America would be better off if all we could use the internet for was cute animal videos. I was going to add a few other subject matters—like grandkid videos, for instance—but I think I’ll just leave it at cute animals.
I am happily inundated with cute animal videos but when I witnessed firsthand my sister’s Instagram feed I realized I am only seeing the tiniest tip of the Antarctic-sized iceberg. I suggest everyone like, love, thumbs up as many cute animal videos as possible as a guaranteed online palate cleanser.
Here I’ll jumpstart the process for you:
You know I don’t want to talk about cute animal videos. Even though everyone—the vaccine-hesitant, the paranoia-prone and the common sense-challenged—smile, laugh and tear up over cute animal videos. Like this golden retriever happily slapping about in a water puddle.
I’m visiting my sister and her husband in Santa Fe. They are kind, generous, genteel people but even they are at the end of their ropes with the nonstop nonsense enveloping the “home of the brave, land of the free.” Like intelligent, empathetic people everywhere they are nonplussed by the insanity engulfing the public sphere.
Allow me to digress.
I watched—actually paid attention—to my first golfing tournament yesterday. It’s the Ryder Cup being held in Wisconsin this year and to give you an idea of how much I don’t know about golf I was only familiar with one name out of the twenty-four competitors. I also could not have told you in advance that the Ryder Cup is a competition between Europe and the United States. The day I paid attention, four sets of two European golfers went head-to-head against four sets of two American golfers. As a sign of my getting older I suppose—like the inexplicable interest I took in cricket while traveling to Tasmania—I suddenly found myself immersed in watching men with clubs spoiling a perfectly good walk.
The first thing I noticed was the steady thrum of the crowds on hand. These weren’t the murmuring crowds that would instantly put me in doze mode if I accidentally left the television on during a weekend of college and professional football and the sports channel carried on with golf. This boisterous crowd was singing or chanting something I associate with soccer fans. (Always remember. . .“fan” is shorthand for “fanatic”).
It was especially funny because, while you halfway expected the crowd to break into the—offensive—tomahawk chop accompanied by a raucous chant, the announcers were still whispering into their microphones. Old habits die hard, I guess. Since the majority of the competitors were under the age of 30 and a significant swath of the gallery were fraternal bros of some kind, it should not have come as a surprise to me.
The session ended yesterday with the Americans in a commanding lead going into the last day of the tournament and, predictably, the partisan crowd of inebriated golf bros and their faux-blonde wives, girlfriends and dates serenaded the leaders with the obnoxious “USA, USA” chant replete with fist bumps, high fives and chest bumps with sloshing beers all around. If I didn’t know better, I would have presumed I had tuned into a bare-knuckled brawl being held on a fairway.
According to my sister and her affably congenial husband, tennis matches and their crowds have also become reminiscent of Roman gladiatorial events.
Now, before I pass judgement on the degradation of society and the diminution of tradition, I want to confess that I have always been a demonstrative competitor. I am not a stranger to “showboating” or gloating under the right circumstances—like when I pitch my way out of a bases-loaded jam, or throw a double ringer on top of my opponent’s double ringer in the staid sport of horseshoes. I will admit I once took delirious satisfaction at heckling a minor league pitcher at an Everett AquaSox game that featured a tiny piglet delivering balls to the umpire between innings. I also took delirious, good-natured satisfaction at heckling the hell out of Diana Taurasi at a Storm-Mercury playoff game several years back. (Unfortunately, Diana Taurasi is one of those players who thrives on negative attention and generally winds up shooting the lights out while an entire WNBA crowd taunts her.)
As you may or may not know, I am not a staunch supporter of tradition, but I will defend to the death your right to celebrate your traditions as you see fit. With the caveat being, of course, not to the extent that your traditions are harmful to others. (As for yourself? I’m a little more agnostic about that. I lean closer to Ed Abbey’s point-of-view that we all should be free enough to risk our lives daily and lustily if we so choose.)
I have digressed far enough.
On balance, the internet has made humanity uglier, coarser, less tolerant. Worse still, it might be ringing the death knell for democracy—the world over—as I type. Why? Because anger sells. Outrage gets clicks. Death threats are just as common as ‘fuck yous’. ‘Fuck yous’ are more common than nerdy ‘shaking my head’ responses.
And so on. And so forth. And so it goes.
A Republican representative from Ohio who voted to impeach the twice-impeached crass, corpulent cad of Mar-a-Lago has opted not to run for re-election. Rep. Anthony Gonzalez is worried for his family. He called the cad and his current party a “cancer on the country” and, well, you can imagine the kind of literature filling up his direct messages, inboxes and social media feeds.
Rep. Jaime Herrera Butler—another Republican who had a bout of ethics during the second impeachment trial against the former guy—is being ‘primaried’ by another authoritarian-in-training in her district. Her opponent, Joe Kent’s, rallies are magnets for Q-Anon adherents, Proud Boys and the ubiquitous anti-vaxxers. I suspect Rep. Butler is undergoing a similar mistreatment by the vitriolic miscreants that inhabit every corner of the internet.
Neither I or any free, non-authoritarian government has any idea how to police the internet. Remove the ability to be anonymous? Systematically and uniformly de-platform everyone who ignores the Terms of Service? The only fines that would ever work versus the goliath social media companies would have to start at about a billion dollars a day.
As Heather Cox Richardson recently pointed out, the Republican party—which formed in the mid-1800s, as a counter to the existing parties, like Democrats, who wanted to preserve the traditions of the South—have come full circle. Instead of defending the ideals of equality set forth in our nation’s Constitution, they want a “reset” to the glory days of yore when white people clung to the notion of “separate, but equal”, or better yet, in the minds of some, deporting Others to their “lands of origin.”
The radicalization of the base of the Republican party is now complete. So much so, moderates of their party—at least the dozen or so who remain—cannot speak up. The moderates cower in their foxholes emerging long enough to toe the party line and vote “No”, or they choose to head for the exits. The rest are all in full-throated rebellion against the government as it exists today and anyone that does not identify as white.
I was going to say, “Who can blame them?”, but we can blame the Republicans that ought to know better. Without 40 years castigating government programs, 40 years of race-baiting and 40 years of just making up shit, we would not be hostages in our own country to online trolls and an uncontrollable virus made less controllable by human boxes of doorknobs.
I have news for the rebels. There are three branches of government and not one of them is their own personal religion. Not one of them is controlled by the petulant pissant residing (or is it hiding?) in Florida. They’re going to lose. But only if we stay fired up and vote, canvass during the election process, donate what we can, volunteer, make an effort to be informed and show up when it matters.
Oh, yeah, and keep watching cute animal videos to counteract the mean streets of the internet.
Ed Abbey quotes because who doesn’t need an Ed Abbey quote now and then?
“The one thing ... that is truly ugly is the climate of hate and intimidation, created by a noisy few, which makes the decent majority reluctant to air in public their views on anything controversial. ... Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all.”
― Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
“Yes, there are plenty of heroes and heroines everywhere you look. They are not famous people. They are generally obscure and modest people doing useful work, keeping their families together and taking an active part in the health of their communities, opposing what is evil (in one way or another) and defending what is good. Heroes do not want power over others.”
― Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
“Saving the world is only a hobby. Most of the time I do nothing.”
― Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
“I think it is far more important to save one square mile of wilderness, anywhere, by any means, than to produce another book on the subject.”
― Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
Also, AAR Dallas Silva tells me these short, but sweet, podcasts by David Attenborough are “an absolute delight to listen to”. You can find them on BBC Sounds.
ICYMI tidbits of news. . . Anti-vaxxers are encouraging folks to leave hospital beds for the quack treatments being pushed by online charlatans. . . the Conservative Political Action Committee will hold next year’s conference in Hungary so America’s authoritarians-in-training can get an up close and personal look at a full blown autocratic society. . . Texas had approximately 55,000 abortions last year while New Mexico had somewhere along the lines of 4,000. New Mexican clinics are bracing for a surge they will not possibly be able to handle.
Other than that. Go Mariners!