It all adds up to something

     What to do? How to react?     
     The most frustrating thing about the constant random, cruel initiatives from Washington—after the continual shock that this is happening to our country— is knowing what to highlight, what to dig in against. There is so much that is wrong, and you can't push in all directions at once.. 
     Children held in inhuman conditions on the border? The no-brainer of all time. Of course anyone with a shred of decency is outraged—that's a given. But how can that be stopped? Getting into a pointless debate over the use of the phrase "concentration camp" certainly isn't going to do it. The Holocaust dead sure don't care one way or another. The Holocaust is an apt point of reference, not because the situation today is equal to it, but because it's going down the path, in the direction. The lesson of the Holocaust is that it unfolded while a pliant population approved or did nothing. It starts with one child. Then more.
      What can be done that is not symbolic, but real, effective? 
     The Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids were supposed to start today nationwide, in 10 cities, including Chicago.
     Punishment for their "sanctuary city" openness. From San Francisco to Miami.
     Why? What crisis is being addressed? That would be Donald Trump's crisis in popularity. With the election nearing, and even his base growing restive over their leader's imbecilic antics, the president seeks to stir up his supporters with the only thing that raises a tingle in their blown-out senses—by playing upon their hatred for others, in this case, the immigrant, the foreigner, the person of color.
     Never mind that they have lived here for years, and are our neighbors, employees, and friends. Never mind they have worked here for decades, often at the hardest, most grueling, lowest paid, jobs our society offers. In fields and kitchens, tending children and mowing lawns. Not to devolve to stereotypes: they are also students, entrepreneurs, senior citizens, veterans, scholars, poets, the same mix of humanity as anyone else.
     A decent country would welcome such people. Who found their way here, leaving everything they knew -- their homes and families, nation and language. Who often fled terrible conditions with nothing but their clothes and their loved ones. We would embrace them and help them, knowing that not too long ago, almost every American was in their shoes, strangers in a strange land.
     But we are not that decent country. Not officially. Not anymore, but a land of lies ruled by a cruel and capricious despot.  At least we have a free press, so far. We can point in horror and say, "This isn't right." Trump has spat in his hands and tried to figure out how to pull that down. It hasn't happened yet, but if it does, we will be truly lost.
     A grim moment in this grim time, and if the decent citizens of this country cannot stand by while these were occurring. This past week cities mobilized. Officials denounced the raids, offered assistance to threatened immigrants, and ordered police forces to not cooperate with federal authorities. Lori Lightfoot was front and center in this, taking decisive steps and speaking out against this "hateful" action, going personally through immigrant communities, handing out cards detailing their rights. 
      And it worked, for the moment. Trump, who is making a habit of caving in, caved in, lashing out at Chicago as he did.
     ”Some cities are going to fight it,” Trump said, as he backpedaled. “If you notice, they are generally high-crime cities. If you look at Chicago, they are fighting it and if you look at the other cities that are fighting it, many of those cities are high-crime cities and they are sanctuary cities.”
      Another lie. The presence of immigrants has nothing to do with the crime in a city, except to lower it. Study after study shows this, and it makes sense. If you can be deported for a traffic ticket, you tend to drive carefully. Trump associates the two because besides being a bigot he is a coward, and cannot even own up to the hatred that so obviously motivates him, or at least which he plays upon to appeal to his base. He might not really even care, which is in a sense worse: a cynical ploy to appeal to haters.
    There's a lesson there. Do something, anything, everything. All we can do is all we can do. Every pushback, every voice raised, every vote cast, every dollar spent. Each individual act might seem small, but it all adds up to something. It has to.

The younger generation reveals its genius

     Those of the younger generation—"Generation Z," we oldsters call them—get a bad rap: entitled, lazy, inconsiderate. 
      I disagree.  While I haven't surveyed the entirety of the early 20ish cohort, mind you, I have had a chance to observe certain members up close, and let me tell you what I call them: bold, creative, boundary-defying.  
     What's the old, ordinary, dull, established way to, oh, interact with a pot of mac and cheese you've been eating with a spoon? Take it to the kitchen? Put it in the sink, maybe even rinse it out so the contents don't set up like concrete?
     Borrr-rrrring!
     Certainly what I'd do, with my laughable late 50ish antique ways.
     How much more daring to just balance the thing on the arm of the couch. It's almost art, a piece of performance art. Pot on the Sofa. One in a series, including Mug on the Bed and, my favorite, Bowl in a Drawer. Edgy, Dadaesque. Convention-shattering. Playing with middle-class expectations in a way that Marcel Duchamp would nod at with understanding and approval.
     We guardians of the established order could rail at these new ways. No doubt most do. Or we could welcome them as the marks of genius that they are. I feel privileged to be present at the creation of a new modern age. 
     
     

The Stones: Important men making unimportant music

Rolling Stones

     The Rolling Stones are in town — Hi, Mick! Hi, Keith! — for two shows at Soldier Field, Friday and Tuesday, kicking off their North American tour.
     I’m going to the second show. Yes, I know, you’re thinking, “That’s out-of-character for you, Neil. Aren’t you more of an opera guy?”
 

Jimmy Johnson

   Yes, yes I am. But there is an explanation: My wife really likes the Stones. I’ve forced her to sit through many hours of Wagner. Turnabout is fair play.
     The tour almost got scuttled after Mick Jagger had a health scare. But a new heart valve got tucked in and he seems good to go.
     The man is 75, but that’s nothing for a bluesman. Jimmy Johnson performed a strong set at Blues Fest a few weeks ago and he’s 90. Bobby Rush is 86, and shimmied for an hour with two enormous, scantily-clad dancers.
 

Venus of Willendorf

    (Am I the first guy to see Rush’s dancers and think, “Venus of Willendorf”? Maybe. They were very large. That is not a criticism. My attitude was: ‘Good for them, I bet employment opportunities are limited for 250-pound dancers.’ My wife was uneasy with Rush’s sexism, and it did cross my mind that the city of Chicago was sponsoring a bawdy show. But the dynamics of race, music and offense are complicated, and I can’t imagine any complaint getting traction.)
     See why I’m not the ideal rock audience? I’m not good at unreflective enthusiasm, at forming my fingers into horns and waving them above my head, screaming “Woooo!!!”
     Here, I’ll try it.
     ”Woo.”
     Pathetic, like a koala moaning in its sleep.

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The Era of Contempt V

Five Butterflies, by Wenceslaus Hollar (1646) Metropolitan Museum of Art 

    
     A lepidopterist is, as any Nabokov fan knows, a butterfly collector. It is fitting that the colorful stationery bearing Alan P. Leonard's latest missive to this column has butterflies on it. Because I always think of myself as a lepidopterist when it comes to processing hateful mail. I try to bring a connoisseur's discernment to their ravings, a protective measure to keep the poison within from raising a welt on my delicate mental skin. I net the odious thing, put it carefully in the killing bottle, using tongs, then pin the little corpse to a board and admire its patterns, its grotesque variegation. 
      We met Mr. Leonard last year, with three emails I dubbed "The Era of Contempt."  As with the one below, they were informed by fear of those whose sexuality is at variance with his. 
     You may find them here, here and here, if you are so inclined. 
     They proved decidedly popular, as freak shows often do.
     Then two months ago, he was back, with a racist screed decrying the looks of Michelle Obama (an revulsive scrap of classic 1859 bigotry that one just doesn't expect to see expressed publicly by someone proudly signing his name. A shocking anachronism, like finding a child with rickets).
      This one, as he makes clear, is in reaction to my June 10 column about Boston's idiotic "Straight Pride" parade. The twist is that he doesn't sign his name, perhaps forgetting that he has written four times before, with the same stationery and his distinctive block printing. 
      As before, I paused, wondering if it were somehow cruel to share Mr. Leonard's thoughts, to stretch the term. The man is afraid, as haters are at core. A shameful fear he has to share, trying to alleviate it. The usual terror of his correspondence ratcheted up a notch as, for the first time, he signs his letter with a nom de guerre, "A normal person." As if it were normal to write anonymous notes to newspaper columnists, venting your bile and your sexual insecurity.
     Which it sorta is, sadly. But still. I don't have to take the bait. Isn't posting the letter itself a minor cruelty? "When battling monsters," as Nietzsche reminds us, "make sure not to become a monster."
     Perhaps. But if so, it is cruelty with a higher purpose. It is not monstrous to print a letter sent to a newspaper, nor to note that hatred is an acid that, increasingly, eats up the possessor more than the object. I believe airing it is therapeutic, if not for him, obviously, at least for us. Don't be like this.
    And lest we feel too superior, lest we chuckle too much, remember this: these are the people running our country now. These are the people we let take charge.




  

Trump calls the tune, and his fans dance

      You gotta dance with them what brung ya.
     I’m not given to rustic turns of phrase, especially those including colloquialisms like “gotta,” “brung” or “ya.”
     Yet there is truth here.
     After — golly — four years of continually condemning Donald Trump as a liar, bully and fraud, I believe now, with his circus-like announcement Tuesday in Florida of his quest for a second term, is a good time to pause and give credit where due:
     Donald Trump is a master.
     A master what? Well, liar, bully and fraud, for starters. Those who don’t see that by now never will. But that is a huge, unwavering group of Americans — tens of millions. Time to tip the hat and acknowledge something I have not previously recognized: what a good liar, bully and fraud Donald Trump really is.
     A master of his craft, really. A genius. Begin with his skill as a liar. Democrats tote up his lies like some disturbed individual counting the passing cars, oblivious to the fact that the total doesn’t matter. Nearly half the country doesn’t care. Trump has rendered the truth un-important for his followers, and that is a feat I did not previously think possible. But obviously, tragically, it is.
     How does he do it?
     By force of personality. He can say one thing today, another in an hour, then contradict both the next day. Anyone rude enough to draw attention to this is attacked by himself and his crew of lackeys and bootlickers, who have sold their souls for access to his presence, not to forget our version of State TV, Fox News. The mushroom cloud of controversy forms with a “whump,” rises into the air, floats away and is forgotten. The past is a vapor, reality a dreamworld inhabited by losers. You can choose truth or you can choose Trump.

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Two tickets to Chicago

    Ritual is protective. Doing the same thing, the same way, all the time, might be timid. And it might be dull. But you cut a groove of experience, the walls of which prop you up as you hurtle forward. 
     Depart from that groove, well, you're free to roam, sure. But also free to careen into trouble.   
    When riding the Metra, the conductor appears at the front of the car and cries, "Tickets please!" 
     I pull out my iPhone, assuming it isn't already in my hand, tap on the Ventra app, summon a new ticket up, and wait.
     And wait.
     Not long. A minute or so, as the conductor works his way toward me, my eyes upon him 
     That's how I do it. But it's also time wasted. Why not, I thought pop into another app, and fidget with that while waiting? I had something I wanted to explore, the app associated with my new Bose headphones—birthday gift from the wife. Then I would return to the ticket at the proper moment.
    I considered pulling out a paper ticket—kept in the wallet in case of phone freeze and other related emergencies. But no need. I've got this.
    The conductor approached. The Bose app had shunted me to iTunes which would not let me go. I mashed at the phone, impotently, and by the time I got to the ticket the conductor was looming above me. I mashed another button, showed him the ticket. 
    As he left, I realized I had somehow, in my panic, purchased two tickets.
    $6.40 down the drain.
     There is an inverse between the minuteness of a woe and its reverberation. The county might be run by a crook, but that is not my doing. This was. I explained what happened to my wife, who was nonplussed.
    "Forget it," she said. "Price of a cup of coffee."
    Not any coffee that I'd buy.
    My next thought was to appeal to the conductor. Show him my error and ask for a physical ticket I could use on the train coming home this afternoon. But the aisles and entryway were filled with commuters—the trains have been shorter lately. I'd have to push past them. The conductor would be busy.
    To my credit, I forgot all about it the moment I left the train station. I had planned to phone Metra—I can't be the first goofus to waste an electronic ticket. What is the procedure, the protocol? But I didn't call Metra. There was a column to write, a friend to meet for lunch. We sat at a table by the river on a perfect June day.
     Then to Union Station where, slipping onto the train, it came back to me. My Gaffe. I took a seat at the very back of the car, by where the conductor usually set up shop. He was a man perhaps 20 years my junior, all business, like most Metra conductors. I explained The Situation to him.
    "No worries, happy to help out," he said, explaining that he would waive the need for a ticket on the way home. "We always try to do what we can."
     A few minutes later he came through the car, collecting tickets. And though we had an agreement, and I had used my two tickets that day, as he came toward me, it felt odd, almost illicit. I didn't like not handing over a ticket to be punched. It felt wrong; I had to remind myself not to summon a ticket up again, the third for the day. I remembered traveling in with the engineer once, in the cab, for a column. The conductor came up to the engine to collect not only my ticket, but the Metra PR guy. Even conductors have to show tickets.
     But I endured. Later, talking about it with another conductor, he pointed out that conductors tend to know the people who ride their trains. Even if not by name, they know who is there habitually and who is not. You show your ticket dutifully for almost 20 years, taking pains to make sure you are ready at the proper time so as not to inconvenience or delay the conductor, well, it buys you goodwill on the day you screw up.

     

On traffic lights, beehive and vaccinations

 

     Think about traffic lights.
     They hang at intersections in every city and town, endlessly cycling through green to yellow to red, then back to green again, telling drivers when to stop and go.
     Silent sentinels, automatically observed and unquestioningly obeyed. Like idols really.
     Like gods.
     Let’s say this situation genuinely offends my understanding of my faith, which commands “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me,” and warns against the worship of false idols. Let’s further say that I take to setting up a ladder at stoplights in the middle of the night and painting the lenses black.
     God, in His infinite wisdom, will direct traffic safely through the intersections.
     How will society react to this sincere expression of my religious faith? Will it respect me? Or will it throw me in jail?
     Jail, and rightly so. Because my ability to practice a particular personal belief stops when it harms other people and tears down social order.
     The above, metaphorically, is the exact situation regarding vaccines — well, maybe not the painting-over part. So let’s say I drive heedlessly through red lights, aghast at the imposition society would inflict upon my personal freedom. 

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