And I check the news again later in the day (why? why? Because the initial horror wasn’t enough?) to see that they caught another guy on the verge of the next horrible thing, not 24 hours later.

And I feel a nagging at the back of my brain; and I think to myself that while I was writing about rape a few days ago, I wasn’t just thinking about rape, I was thinking about the world we live in. About how we are shaping the world we live in.  I’m not going to toot my own horn here, nor am I going to offer platitudes or outrage or rushes to judgment or anything like that. The internet is full of such things, and I don’t need to bathe myself in those muddy waters.

Still, not three days ago, I wrote this:

And deal with it we must. There’s something broken in our culture, and by extension, in ourselves. It’s so easy for the rapist’s father to say “this is not the son I raised; he made a mistake.”

Substitute “shooter” for “rapist” and you have not only the events of last night in Orlando, but you have the events of … jesus. Columbine. Sandy Hook. Virginia Tech. And so forth.

 

Something is amiss in our society. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. And until we have the courage to face up to it and do something about it, nothing will change.

For that matter, I was reading some Dr. Seuss to my son the other day. That’s right, Dr. The-Cat-in-the-Hat Seuss. To be specific, we were reading The Lorax, because he likes all the bright colors in that book, if not perhaps the heavy-handed environmental message of it. In that story, toward the end, there’s a rather prescient sentiment:

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,

Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.

Apply that little nugget to whatever issue you like. But goddammit, all this shit is related. Rape. Mass shootings. Terrorism. General dickishness to your fellow man. And usually I censor myself on the blarg here, but fuck all, there are times when you observe societal niceties and there are times when you let the niceties fall by the wayside.

A hundred people are dead or injured today, here, in the United States of America, because of hatred, pure and simple. Who knows how many more might be next to them if not for the efforts of California police interrupting the man with a car full of assault weapons?

A hundred more sons and daughters. A hundred more fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, friends, aunts, uncles; a hundred more people. Who cares if they were LGBT or otherwise, who cares what you think about LGBT individuals for that matter? A hundred people are DEAD.

John Scalzi puts it rather well here, probably rather a lot better than I do. But the fact is, when things like this happen, people wallow in despair for a few days, they say the magic words, and they move on with their lives. But in this country, at least, you have one tiny bit of power. One tiny little ounce of leverage. One seedling of an unlikely tree sitting in your pocket, to hearken back to Dr. Seuss.

That leverage isn’t your thoughts and prayers, as Scalzi points out. Nobody gives a shit what you think in your own private Idaho. Nobody gives a shit what you pray about.

But the people who make the laws sure as hell give a shit how you vote.

In the days to come, the overbearing attack dogs of both sides will be unleashed on our collective consciousness. “It’s not a gun problem, it’s a mental illness issue.” “Nobody needs guns like the ones used in these crimes.” And everything in between.

Guns are not going anywhere. And I don’t in any way advocate legislature that would prevent any American from owning a reasonable weapon for the protection of his or her family.

But assault weapons are not that. And attacks like this would not happen without weapons like that. You can’t kill 50 and wound 53 with a knife, or even with a pistol, before somebody takes you down. And it is the staunch, unblinking adherence to “2nd amendment rights” that continues to make it possible for the wrong people to get their hands on guns more easily.

Would more gun laws eradicate gun violence entirely? Of course not. Lawbreakers, as they say, are not going to be deterred just because there’s a law in place.

But by that rationale, why do we have speeding laws? Or anti-theft laws? Or anti-drug laws? Or or or …

As has been said many times around this blog and many others, the perfect is the enemy of the good. And gun rights advocates will argue til they’re blue in the face that criminals will still get guns. And maybe they’re right.

But just because there is no perfect solution doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

Dammit. I’m supposed to be on vacation.

 

Dumb (Bad) Luck

Pavowski2 Comments

Police, Auto, Police Car, Retro, Patrol Car, Model Car

So I got ticketed driving through my own neighborhood last night. That’s embarrassing enough in its own right — not that we get too hung up on what the neighbors think (I am pretty sure we have druggies living next door, three generations living in one house across the street, and an elderly couple very concerned with lawn care living on our other side who I have no doubt absolutely HATE me and my “mow it once a week, what more do you want” approach to groundskeeping). But it got worse still: while I was pulled over by the police officer, blue lights strobing away and all in our quiet little residential area, who goes driving by?

My in-laws.

My in-laws.

The indignity. The shame. The fargoing sheer stupid idiotic bad luck.

I would have gotten away with it, too. I would have explained away the ten-minute or so delay in my grocery store run, paid the fine quietly, and nobody would ever have been the wiser, except that my freaking in-laws go cruising by on their way to visit with our kids before we head out of town.

As it was, though, I walked into the house to find my wife standing with folded arms, already waiting an explanation.

It was for the dumbest of things, too — a failure to come to a complete stop. Now look, I know. Rules are rules. And you won’t find me arguing with police officers. But living in this neighborhood for 6 (help!) years, I’ve seen a lot of drivers doing a hell of a lot worse and getting away with it almost every day. It’s the richest of irony that I would get dinged for a rolling stop just at the time when my in-laws are rolling past.

Actually, I lied before.

I wouldn’t have gotten away with it, not by any stretch of the imagination. Because my 4-year-old son was in the car with me. And if you don’t have any 4-year-olds in your life, well, let me tell you, you will never appreciate silence more than if you ever cross paths with a 4-year-old.

DADDY CAN I HAVE SOMETHING TO DRINK DADDY WHAT’S THAT GUY DOING DADDY LOOK AT THE KITTY ISN’T THAT FUNNY DADDY I THINK THERE’S SOMETHING WEIRD OUTSIDE OH IT’S JUST A BIRD THE KITTY WANTS TO EAT IT DADDY WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THE KITTY ATE THE BIRD THAT WOULDN’T BE VERY GOOD HUH DADDY HEY DADDY CAN I HAVE A POPSICLE DADDY HOW MANY MORE BITES OF MY DINNER DO I HAVE TO EAT FOR A POPSICLE DADDY I ATE MY DINNER CAN I HAVE THAT POPSICLE NOW DADDY POPSICLE DADDY DRINK DADDY WHY ARE YOU MAD

(One of these days I’m going to get one of those pitch counters that baseball umpires carry, and I’m just going to quietly keep a tally of how many times the sprout says “daddy” in a day. I mean, it’s adorable, but it’ll also make you seriously think of changing your name or of leaving the state.)

Of course, after getting pulled over by the policeman, the unstoppable monologue was more along the lines of:

DADDY WHAT DID THAT MAN WANT DADDY WHO WAS THAT DADDY WHAT’S A POLICE OFFICER DADDY DID YOU BREAK A LAW DADDY IS HE BEING MEAN TO YOU DADDY WHY AREN’T WE GOING DADDY IS HE GOING TO BE YOUR FRIEND DADDY THAT POLICE OFFICER HAS HAIR LIKE YOU DADDY WHY DIDN’T YOU STOP AT THE STOP SIGN DADDY ARE YOU GOING TO GO TO JAIL THAT WOULDN’T BE VERY GOOD DADDY ARE YOU IN TROUBLE DADDY WHAT’S A TICKET DADDY HOW MANY DOLLARS DOES IT COST DADDY CAN WE STILL GO TO THE PLAYGROUND TOMORROW DADDY CAN I HAVE A POPSICLE WHEN WE GET HOME

And I know he would have been all too happy to regale my wife with his tale, even if my in-laws hadn’t already ratted me out.

Which is why I’m here writing about it. Because we’re heading out of town today, meeting up with family on the way, and he’s going to tell the story to anybody who will listen and I just want to get ahead of the controversy.

Incidentally, while I was telling my wife that I was obviously going to have to write about this experience, I told her I’d be depriving her of the opportunity to rat me out to my own mother. “I’m totally stealing your thunder,” I told her.

To which the 4-year-old replied, faint horror rattling his tiny voice, “Daddy, are you going to thunder my mom??”

Anyway, to set the record straight, and to make sure all thunder is properly stolen (though I want to be clear: no mommies were thundered in the writing of this blarg):

Yes, I got ticketed in my own neighborhood.

Yes, my in-laws (MAMA AND PAPA) drove by while I was pulled over.

No, the police officer was not mean to me.

No, I am not going to jail.

Don’t believe anything else that 4-year-old tells you.

This weekly remotivational post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Every weekend, I use Linda G. Hill’s prompt to refocus my efforts and evaluate my process, sometimes with productive results. This week’s post was very little about process, but it made me laugh anyway — deal with it!