A New Approach for Democrats: Pragmatism

Some believe one reason the Democrats have done poorly in elections lately is that they don't have a simple, cohesive message. Meanwhile, Republicans can essentially say "Politicians stink! Let's try something new!" and get farther than their actual policies would warrant.

The reality is that government is complicated, and reducing it all to a simple message is usually so reductive as to be dishonest. The Republican approach is extremely dishonest; they position themselves as simple, "Real America" outsiders railing against the status quo. Meanwhile they actually represent the wealthy, powerful types who have had almost all of the control since the beginning of time.

But it works, because everyone hates politicians. Everyone hates politicians because they only hear the bad things. The scandals and fights are the interesting things that make the news. The good things, like complex pieces of litigation that will likely make millions of lives better down the road, don't quite carry the same visceral punch. They're boring and complicated. Ideally, news networks would only report the boring, complicated, important stuff, people's preferences be damned. But as long as news networks have to sell papers and get ratings, that is unlikely to happen.

While we wait for the American populace to get more interested in policy and less interested in shocking headlines, the Democrats have to find a more arresting central message. There is a bit in this short article that points to a similarly simple, but much more honest, theme that the Democrats could use: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/how-ayn-rands-theories-destroyed-never-trump-conservatism.html:

"The conservative movement treats small government as a first-order question of liberty, alongside or even above political liberty. Liberals treat economic policy on pragmatic grounds — the point of Medicaid is to help poor people get health care, and the point of the Clean Air Act is to create more breathable air. Expanding government is the means toward those discrete ends. Conservatives have discrete goals, like economic growth, but also larger ideological ones. As Milton Friedman once put it, “‘freedom’ in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so ‘economic freedom’ is an end in itself to a believer in freedom.” While it may seem strange to liberals, for economic conservatives, the fight to slash down the size of government is itself tantamount to a fight against authoritarianism."

I think a huge majority of American side with Democrats on this. Most Americans don't equate government with tyranny, which is after all a ridiculous notion that hews much more closely to anarchy than anything that would fit under the label of "conservatism" in any other country. Most Americans are practical people. They are for things that work, that make their lives better. They're not going to oppose Medicare or Social Security because the programs can be spun into an assault on "economic freedom." What freedom would that be specifically, in real terms? The freedom to be starve or die from treatable diseases when you get old? Some freedoms are best left unrealized.

There are or course many things that can and should be looked at as essential freedoms. Most of those are elucidated in the Constitution. But while specific freedoms are vital, the general concept of "freedom" has been so stretched and abused as to no longer be useful in political discussion. Everything that the government does can be interpreted as an encroachment on someone's freedom. Social Security robs you of your freedom to do what you want with some of your money. Anti-discrimination laws deprive you of your freedom to refuse the business of gay people. Helmet laws deprive you of the freedom to be an idiot and suffer a traumatic brain injury and then pass the hospital expenses on to the rest of us because you exercised your freedom to not have adequate insurance. Drug laws rob you of your freedom to snort cocaine. Sex laws deprive NAMBLA members from the freedom to have sex with children. And on and on.

"Freedom" is simply too large and malleable a concept to have any validity when "broadly understood," to borrow Milton Friedman's term. You have to evaluate each individual thing that can be defined as a freedom on a case-by-case basis. After all, any law will deprive you of some freedom. The real question is what freedoms we need and which we don't.

I'm happy to give up my freedom to snort cocaine, and more than happy to give up my freedom to have that Social Security money right now. I give up that latter freedom because I know that Social Security works. Before Social Security, 50% of seniors lived below the poverty line. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Social_Security_in_the_United_States) Now that we have Social Security, it's 10-15%. (http://kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/poverty-among-seniors-an-updated-analysis-of-national-and-state-level-poverty-rates-under-the-official-and-supplemental-poverty-measures/) Assuming that the goal of Social Security is to get seniors out of poverty, I think we can comfortably say it is effective.

It might work best to leave out the word "freedom," loaded as it is with self-evident righteousness. Instead, focus on pragmatism. In simple terms, the idea is "Do what works." Do what has proven to work within states or in other countries. Put philosophies aside and just look at results.

This might sound obvious, but in most political arguments, pragmatism is nowhere to be found. Most political arguments get stuck in 1) overarching ideologies, 2) competing theories, and/or 3) appeals to morality. These can be perfectly valid reasons to be for or against a government program. But they usually get us liberals nowhere in arguments, can often result in terrible failures. Pragmatism can cut through it all. Let's show how by giving examples in which each of aforementioned three main types of arguments failed.

1. Overarching ideologies

Social Security provides a good example of the problem with ascribing to overarching ideologies. Basically, Social Security is socialism. It's an involuntary redistribution of wealth by the government. Ideological conservatives get very upset about this fact. To which I say, "Maybe it is socialism -- so what? It works." The people who receive Social Security would likely agree with me; seniors, who tend not to be socialists by any stretch of the imagination, on the whole, are very, very, very supportive of Social Security.

Maybe it makes you feel icky to have anything that smacks of socialism in our society. Maybe you feel more stable and satisfied when you can devote yourself to one simple ideology that encompasses everything. I'd argue that those sorts of concerns are a lot less important than whether something works. If something makes millions of lives better at a minimum of pain, then I don't really care about your need for ideological purity.

Ideologies are important, sure. But the world is always more complicated than any ideology can really encapsulate. Capitalism is a great thing, except when it isn't. Socialism is also a great thing, except when it isn't. Again, it's a case-by-case thing.

Some things need to be run by the government, like Social Security. Some things need to be run by the private sector, like most of the economy. I want to make this latter point very clear to my more left-wing ideological readers. Horrible things occur when the central government tries to micromanage the economy. You can see this by looking at what happened in communist nations.

From 1958-1961, Mao Zedong tried to force China to quickly change from an agrarian to an industrial economy, in what was called the Great Leap Forward. He was an ideologue, believing firmly that government control would work best in every aspect of society. It proved to be a horrifically tragic blind spot, as the Great Leap Forward resulted in a massive famine that devastated China. Estimates range from 18-55 million deaths. In the history of the world, only World War I and II can top that level of devastation.

That is not to say that something similar did not happen in the history of almost every communist country. Another example is found in Ukraine in the 1930s. The Russians controlled Ukraine, which was the breadbasket of Europe. Stalin was an ideologue, so he forced Ukranian farms to reform into collectives. As a result, grain production dropped precipitously. Five million Ukranian peasants starved to death. The Russian commissars who were overseeing the project has strict quotas, so they would take away even the seed grain, making future food production impossible.

How do we react to these tragedies? Do we start delving into the philosophical or ideological reasons that communism caused such horrors? In "The Great Big Book of Horrible Things," author Matthew White has a better perspective:

"Never trust anyone who argues against communism on theory. Here we have one of the greatest social experiments in history failing spectacularly, yet instead of using the obvious, scientific proof that we tried communism and it doesn't work, some people want to take the long way around and argue property rights and theories of ownership. They obviously don't care whether communism worked or not; it's the theory of communism that bothers them, and they'd argue against even if it had worked perfectly."

The people Matthew White is ridiculing have a compulsion to frame everything in theory and ideology, to such a ridiculous extent that they have do it with communism, a massive failure that resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people across the globe. Just put all the theory and ideology aside and concentrate on pragmatics: Communism doesn't work. So let's not try it again. Done and done.

Terrible consequences can result from getting stuck in philosophy and forgetting pragmatics. In reaction to the failures of communism, many people became staunch laissez-faire capitalists. Ayn Rand, for example, grew up in Russia and saw how awful communism could be. Then she made the common mistake of saying "Well, if that's wrong, then everything opposite to it must be right." Her single-minded, oversimplified worship of capitalist alpha males formed the foundation of objectivism, which still infects our political system through Paul Ryan and many other capitalist alpha males. (Ironic that they love the philosophy that makes them into gods, eh? If only someone would invent a philosophy in which nerdy liberals were ubermensches, I might have to rethink everything.)

The failure of communism does not mean we should go to opposite extreme and allow no government involvement in the economy. We saw what that did in the Gilded Age of the late 1800s and early 1900s. A few people got incredibly rich, but most people lived in fetid slums and died young. Children worked in factories for 12 hours a day with no hope of ever having a better life. Eventually the system collapsed in on itself, as a gigantic stock market bubble popped and led to the Great Depression. Then people watched farmers being paid to destroy food even though people were starving. It made sense in capitalist terms, as it lowered the supply and thus boosted prices. But in any human sense, it looked like insane cruelty.

An even better example was found in India. The British owned India at the time, and exploited its agricultural capacity to the hilt. Throughout their history, Indians had always stored food to guard against famine. They knew that every so often, the yearly monsoon would be weak, the harvest would very bad, and you have to dig into the food stores to survive. But this was anathema to the Adam Smith devotees among the British upper class. When the market was favorable, they sold the food, ignoring any concerns about future famines.

In fact, Adam Smith didn't even believe famine could result from such conditions. He wrote "Famine has never arisen from any other cause but the violence of government attempting, by improper means, to remedy the inconvenience of dearth." (Again, I'm cribbing this and the rest of the information about the Indian famines from Matthew White's book, which is terrific. If you need one book to teach you world history, his is a good start.) So in other words, only government intervention in the economy causes famine. Markets, when left alone, always make things right.

In 1874, a drought hit northeastern India, just as it always does periodically. The British had made sure there were no sufficient food reserves. The little food that was being produced was so scarce that it jumped in price, becoming too expensive for Indians to buy. Sir Richard Temple, the British official in charge, leapt to the rescue, setting up a system for importing rice from Burma and giving it to the poor. It was a huge success, and famine was averted.

But the British ruling class did not see this as a success; quite the opposite. Temple was severely reprimanded for his actions. "He was scorned all across the ruling class for spending money and meddling in the natural order of things." (White again.) White uses the term "natural order of things" ironically, but the British at the time meant it quite seriously. It is of course not at all a "natural" order of things to anyone who owns a conscience or capacity for empathy that hasn't been clouded by the ideology of Adam Smith-style lassiez-faire capitalism.

Another drought hit India in 1876, and this time Temple didn't repeat his "mistake" of saving lives. Again, scarcity drove food prices beyond the ability of Indians to pay. Prospectors hoarded grain in the hopes of even higher prices. While the Indian people starved, the food they produced was shipped to Europe for sale. It is estimated that anywhere from 5 to 10 million Indians died of starvation.

Did the British capitalists learn from this? Not exactly. They blamed the famine on the weather and then did the same thing when the next drought hit, in 1896. And then they did it again in 1899. An estimated 16 million people died in the the three famines.

There were people in Britain pleading for mercy. But the British ruling class argued that any sort of relief would "encourage a cycle of dependency." Sound familiar? To be fair, the British adherence to lasseiz-faire capitalism went well beyond the patronizing arguments that modern conservatives make against anti-poverty programs.

The viceroy of India, Lord Lytton, stated that "the Indian population 'has a tendency to increase more rapidly than the food it raises from the soil' and that any relief would simply be absorbed in further unrestrained breeding." In other words, these subhuman Indians will only make too many children if you give them food; better to allow millions to starve to death and thus keep the population under control. (Never mind that the old system of storing grain kept the Indian population at a manageable level without frequent multi-million-casualty famines.) Lytton and Temple worked together to enact the Anti-Charitable Contributions Act, which "outlawed any private relief donations that might undercut the price of grain set by the open market." Let's underline that: Feeding starving children became illegal, because it could potentially lower the market price of grain.

Throughout the Gilded Age, unfettered capitalism created a world so out of balance, with so much blatant cruelty, that it gave rise to communism, an extreme form of socialism in which an oligarchic government makes all the decisions regardless of what the people want. (Socialism is different in that it is responsive to the people; socialism requires democracy. That doesn't make it infallible, but it makes it much, much less likely to create famine.) The turn to communism turned out to be a terrible, tragic overreaction. But considering the example of India and many others, you can at least understand the motivation.

The truth is that both extremes of capitalism and socialism are horrible, monstrous ways to run modern economies. Thus all countries use carefully constructed combination of the two, in what economists call "mixed economies." Some arenas are best left to private enterprise while some are best left to government. Selling consumer goods is left to private enterprise while national defense and justice systems are left to government. Few people would argue with that; no one wants the government selling apples and no one wants the police abolished and replaced with private security forces available only to the wealthy. Pretty much everyone who calls him/herself is a "capitalist" or a "socialist" is actually believer in mixed economies.

In the great book "Government is Good," Douglas Amy likens the government's role in the market economy as like that of a referee at a football game. The referee is there to enforce the rules. But in enforcing the rules, he doesn't destroy competition, as many conservatives would have you believe about the economy. The referee actually enables competition to occur. Without the referee and the rules, football would just be "kill the man with the ball." It would be chaos, with even more brutality and carnage than football already has. Everyone would be incapacitated except the biggest and strongest, who would then saunter slowly down the field and win every game in a blowout. Maybe sociopaths would enjoy that more. And maybe sociopaths would enjoy an economy in which might makes right and the powerful have no restrictions from crushing the powerless. I think the rest of us would not want that.

Moreover, laissez-faire capitalism would crush what conservatives always say they love more than anything else: entrepreneurship and competition. Read up on the things that the robber barons of the Gilded Age did to maintain their monopolies and crowd out any up-and-comers: kickbacks, slush funds, bribes, and lots of other tactics that are now illegal. Innovation would also grind to a halt; established companies tend not to bring about change nearly as quickly as entrepreneurs do. Monopolies really don't like change; why would they want to do anything that could possibly threaten their monopoly cash cow? If you have a cable company, you have some idea what it's like to deal with a monopoly. You get charged a ton for very little, and if you don't like it, what are you going to do? Not watch baseball?

The role of government as a referee is the best solution, but not because it hews to some overarching ideology. It is best because it works. As I said, it is what all developed nations do. Many third-world nations don't, and they have much lower standards of living, higher mortality rates, etc. etc. When every developed nation does something a certain way, that probably means it works.

2) Competing theories

This one is a sort of a micro version of the previous one. When I say "competing theories," I'm talking about theories about what a particular piece of policy would do. Let's delve straight into an example.

Conservatives say that raising the minimum wage actually hurts the working class because then employers can't afford workers. Then minimum-wage jobs disappear, and people go from being underpaid to not being paid at all.

OK, that's a theory. It makes some basic sense. And it was in fact the dominant theory about minimum wage laws for many years among economists.

But now let's look at the pragmatics. Is this a theory that has been tested in the real world? If so, what were the results?

We have lots of results for this particular theory, because the minimum wage has been raised many times, in the United States and elsewhere. And on the whole, the theory doesn't stand up. Minimum wage increases, as long as they aren't too drastic, do not tend to result in large dips in jobs, minimum-wage or otherwise. In 2013, the Center for Economic Policy and Research did a meta-analysis about the question, and found that minimum wage increases had little or no effect on employment levels (http://cepr.net/documents/publications/min-wage-2013-02.pdf) (Meta-analyses, by the way, are always the way to go to find pragmatic answers to questions. Never believe a single study, which can can come up with just about anything. A meta-analysis takes the results of dozens of studies and shows the general result. It's much, much more reliable.)

Maybe all that is a bit much to fit on a bumper sticker. But the basic dynamic of this argument can work for Democrats. In a debate it would go something like this:

Democrat: No one who is willing to work full-time should ever be under the poverty line. (Editor's note: This is a very good moral argument that convinces you and me. But won't convince many people, as we know from the fact that minimum wage increases are still controversial. Watch our Democratic friend take a new tack later.)

Republican: But minimum-wage increases hurt the people you're trying to help, Democrat! They make it too expensive to have workers. You'll see massive layoffs if you enact such a law!

Democrat: Interesting theory. But has that happened in practice?

Republican: Say what now?

Democrat: The federal minimum wage has been raised 22 times since 1938. Did it ever result in large layoffs nationwide?

Republican: Well, uh ... (A dumb Republican will change the subject here; a smart one might have a few cherry-picked examples of this and that happening in a particular town once.)

Democrat: Your theory, Republican, used to be the main one among economists. But in practice, it's been proven wrong. On the whole, minimum wages do not result in lots of layoffs. There are many theories as to why, which I could get into, but suffice to say: What matters a lot more than a theory is what happens in the real world. And in the real world, minimum wage increases, as long as they're not too drastic and are done right, help the poor, and indeed everying in America willing to work for a living.

See what Democrat did there? She appealed to Joe Sixpack who doesn't give a flying fig about theories. He cares about what happens in real life. Most Democratic positions on the economy are rational ones rooted in what has been shown to happen in real life. They need to push that above all else.

Democrat didn't also get bogged down in why minimum wage increases don't result in mass layoffs. That kind of thing is interesting to you and me, but to most people, it makes their eyes glaze over. Just show the results; they're more powerful than anything else.

With any pragmatic approach, there is a danger that Democrats can come off looking like smarty-pants professors, which tends to annoy people (even if they need it). After all, this is all about teaching people about meta-analyses and examples that they don't know about, because they don't pay close attention to academia and world governments across. But I think if you couch it in terms of "Well, that's a nice theory, but what works in practice?" you can actually cast the Republican as the out-of-touch ivory-tower denizen and make yourself look more in tune with the average Joe who wants results, not theories. (Then you can keep to yourself the knowledge of how important theories are in the whole process.)

3) Appeals to morality

This is going to be insufficient and short, because I've already written much more than I intended here. Really, the main point in all this is the first one, that pragmatism can brush aside all the blind spots that oversimplified philosophies create. But it's also important to lessen the Democratic tendency to argue everything with an appeal to morality.

This will be a tough habit to break. Perhaps contrary to stereotype, we liberals tend to be very morally minded people. Specifically, we always think of everything in terms of "rights." Again from my beloved Matthew White:

"The Civil War was a battle between two competing visions of America -- one defined by nationality (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants) against one defined by ideology (all men are created equal). This is probably the central conflict of American history ... the Fourteenth Amendment made the states subordinate to the federal government on matters of human rights for the first time, an ideological victory that has annoyed conservatives for a century and a half."

We liberals genuinely believe that the United States is based on the principle of "All men are created equal." It is the moral center of everything else in this country. Conservatives, though, tend to believe in it only when it benefits their tribe. The people they know personally and identify with are America. Everybody else who lives in this country are scary and threatening.

This mindset doesn't make conservatives evil. But it does make them disappointingly just like every other group of people who have ever lived on this planet. Pretty much every other country was founded on an idea much less lofty than "All men are created equal." Instead it was always something more like "Let's all band together so we do better than those assholes over there." It's an instinct firmly rooted in our species' DNA, but that doesn't make it right. The founding fathers discovered something much better in "All men are created equal."

Our genuinely principled perspective leads to put everything in terms of "rights." For example, people would often talk about all people's "right" to adequate health care, regardless of wealth. While I believe that's true, it's not an effective argument to conservatives. Much the way everything can be couched in terms of "freedom," everything can be couched in terms of "rights." It is a very valid concept for many things. But it has been beaten to death from overuse.

Other moral arguments would talk about people in general, and how they suffer from the terrible health care system. That's not good enough to convince conservatives; they'll just think you're talking about minorities and won't care. Instead, bring it to the people in their tribe. Say, "Ever seen those flyers at the gas station asking for money for someone who was diagnosed with cancer? Ever known someone who stayed away from the hospital until the last minute because he/she couldn't afford it, and by then it was too late? Know anyone who can't get insurance because of a 'pre-existing condition'? How horrible is that concept, by the way? It means the people who need insurance most can't get it. Can you name any other product that you can't get if you need it too much? How about a world where none of this crap never happens again?"

I suppose in this one, you have to get into the weeds a little, just people know what you're talking about. With a minimum-wage hike, it's all there in the name. With health care reform, people often didn't know what exactly the problem was.

It might seem crazy to those of us immersed in these issues, but lot of people never saw or understood the need for health care reform. So we should have showed them the need in visceral, heartstring-tugging terms. Conservatives effectively exploited fear by making up lies about death panels; liberals need to learn how to use both hope and fear.

During the health care debate, I wanted to see more ads profiling some "Real American" who was dying of a preventable disease and couldn't afford treatment. Make sure it's clearly a member of their tribe (i.e., white, rural), someone who worked hard and never did anything that could have led to the sickness. Maybe it could be someone who had insurance through their work, but that insurance had a cap or for some other reason stopping paying. Let that person tell their story to the camera and prove how easily it could happen to you or your loved one, viewer.

Then talk about how the United States spends more on health care, but gets worse results, than any other developed nation. In my experience, this fact tends to get people to stop and think. Obviously, these sorts of problems have been solved in other countries. This is all the old advertising tactic of "Present the problem, then offer the solution." It's old tactic because it works.

I really, really wanted Democrats to push this perspective more during the health care debate: All you have to do is look around the globe and see what has worked elsewhere. And what has worked is either single-payer (i.e., "Medicare for all," which is a phrase I love because it hooks in the seniors), or non-profit health insurance companies, or something, anything besides leaving it to the capitalist markets. Like many things, from roads to national defense, health insurance does not work as a consumer good on a marketplace. I say, be blatant about the pragmatics behind it all: that some things are best left to capitalism, and some things, like health insurance, are done best by governments. Don't be afraid to say that governments can actually do things well; yes, we know everyone will scoff at first, having been immersed in knee-jerk anti-government crap since Reagan. But give them enough concrete examples and they might start to listen. Say, "You know those people who object to the idea of socialized medicine because "it's socialism"? They usually think the same about Social Security. And you like Social Security, no?"

I was a Hillary Clinton supporter, but I didn't agree with her on everything. I got especially frustrated when she responded to Bernie Sanders's description of health care works in Denmark by saying "We're not Denmark." What the hell is that supposed to mean? How are we so different from Denmark that we can't copy what works there? Are we a different species with different diseases? Are all Danish doctors volunteers or something? Of course there are challenges in adapting a policy from a small country to a large one. But I don't know of anything so fundamentally different about our nation that forces us to invent everything from whole cloth.

Anyway, all this is a first draft of a lot of ideas that have been kicking around my head for a while. Please offer any constructive criticism.

Americans Are Spoiled By Government

See if you agree with me on this. Americans a bunch of spoiled brats. They're spoiled by our government. 

I'm not talking about Congress, which is a disaster. Congress is not the same as government; if government were a corporation (a comparison that is usually invalid, but let's just use it this once) Congress would be the policy committee. The President would be the CEO, who still has a lot of influence in broad strokes. But much the same way you wouldn't hate all Ford cars because you don't like the CEO, you shouldn't hate all government if you don't like the President. 

I'm talking about government: the millions of government employees who make sure our water and food doesn't kill us, who protect us both within the country and from foreign threats, who teach our children, etc., etc. I'm even talking about those dreaded bureaucrats who might do things too slowly and inefficiently for your schedule, but still get done many important things that you don't notice or appreciate. People don't conceive of a world where these things don't occur, because they've never experienced it. 

They would experience it if they visited a third-world country. There they would see what small government really looks like. You have very few protections in life. Economies are small and local because you don't buy from people you don't know and trust. Trade is minimal. Living standards are low. Education is only for the wealthy.

Every developed nation has a large government, most much larger than ours, proportionally speaking. Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries -- basically every country with a high standard of living and high rankings in every measure of success also has much higher taxes than the United States. And that's despite the fact that we have the largest military in the world by far, bigger and more expensive than the next eight militaries combined.

Government can of course get too big and try to control too many things, as it has in Cuba and Venezuela. There are many areas of the economy that government should not get involved in. Governments setting prices for goods, for example, is a terrible idea. Communism always results in massive tragedies that kill millions. It should never be attempted again.

But there are still many things that the government does better than the private sector. Obviously, government is better at things like justice systems and national defense and roads. I'd also argue that they're better at health insurance; countries that have national health insurance, essentially Medicare for all, have cheaper health care with better outcomes than does the United States.

I think a central problem with the United States is our excessive, knee-jerk distrust of government. Skepticism is good; you have to keep government accountable. But cynicism is bad. Cynicism of government underlies the entire Republican party, and we're seeing it in stark terms with Trump's cabinet picks. 

If these people succeed in dismantling the departments they have been picked to "lead," we'll gain first-hand experience of what it's like to be in a third-world country. It will unleash a lot of terrible things you never thought could happen here. Every month will see something like the 2008 financial collapse or the BP oil spill, both of which resulted from deregulation and/or lax enforcement of regulations. Then once again everyone will switch from "Why won't government get out of our lives?!" to "Why won't government fix our lives?!"

Of course, then that will only reinforce the cynicism of government, and the spiral will continue. That's the Republican game: Say government doesn't work, and then get elected and prove it. We only break the spiral when we all learn about and appreciate all that government does and can do.

Anyway, this is mostly a rehashing of "Government is Good," by Douglas Amy, which I highly recommend. Please read it.

Hometown Heroes Ballot

Please Stop Talking to Me -- I Just Want to Buy This and Go

I am a pretty socially awkward person. I'm an introvert, I'm shy, I'm terrible at small talk -- after I know someone well, it gets a lot better, but until then, I'm pretty lost. It's not necessarily how I want to be, but I doubt I'm going to change at this point. This means it's getting increasingly unpleasant to just go to a store and buy stuff.

Every time I go to a cashier nowadays, I get a whole lot of chatter. I don't know if this is a recent phenomenon, but it sure seems like it. Granted, this is a totally first-world problem, if even that. It's never a horrible experience for me. But it does seem like an unnecessary chore. I never know what to say. And then when I do say something, I often say something kinda lame, and on the way home I kick myself a little about it.

Maybe most people love to chat with cashiers. After all, most people are extroverts -- around 75% of the population. But for the 25% of us who are introverts, it's not easy.

There are degrees. When it's a cashier at some mom-and-pop store, it's not so bad. You get the feeling that this is just a chatty person. But when it's a cashier at a big chain, I always assume that this is a sort of store mandate -- that they are forced by corporate dictum to chat up everyone who comes in, because extensive research has revealed that, subsequent to the requisite jibber-jabber, customers will see this local franchise #1432398-3 of Megalofoods as their down-home, aw-shucks meetin' hole. Then they'll bring all their young'uns and grandpappies and have a good ol' time, which will then provide sufficient cash outflow for Megalofoods to purchase the Amazon River and drain it of endangered tree frogs to sell as "beef substitute."

Is that paranoid? Maybe a little bit. But you can't deny that sometimes it is explicitly store-mandated chatter: specifically, when they try to sell you the store credit card or club membership or whatever. I always say "no thank you." I don't want a commitment here. I just want a freaking donut.

This probably goes back to my near-pathological aversion to salespeople. Which in turn might go back to my childhood fear of ventriloquist dummies. You might not see where I'm going with this.

When I was a kid, ventriloquist dummies seemed human but they weren't. I just wasn't sure, and felt like that dummy sitting in the corner of the room could spring to life at any moment. Meanwhile, salespeople are talking to me like they're regular humans -- but they're not, they're salespeople. They're relating to you only because they want something out of you. It's all fake -- fake niceness, fake concern, fake everything, just to manipulate you into giving up more of your money.

I'm sorry, that's a terrible thing to say. It's just how talking with salespeople makes me feel. On the other hand, what I know, intellectually, is that sales is a really tough job that a lot of people need to do to keep any economy afloat. I certainly couldn't do it, not for a day, so I have an admiration for those who can.

A distant admiration, that is. I still have this deep-seated repulsion when I'm in the situation, a repulsion that I do feel guilty about later. I saw a documentary once about a parking lot (I am an exciting guy), in which the workers talked about how people always treated them like crap, refusing to look at them, throwing money at them, arguing with them about the rules -- basically treating them like inferiors.

I don't want to be like that. I want to treat everyone with respect. But I'm also not comfortable enough talking to strangers, and especially not potential salespeople, to go along with the chatter. When I go to buy something I answer all questions briefly and directly and say "thank you" at the end. But I make almost no eye contact and I don't smile. I am capable of doing so, but I'm so devoted to avoiding small talk that I'm willing to make myself seem like a dorky, semi-autistic weirdo.

Some cashiers take the hint. The ones at many big chains don't, perhaps because they aren't allowed to. The worst are at Potbelly Sandwiches, Barnes and Noble, and Trader Joe's. I gave up going to Potbelly because I got so exhausted with the small talk. I rarely go to Barnes and Noble any more -- Amazon.com keeps looking better and better each time the Barnes and Noble cashiers try to push a Nook or a membership on me.

I have to go to Trader Joe's because they're the only place with $3 bottles of wine. But I always buy around two cases of alcohol so I don't have to go again for a long time. (Which then means that cashiers always say either "Wow, I want to come to your house! Ha ha ha" or "You having a party?," to which I always want to say "No, this is just for me, tonight. I'm trying to drink myself to death.")

I'm probably sounding like a jerk at this point, and I certainly don't want to. I don't think I am a jerk --I'm just a severe introvert. There's a big difference. Jerks look down on people. Introverts are afraid of them. Extroverts don't usually try to understand this distinction, so we introverts are usually seen as aloof at best and assholes at worst. But we're really not terrible people. We just are not comfortable talking to you unless we know you.

So cashiers of the world, when someone shuffles up to you, eyes averted and frowning, please, please, take the hint and don't talk to him about the weather. Don't talk about how much you love whatever he's buying. Don't try to push whatever you've been told to push on him. Just let him pay and go. Otherwise, you're going to be scaring even more people towards Internet shopping. If only $3 bottles of wine were available at Amazon ...

The Ten Commandments: A Critique

Like many kids, I had to memorize the Ten Commandments. When you're a kid, you just kind of just accept them as written. God said them, and adults say that God said them, so that means they are definitely right.

I think this childhood indoctrination is why most of us still assume they're a set of pretty reasonable rules. Conservatives take it farther, saying they're the foundation of our government. Which is of course a load of crap: Only a few of the Ten Commandments are even laws anywhere in the United States, much less foundational ones. None are in the Constitution, for example, and some Commandments are directly contradicted by constitutional amendments. (I'm thinking of freedom of religion specifically -- that is not an idea God tends to be big on.) I guarantee I can find one essay by John Locke that has more constitutional principles than are in the whole Old Testament.

But anyway, the Ten Commandments are not only irrelevant to the U.S. Constitution -- some of them are pretty darn ridiculous. Now that we're all grown-ups, with internal senses of morality and abilities to engage in critical thinking and stuff like that, we can take a closer look at the Ten Commandments. Let's go through them one by one.

1. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.

I'm not crazy about the fact that this one starts us off. But I'm not surprised, because this is pretty much the whole thrust of the Old Testament. As Bill Maher has noted, God usually comes across as a very insecure abusive boyfriend. Usually all he says is some variation on "Love me or else." "Love me or you'll all be flooded." "Love me or your city will be burned by the Babylonians." God's main way to gain power and influence is by making mortal threats. He's basically a Bond villain.

Sometimes you get a different spin on it. Sometimes it's more like "Prove that you love me by killing your only son." That's some pretty damn twisted stuff. That's beyond Bond villains -- that's more in the realm of a Hannibal Lecter.

At least this Commandment softens the message, putting in the terms of a neurotic mother laying a guilt trip on you. "You know, I did rescue you from slavery. So maybe you should find some time in your busy schedule to sacrifice a calf for me now and again?"

2. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Yeah, God, we heard you the first time. Worship only you -- got it loud and clear. I realize that you're hopelessly insecure -- or in your terms, "jealous" -- but all you're doing here is giving more detail about how we should not have any other gods before you, which you covered in the first one. It's like if I said "Rule number 1: Don't eat my food. Rule number 2: Don't pick up my food, bite it, chew it, swallow it, pass it through your esophagus, digest it, and eventually poop it out. If you do, holy cow I will beat you up and every innocent person who is related to you."

And moreover, God, you've only got ten commandments here, and you just blew the second one with what is essentially a footnote to the first. You realize there are lots of terrible things people can do, right? Like rape? And slavery? You will find room for rape and slavery, right? OK, sorry, I shouldn't judge too early. Let's keep going.

3. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Huh. Okay -- again, you only have ten of these. Now you're devoting a whole Commandment to making people say "goshdarnit" instead of "goddammit." I hate to be an armchair quarterback here, but is this really such a huge problem? In my experience, people who neglect to use their turn signals cause more death and destruction than people saying "God!"

Wait, is this just a footnote to the footnote of the first one? Is this still just telling us to love you? Are you going "Number 1: Only me! Number 2: Seriously, only me! No whittling driftwood into statues of Zeus or I'll totally kick your ass! Number 3: Seriously! Don't even say my name with a crappy attitude!" (I think I stole that one from Bill Maher too, by the way.)

4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy

Well, hell, this is actually a pretty good one. Here you're enacting a pretty decent labor law: Once a week, everyone gets a day off. I'm with you 100%. Good work.

However, I must say, if I were editing the Bible, I'd replace the long and boring list of applicable people with just the word "everybody." But I realize that's just splitting hairs. Or who knows, maybe people 4000 years ago needed a list like this. Maybe they were like "OK, yeah, I get to rest, but what about my livestock -- can they go plow the fields by themselves on Sundays? If I trap a sojourner within my gates, can he do my dishes?"

5. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

OK, that's pretty damn vague. I don't know if it's the translation's fault or what, but I have no idea what it's supposed to mean to "honor" your parents. Does it mean to throw them a banquet? Should I give them each a Golden Globe? Or will last-minute, half-assed birthday presents and monthly awkward phone conversations suffice?

As a kid, of course, we were told that it means to do whatever your parents say. But adults tended to turn everything into that message. And when you become a grown-up yourself, you're kind of supposed to break free from your parents and live according to your own conscience. Imagine if you did everything your dad told you to throughout your whole life. You would do nothing all day but buy insurance and do preventative car maintenance.

6. You shall not murder.

Whoa. I take everything back. Color me impressed, God -- that is one hell of a Commandment. Now you're talking! Obviously, God, you took my previous notes to heart. Here you use one of your commandments to disallow one of the worst things human beings can do. You said in clear language, with no ambiguity. It was even concise -- I don't see a long list of people and animals and sojourners that you shouldn't kill. Bravo. Let's have more like these.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

Pow! Another direct hit. I must say, God, you have improved by leaps and bounds at this commandment-writing thing. I'm giving you a Gold Star. If you get twenty Gold Stars by the end of the term, you'll get a bar of soap in the shape of Zoroaster - kidding! Ha ha ha, you have a sense of humor, right, God? Right, God? God?

8. You shall not steal.

Another good one. Stealing is definitely bad. Although, I must say, I'm watching the clock, and we only have two left now, and stealing is ... well, it depends on the amount, I suppose, but most kinds of stealing are more in the misdemeanor category. And I feel like you should really devote your limited space to felonies ... rape comes to mind, and we still have a few crimes against humanity uncovered, like slavery, for example. Just saying. I'm not saying you're on the wrong track -- just hoping to shift your trajectory a bit. Sorry. Go on, you're still on a roll.

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Yeah, see, this is what I was just talking about. Lying is bad, absolutely. No argument here. But I'm getting the feeling that you're running out of bad things you can think up. Like, you're thinking "OK, covered murder, adultery, stealing ... what else is bad? Well, my neighbor did lie to me about what his dog did in my lawn, and that was really irritating. Let's roll with that."

Also, while I've been applauding your recent turn toward conciseness, God, in this case you could actually use a lot more detail. You could give examples of the really bad forms of lying -- perjury, mail fraud, etc. -- and then say something like "But if you get a last-minute, half-assed gift from your kid, you don't have to be honest: Just say you like it. There are shades of gray here, people."

10. You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.

Jesus Christ, God. Now you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel. We're not even supposed to secretly want things now? Was this one thrown in just to make for an even ten?

But that can't be it, because there are so many other things you could have gone for with this one! I don't feel like I could have mentioned rape and slavery more often, but now the list is over, and they weren't in there even in passing!

Sigh ... OK, well, all told, it could be worse list of commandments. I've seen worse. You got at least three and maybe four great ones in there. The rest are pretty dumb, but at least they don't explicitly legalize terrible things (for instance, there's nothing saying "Slavery is awesome! Rape you all want!") There was the long tangent of "love me or else" which bled into three commandments, and you missed some major, major sins. All in all, I give it a C-minus.

Try to apply yourself more next time, and for Christ's sake, no more of the "love me or else" crap. You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Ask your son -- he knows what I'm talking about. (Man, don't you wish Jesus had written the Ten Commandments? Moreover, don't you wish someone had misplaced the Old Testament in a cave somewhere? I guess for Jesus's whole messiah thing to work you had to have the backstory of this God character who is his father and foreshadowed his arrival and all that. Still, I think of the Old Testament like I think of the Star Wars prequels: There are a few good scenes here and there, but it's mostly terrible and just destroys the series as a whole. Anyway, now I'm off on a tangent! God, you're rubbing off on me in the worst way! Oh, that God!)

Mourning the Loss of Java Train

When my family and I moved to this area more than two years ago, we were especially excited to be in a neighborhood in which you could walk to all sorts of great places. Chief among them was Java Train.

Java Train is the kind of place that should be in every residential, family-oriented neighborhood, but I've never seen in any before or since. It has an indoor play area in the shape of a train, complete with an electric train around the top that (occasionally) runs. It has an outdoor play area with a sandbox and a sort of spaceship structure. It has a long row of gumball machines offering everything from candy to rubber balls. It has a row of around a dozen great ice cream flavors, ready to be scooped out for kids. It had a terrific kids' menu of Italian dunkers, chicken fingers, etc.

And it can cater to the parents' every wish too. It has great coffee confections of many varieties -- everything from turtle mochas to chai. It has a solid menu, including genuinely top-notch pizza. It has some idyllic outdoor seating and a lovely, understated interior. And it even has beer and wine!

I've lived a lot of places and been in thousands of restaurants, and I've never seen any other place that has everything a young family could possibly want, the way that Java Train has. Or rather, "had."

This one-of-a-kind, perfect neighborhood spot will be gone soon. In its place, apparently, will be a generic bar and grill, a Champps knock-off (because where else could you possibly find one of those)? The indoor train has already been replaced by a TV locked to a sports channel (original!), with more devastation to come.

I admit, I don't know the whole story. Maybe there's a greater profit margin in cranking out generic food and beer than there is in being a fantasyland for toddlers. Maybe they've done some extensive research that supports this decision.

From where I stand, though, it doesn't even make business sense. My neighborhood is rapidly changing, into one filled with young families. Two of my neighbors are expecting. Even if Java Train isn't making money hand over fist now, it certainly could be soon.

But I can't really know that for sure. All I know is that this decision destroys the place that my two-year-old daughter and I love to walk to to at least twice a week. It shoots down the future I envisioned in this neighborhood, one in which my daughter and possibly future children would grow to adulthood running over to Java Train for muffins, ice cream, and a lot of fun.

I don't mean to be melodramatic. The neighborhood is hardly ruined. We still can walk to both Como Zoo and the fairgrounds, and Coffee Grounds up the street has buckets of toys, having apparently decided that young families are not undesirable.

But I can't help but feel like something has been robbed from me and my family. And I can't help but hope that Boilerplate Bar and Grill, or whatever it will be called, will fail miserably. Maybe then, someone else will take over and bring back the greatest neighborhood restaurant I've ever seen.

Things to Like About America

It's well-known that we Americans don't like to acknowledge that other countries exist, unless, of course, we decide to bomb them. The thing is, looking at other countries can be depressing (especially the bombed ones). Some are much worse off than us, starving and dying and such, and that makes us feel bad, for a minute or so. One mention of Darfur on the radio and you almost feel guilty for speeding your SUV down to the Consume-o-mart to buy your hundredth pair of shoes made by Chinese child laborers. Almost.

And fellow developed countries don't help. They may not be as rich or powerful as us, but somehow, without even letting us know, they sneakily end up solving a lot of the problems that still plague us. No one in England is worrying too much about the abortion issue. There's no health-care crisis in France. And Finland is so wealthy, successful and crime-free that the Finnish have nothing to be sad about at all, which apparently makes them very depressed. Poor guys.

But there are a few things that should make any American's chest swell and heart pump blood colored red, white and blue. There are a few things that make even liberal America-hating baby-eaters like myself shed a joyful tear in the shape of an eagle. Yes, Virginia, there are a few things that the good ol' U.S. of A. does better than all the Finlands and Belgiums and Central African Republics combined. And they are:

1. BATHROOM AMENITIES: OK, apparently Japan does these well. But every other foreign country I've been to had shit for bathrooms. Literally -- every single one had toilets, sinks, and showers made entirely out of shit. When you had to do your business, you'd do it and then carefully mold it so that it fit into the other furnishings. Word to the wise foreign traveler: Always bring lots of plastic gloves. And a kiln wouldn't hurt.

Actually, what you typically get in foreign countries is no hot water. And showers aren't showers so much as they're detachable spigots connected to a tub by a hose about two feet long. So if you like your showers lying down, in cold water, you my friend, are in for a treat.

Toilets aren't much better. Overseas you get a lot of the "eternal flush" thing where the toilet slowly fills up with water for days. How does it keep filling up, but never get full, you wonder? (And then your mind EXPLODES.) There's something quietly sinister and otherworldly about the eternal flush. It's like an axe murderer who's coming at you so slowly that even if you're staring at him you can't see him move. Or maybe not.

2) TELEVISION: If you're lucky enough to get cable in a European country, you know how many channels you get? Twelve! Wow! That's enough to fill, five, maybe ten minutes per day! Meanwhile, in America, even homeless people have digital cable boxes with 5,000 channels each. I'm no math whiz, but I'm pretty sure than 5,000 is about a million times larger than 12.

Now I hear you literati already. "More TV is a good thing?!?" you scoff, nearly spilling your cabernet all over your Harold Pinter fan club T-shirt. "Hasn't television already destroyed American discourse?" To that I say, "No, and you know why? Because you are a poophead. Heh, heh, heh. Heh, heh, heh. Poop."

Seriously, though, have you checked out TV recently? It's not wall-to-wall "Three's Company" reruns like in the old days. My cable has two, count 'em two, PBSes. I also have the Discovery Channel, Discovery Health, Discovery Times, Discovery Science, Discovery Philology, Discovery Kazakh Poetry, and a whole channel devoted to nothing but video footage of Bunsen burners. There is a wonderful network called History International, which is just like the History Channel except its shows actually involve history.

Sure, 80% of TV is crap. But 80% of everything is crap. Ever been to a bookstore? Yeah, you can still find Dostoyevsky, but you have to go past several acres of books about how to lose weight by eating only olives, paella, geflite fish and liquid smoke.

And you know what else? You can't blame television for dumbing down America, because America was always as stupid as it is now. You might not remember clearly, because your memories are sugar-coated, but there was no time in history when discourse was actually elevated. Life in the '50s was not all Edward R. Murrow slowly and gray-ly discussing foreign policy with Adlai Stevenson. Most people switched away from that and watched boxers beat the crap out of each other for fun.

But then, as now, there were pockets of smarties smart-ing it up, and God bless 'em. They're always there to work and strive and harangue and every so often, their messages break through to the dummies watching boxing or Ultimate Fighting or what have you. Then the world changes, usually for the better. TV is simply the messenger letting the sheltered smarties know how the rest of America lives. Don't shoot it.

Man, I've gone far afield of my point. My point was that America does TV great and big and bold, and we should be proud of that. And, uh, we got the bathroom thing going for us too. We don't do endings of blog posts well though. At least, I don't.