First: Every year, without fail, someone posts a guide about how to talk to your nutjob uncle about Trump on Thanksgiving. Here’s my guide: don’t. Make it a rule to not talk politics or religion at the dinner table. There are plenty of other topics, especially if it’s a family gathering. Is it only a Dakota/small town thing that most family gatherings mainly involve talk about family and friends? My parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles could talk for hours about former neighbors, what distant nephews and nieces are doing, etc.
And, if Uncle Joe won’t shut up about politics, disinvite him and tell poor Aunt Sara that he’s run off to Fire Lake.
Second: Erin Ryan is absolutely fucking right about this:
Betty
I hope big media takes this advice to heart. Sounds right to me.
JaySinWA
Is that around Fire Island?
mrmoshpotato
@JaySinWA: The scammers are retrying the Fire Festival on Fire Lake. Accomodations will be blow-up rafts and pool noodles duct taped together this time.
Queens Lurker
Couldn’t agree with you more about the family advice. My parents are wingnuts and while I strongly believe they are on sane side of the Q-fence, I don’t actually know because we never, ever talk about politics any more for years now (dating back to pre-Trump). Not spirited debates, not little jokes, not any haha-gotcha discussion ever. And I couldn’t be happier about it.
If we could handle those conversations without hurting feelings, I’d be ok with that, but we can’t, so we don’t. There are more important things.
Omnes Omnibus
No one remembers Bob Seger?
narya
I come from a family of lefties (89/83 year old parents phone-banked for the last two Democrats to run for president), so not an issue for me. What I’ve taken to doing, though, is asking about their childhood. I still learn new things.
JaySinWA
But of course the folks hanging out at the cafe are conveniently free to talk and are all rounded up in one place. One stop shopping, with easy access. You wouldn’t want to have these reporters overwork themselves, would you?
Snark aside, I’m not sure how you would do an interview with locals at a sporting event. Libraries maybe, in the right context, but not obvious to me.
misterpuff
Small Town Daytime Diner Denizens (recollections from childhood fifty years ago) : Mostly Small businessmen, disabled vets or retirees. Small town businessmen (The Boss) always have time to go yak. Wage earners are at work, tending the store, running the farm or wage slaving in offices. So as I observed during my summers helping my small business grandfather (the only time I could observe this since I spent the remainder of my days studying or working during normal office hours) basically only Repugs and MAGAts get to spend time ‘shootin the sh*t”
Miss Bianca
“Fire Lake” is my favorite Bob Seger song. Yes, you are actually obligated to have a favorite Bob Seger song if you’re from SE Michigan.
Well, actually “Two Plus Two” is my favorite Bob Seger song, “Fire Lake” is actually my second fave.
NotMax
Talking about family amongst my family is more divisive than just about any other topic and is to be avoided in the interests of both mental and blood pressure health.
Jay
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/russia-troll-2020-election-interference-twitter-916482/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Kamala.Harris.2020
Actually, in some instances, the angry racist hillbilly narrative is accurate.
https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results/states/west-virginia
Sure, you could go to WV and seek out the pockets of liberalism – they do exist. But that woudn’t be accurate.
Butch
@Queens Lurker: I spent years around family repeating “I don’t talk politics” like it was the only English sentence I knew. It eventually worked.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: “Like a Rock”
Chief Oshkosh
For the first time in a long, long time, we’ve got right-wing relatives coming in for Thanksgiving. Possibly not surprising, they invited themselves.
jeffreyw
@JaySinWA: Too bad the Dog died in the fire.
//
hitchhiker
@Miss Bianca:
I’m from Northwest Michigan, and we def had a favorite Bob Seger song.
I had two .. Against the Wind and Mainstreet.
Ruckus
@Betty:
Big media has no heart, only a place to put the money. Hoping they find one never works because they are incapable.
Jeffro
I will only be seeing Airquote Libertarian* RWNJ bro this thanksgiving, not KoolAid Mainlining RWNJ dad this Thanksgiving, so I don’t have to worry about any arguments…he already knows I’m right and have been for four years running
*thinking of changing this to Ostrich RWNJ bro since his reaction to all of trumpov & co’s ongoing crime spree has been to keep his head in the sand about basically everything
I’ll be interested to see if my mom has chilled out on her new theme of “human traffickers are everywhere!” She really needs to get off of FB once in a while
NotMax
@Chief Oshkosh
Seat them at the quid’s table.
:)
Jay
spudgun
@Queens Lurker: This. My parents are also RWNJs who constantly watch OAN, Fox News and listen to Hannity on the radio, and there’s simply no changing their minds without lots of really angry shouting and slammed doors and not speaking for months. But my family is kind of all I have right now, so “disowning” them is out of the question.
We have finally reached a bit of detente where whenever I show up for any gathering, the TV gets switched to Animal Planet or NatGeo and the discussions remain very bland and non-confrontational (and obvs pet/animal-based).
Aleta
An outfit in CA is advertising a powdered gravy mixture that they say contains fast acting C B D, offered for dinners that will include belligerent T-supporters.
donnah
Fortunately, politics at our Thanksgiving dinner seldom come up. In the past, I’ve just used my sweet voice to remind them that politics will spoil the meal and we all want to remain friends. Nobody has gone against those wishes so far.
I teach workshops all over the country and that’s another place where politics can ruin the atmosphere. While it seldom crops up, I do step in when it does and remind everyone that in my class, there is no talk of politics or religion. That being said, there are a couple of groups where I know that we’re all politically aligned, and then we cut loose.
Jeffro
Btw did anyone else see Robert Samuelson’s op-ed in the Post today, blaming…workaholics…for income and wealth inequality?
Yes, really.
Santa, the only thing on my Christmas list this year is progressive income tax rates so steep, even Elizabeth Warren goes, “whoa, WHOA there, Jeffro”.
Omnes Omnibus
My family holidays have not had right wing people in over 20 years. Even when we did, it was at my parents’ house and my parents’ views were known and the rightie knew not to bring up politics.
mrmoshpotato
@Omnes Omnibus: Are you trying to say today’s music ain’t got the same soul?
Kay
This is a good post, mistermix and true, I think. It never occurred to me that there was a kind of selection bias in where they’re finding these people.
I don’t know if this is true across the board but I hear a lot less about Trump than I did about other GOP Presidents in this very Republican small town. No one ever brings him up. I assume they’ll all vote for him again but no one is bragging about him. I contrast with Bush II who they really did love. They would vouch for him in a way- “he’s a good man”. None of that with Trump. No testimonials to his goodness.
jeffreyw
I will duck all talk of touchy subjects with relatives by avoiding them and eating out at the Chinese buffet.
Ruckus
@spudgun:
I have only one sibling left, everyone else is gone and that one is a very long time member of a science church. For my own sanity (and possibly safety) I have had to cut all ties. All cousins are far flung and we sometimes talk and I’ve seen some of them on occasion but many of them don’t even see each other often. It’s weird because we used to do all the holidays together but all the aunts/uncles are long gone, my mom being the last to go and that’s nearly a decade ago. Our extended family started dying in the 1930s and was a progression from there.
Jay
Possible conversation subject for the dinner table; )
Aleta
Re: the gravy powder
Forbes says the gravy powder contains a % of T H C.
I’m not advocating this, for one reason because T H C interferes with some medications, including bad effects on some people taking antidepressants.
The Forbes article uses the gravy product news to discuss the newer technology to make edi bles faster acting.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/katieshapiro/2019/11/19/have-the-highest-holidays-ever-with-kiva-confections-limited-edition-edibles/
The link below goes to a story in Greenwich Time that mostly quotes the company’s promotional release material for the product.
“The gravy product is made with cutting-edge technology that bypasses edibles’ normally lengthy trip through the liver, instead absorbing into the soft tissue and stomach. This allows the canna bin oids to take effect in a groundbreaking 2 to 15 minutes. Most other companies who have explored fast-acting technology have employed nanotechnology particles to speed up the process. While the nano molecules used in these edibles are small, they are massive compared to the individually-encapsulated molecules used in this approach. Not only are they isolated from other molecules they might interact with, they are small enough to be absorbed directly into the body’s endo can na binoid receptors; one molecule at a time.”
https://www.greenwichtime.com/business/article/Kiva-Confections-Fast-Acting-Cannabis-Infused-14856145.php
I sorta think the company is sending out the gravy story with the ‘relatives coming to dinner’ hook just to promote its edi bles technology.
Strange new world.
Ella in New Mexico
Hubby and I figured out how to avoid the entire “difficult conversations with MAGA Relatives” thing: move 2500 miles away, block them on Facebook, only call them when necessary like their 83rd birthday and get the hell off the phone before you actually hear Fox News blaring in the background.
Oh, and don’t invite them to anything anymore. Only the good relatives get to come to our Thanksgiving.
Jay
Ruckus
@Kay:
Our trumper at work avoids me like the plague. And has for over two years. He loudly celebrated the day after the election. Now even he knows the shithead is a far worse than useless shithead. I live in socal and I take the train all the way across LA to the VA hospital regularly and I see no one with any kind of trump patches/hats/shirts.
AxelFoley
@Miss Bianca:
C’mon, everyone’s favorite Seger song has to be this:
https://youtu.be/G2UVsyVLLcE
spudgun
@Ruckus: Thankfully, my brother and I get along well enough (even though he’s a libertarian!), but yeah, I feel ya, I’m in a similar situation. My aunts and uncles are dead, far-flung cousins that we no longer contact for a variety of reasons…
Which is why I won’t disconnect from my immediate family, even though it is sometimes VERY tempting.
trollhattan
@Aleta:
Did their dart gun not meet FDA approval?
Omnes Omnibus
@AxelFoley: No.
Cacti
Another boomer legacy. Rampant occupational licensing for everything.
Yutsano
MY family is much more conservative than I am. Except my libertarian leaning dad believes in single payer. Humans are weird.
I don’t bother to participate in political conversations with my family. The exception is my sort of libertarian younger brother. And that almost always happens when we’re driving in the car. I don’t know where he gets his news from half the time (as far as I know he’s not a Fox watcher) but he’s said a few things that have made me think he’s on crack or something.
Yutsano
@Cacti: Nah. This isn’t just boomers. This is driving the major strip joint right next to the stadiums out of town. There’s a deliberate target for this law, and that business should be warming up the lawyers.
CliosFanBoy
@Jeffro: well, at least he’s off his usual “cut Social Security” rant. He may be the single more tiresome columnist they have.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Kamala.Harris.2020: Nah, fuck that. These Cletus safaris aren’t representative of the country as a whole, and they’re run disproportionately often given the percentage of the country where they are representative. Even in most ‘red states’, the urban areas are almost always blue; the reason the red states are red is in most cases just a product of lower population density – in other words, because fewer people want to live there.
Dolt 45 has never enjoyed majority support at any time. 2.87 million more people voted for Hillary Clinton than voted for the Occupant, and that’s after all the illegal voter suppression the Republicans enacted. If you factor in all the votes for other candidates besides the two major party candidates (which you should when evaluating things like this, because first-past-the-post is just about the worst electoral system still in wide usage), even more people voted for people beside the president*. He has never, at any point, enjoyed 50% approval. Most of the time, he’s hovered at just barely 40%.
Moreover, they’re all the same. They don’t tell us anything new because they all consist almost entirely of people regurgitating the same right-wing word salad. A safari to a rural town in West Virginia and a safari to a rural town in Alaska would bring about almost identical results.
Radio RwandaRight-wing talk radio and Fox “News” have resulted in the nationalisation of right-wing grievances (which was the last thing we should’ve nationalised, but I digress). A person playing a “West Virginia or Arkansas diner quote?” game would be lucky to get more than 50% right. Moreover, you could swap out quotes now for quotes from three years ago and, apart from references to current events, they’d also be identical. It is, as the Talking Heads song goes, the same as it ever was. (And to quote another song from the same album, “Facts don’t do what I want them to” seems to be representative of a particularly common right-wing grievance.)We already know everything these pieces are going to tell us before they’re actually written, because they’ve already been written a million times before, which leads us to the question of what newspapers are trying to accomplish by trying to run them. It’s not news: “Cheeto Benito supporters continue to support Cheeto Benito” is a “dog bites man” story. And the way they’re written suggests they aren’t intended to unravel the holes in his supporters’ faulty logic or to condemn the fabric of naked racism and misogyny from which his supporters’ worldview is woven. So there has to be some other reason for running them.
These Cletus safaris might be indicative of the way the people in Possomfuck, Arkansas, feel, but they’re not indicative of the country as a whole, and the fact that they are not counterbalanced by an equal number of sojourns into cafés in Birmingham, Atlanta, or Austin to see what disgruntled Hillary voters think pretty much gives the game away. They’re not run to help people like the readers of this blog. They’re being run to advance the worldview that rural America is Real America, and that the more than half of the country’s residents who have never supported this boil on the ass of democracy are not.
The purpose of journalism is to inform people about current events. These pieces are not that. They are regurgitating disinformation without any challenge, in fact, which suggests that they are better described as anti-journalism. And much as antimatter and matter completely annihilate each other when they come into contact, they have no purpose in a legitimate newspaper.
These puff pieces are not interesting, they are not insightful, they are not informative, they are not novel, and they are not journalism. The sooner they cease to be written, the better off we will all be.
(NB: The “clear comment” link ate my original version of this reply, so apologies if parts of it aren’t clear – they might’ve been more clearly laid out in the original. I lost a couple of particularly colourful metaphors that I couldn’t remember on my second go-round, too.)
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Jay: So they want to make sure the dancers have the right kind of character to wag their bottoms in guy’s faces?
chopper
@Aleta:
“you doctors tell us to drink eight glasses of gravy a day”
Sure Lurkalot
Lucky me, the 5 peeps who will be at myThanksgiving dinner are all liberal. The spouse and I will be outnumbered by Wilmerites, but they aren’t fanatics. There are only 2 right wingers in my family. One is my once liberal only brother who’s as gone as gone can be. We have maintained our relationship by never discussing politics. I know some people cannot separate their feelings like this and I totally understand that.
Cacti
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: What makes this law particularly onerous to dancers is that Washington already is one of the least lucrative states for them to work, because WA prohibits alcohol sales in strip clubs.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Jeffro: To be fair, although I doubt Samuelson actually managed to accomplish this (and I’m not in the mood to get out of the boat to check), I think you probably could build a fairly good case that America’s unhealthy work ethic is a contributing factor to wealth inequality. It goes like this: Most other countries are sensible about work and think that working eighty-hour weeks is a sign of clinical insanity. In America, that’s celebrated. But this means that a lot of the most profitable jobs go to people with certifiably insane connections to work, who think that anyone else who doesn’t share the same insanity is lazy or a moocher or a slacker. So you have executives at large companies who think that working eighty-hour weeks is normal behaviour.
In truth, it’s not actually possible to accomplish more than forty hours of work a week, at least for particularly long. If you work longer than forty hours, your productivity goes down, for the most part. People can accomplish fifty-hour sprints for a few weeks, but only a few. After that, moreover, they’ll probably need shorter weeks for a while to recuperate.
But instead, we’ve built a country where a large number of people are just flat-out required to work multiple jobs just to pay their bills, and that’s somehow seen as normal and desirable by large swathes of the population. It is a case where the mentally unwell are dictating norms for the rest of us. The sooner we purge ourselves of this notion, the better off we will be.
The median work week in Germany – mechanised, efficient Germany – is twenty-five hours per week. To be fair, this is a result of adding all weeks of the year together, including vacation weeks. Between paid vacation and paid holidays, most workers get at least thirty-six days off per year, and it’s common for German companies to give workers even more time off than that. (Getting two months off is far from unheard of.) Contrasting Germany’s attitude to work with ours should tell us something.
Now is our workaholism the only reason we’ve got ridiculous levels of income inequality in this country? Clearly not. The #1 reason is rapacious corporations, executives, and politicians. But I don’t think our attitude to work is helping, either. We’ve got this sort of attitude where anyone who doesn’t want to work too much is regarded as morally deficient. In point of fact, I think those of us who value our free time are better mentally adjusted in many respects – it means we value things outside of work and/or money.
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
Aleta
The dinner I’m going to probably won’t have any Rs. But might have some ‘above politics’ types, who always take me by surprise when they offer what they think is a spiritual take, distorted in my view. Sounding like a melted mess of pseudo-Buddhist-Hindu-hot-yogaish reasoning from an overfermented brain.
“I’m not worried about / the present condition / politics / the news / climate/ ”
because
/everything goes through cycles / it’s the universe/
/ climate change and politics are irrelevant since we only have to deal with whatever happens/
Direct quote: “We’ve died before and we’ll do it again.”
Shocks me every time.
I’m not making fun of the actual practices, just of the idea that spiritual practice or “growth” is used as a reason for non-participation. Argh.
Betty Cracker
I used to have a no-politics rule with my wingnut family members. It was always my mom, sister or me who enforced it to keep the peace. The wingnuts would bring politics up, and we’d say, “Remember the rule! No politics!” It worked for a couple of decades.
But the Trump era convinced me that was the wrong approach. I now believe it was a cop-out on our part that let the wingnut relatives’ views fester and become more radical in a vacuum.
My thinking now is that if they have appalling views, they should know people they love and respect are appalled. So I tell them. If that spoils their dinner, they should have less appalling views or shut the fuck up.
justawriter
Part of the problem is the nature of conservatism in the Fox News era. I’ve seen it in discussion groups as well as family interactions. It seems like if wing nuts are not dominating a conversation then they feel they are being ignored. So you can be gloating about the 49s destruction of the Packers and they will feel the need to bring up Kapernick and then they are off into Trumpland diatribe #73B. I have literally been talking about cooking and have had people bring up Trump just because he hasn’t been mentioned ALL DAY. I think it might be the evangelical influence, you know, where “Junior just had 47 bones broken when his brakes failed but God is Great ™ because it could have been worse.” Just substitute Trump for God.
hitchhiker
@(((CassandraLeo))):
I always assumed the purpose of these diner-guy pieces was a sort of penance.
The big publications all got it wrong. They catastrophically missed the intensity of the trump vote (which is really a f*ck you vote), and so in shame and sorrow they continue to make their sad pilgrimages to various shops where bad coffee and good pie is served.
The point of the stories is a sort of self-flagellation: Yes, we ignored you because we assumed you were dumb/few in number/not paying attention. Our most grievous culpa!
different-church-lady
@(((CassandraLeo))): “Work/life balance” = “Your work is your life!” Perfect balance!
Kay
@Ruckus:
“In town” I deal with mostly Republicans- book club, school committee, and at work. The only real conversation I have had about Donald Trump in the past year is a perfectly civil back and forth with an (older) sheriff’s deputy who is vehemently anti-immigration. I disengaged first because IMO he’s unreachable. Dug in. There’s no point arguing about imaginary hordes of Mexicans.
No one else has brought him up in any context, which is odd, because I’m kind of a “public” Democrat- been identified in the local paper and such and there’s always been fairly good natured teasing about
that. They just don’t talk about him at all. It’s almost like it’s shameful. Has that feel. Not polite to bring up.
Roger Moore
@(((CassandraLeo))):
They also think they’re working 80 hours a week because they classify everything they do as work for tax reasons. In reality, they’re having fun and classifying it as work because they occasionally mention a work-related topic during their golf game, fancy dinner, etc.
Citizen Alan
It’s possible that I’m the jerkass uncle in my family on account of my increasingly overt efforts to encourage my niece and younger nephew to leave Mississippi, a stance that causes their mother to stare daggers at me at every family gathering. Of course, since we’ve barely spoken after her tirade to me in support of Brett Kavanaugh (“I think she was just a crazy liar trying to ruin a good Christian man’s career!“), I find I don’t give a shit. My older nephew’s a lost cause — he voted for Shitgibbon because he thought it would be “funny” to see him as President. He also lives free in one of his paternal grandmother’s rental properties and has an easy overpaid job he got through family connections.
different-church-lady
@hitchhiker: It strikes me more like patronization with tacit freak show overtones. The should have Richard Attenborough narrations: “But observe the strange dining rituals of these herd mammals. Biologists have yet to decode the meaning of their mysterious vocalizations….”
Redshift
About the only thing that pisses me off more than advice about how to talk politics to your relatives is advice not to talk politics (which seems to have had a resurgence this year.) Seriously, does no one remember how we got here? It wasn’t that liberals and conservatives decided family gatherings were the right place to argue about politics, it’s that your Fox-watching uncle wouldn’t stop talking about politics, and the options were to suffer in silence and have everyone but him be miserable, or to argue and have everyone be miserable. There’s a reason why “right-wing uncle” is a stereotype and “left-wing aunt” isn’t.
“Just don’t talk politics” is a bothsiderist argument. The problem isn’t “people talking politics” any more than it’s “partisanship” in other contexts. In both cases, it’s right-wing assholes, and it can’t be solved by liberals just deciding to behave differently. (And we’re not all the hosts of our family gatherings who can decide who’s invited.)
Kay
I think you should sit down at the table and offer this for discussion:
“If God made Trump President didn’t God also make Obama President?”
Just get that sorted out. Report back.
Miss Bianca
@Citizen Alan:
Sounds like Trump. Well, you know the old saying: “Shitbirds of a feather flock together.”
Something like that anyway.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Roger Moore: That’s a good point, and by extension, it might be why they think others can work eighty-hour weeks without problems – they don’t think others might actually be working the whole eighty hours. A lot of these CEOs lack empathy anyway, being sociopaths, so they can’t fathom that perhaps others might have different experiences and obstacles.
@hitchhiker: They didn’t even get it entirely wrong, though. Trump lost the election; he just won* the Electoral College (if you count the Republicans’ voter suppression as legitimate).
I don’t know if reading those pieces as self-flagellation fully explains them, though. It would explain a few pieces in isolation, but there’s a large pattern of the media (and the Fuck the Fucking New York Times in particular) acting so afraid of the “liberal media” label that they bend over and become right-wing in response.
@different-church-lady: You jest, and yet that seems to be a commonplace attitude amongst many executives. It is to weep.
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
Roger Moore
@(((CassandraLeo))):
I think the idea that they’re running from the “liberal media” label is a cheap excuse. They’re being driven the direction they are from the top, and ownership is very happy with right wing policies.
Redshift
@Citizen Alan: Luckily, I didn’t even have to encourage my niece to look beyond small-town Louisiana. Despite the fact that my late brother-in-law was a Fox-watcher, and my sister seems to have stayed with it but isn’t fervent about it, she seems to have turned out okay, and is solidly in the Democratic camp.
laura
@?BillinGlendaleCA: oh BillinGlendale – never change! You pillbert like no other.
Steeplejack
Perfectly timed thread! I just got in from an expedition to a trendy butcher shop in trendy McLean to score a standing rib roast for Thanksgiving. Dr. Bro’ Man is on call on T-Day and can’t accompany his family to Rehoboth Beach, so it’s going to be just him and me for dinner.
The place was a madhouse, and when the clerk asked me if I had preordered I thought I was done for. But I asked him if he could scare up a tiny two-rib roast, and he worked some magic behind the scenes. When I got to the register to pay (long line, different clerk), I found that I was the proud new owner of a seven-pound monster. Yikes! I hope Bro’ Man likes prime rib sandwiches. ? Or I might see about dividing it into two halves and freezing one. What we call in the software biz an implementation detail.
Also picked up some fair-trade, artisanal, breeze-blown asparagus that looked good (joke, but it’s that kind of place), and with some mashed potatoes and jus I think we’ll be set. Maybe I’ll do a horseradish sauce. Pie, of course. Pumpkin or mincemeat or both. Will consult with Bro’ Man about those.
It feels good to get that taken care of. Now having a celebratory drink with the housecat as she eats her first dinner. And ready to take a look at the threads.
Miss Bianca
@Steeplejack: First dinner? Does this come before or after Second Breakfasts? : )
Aleta
@(((CassandraLeo))):
“The purpose of journalism is to inform people about current events.”
I hate how many “journalism” and opinion pieces are about the future, offering predictions about what will happen instead of sufficient information. It’s become so pervasive that the effect is of constantly telling people what to think while adrenalizing us to the max.
The people who write and publish those pieces rarely refer back to compare their predictions with what actually happened. Do they not care about the truth enough to do that? It’s not journalism then. Sometimes it’s intentional manipulation; sometimes it’s merely rapid self-promotion focused on quantity instead of responsibility.
I know that publisher employers and demand for profit causes this too. There was an idea for a while that the internet and blogging would be an alternative, but the pressure to self-promote just seemed to get stronger.
The news tilt toward predicting is crazy- making. It’s like the anxious brain.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
What?! Hope he didn’t die.
. . . Just checked the Google. Whew. “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man.” (Warning: implausible stage presentation.)
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Redshift: I think “don’t bring up politics yourself, but provide counterarguments if someone else brings up the subject” is an acceptable rule. I don’t know if I share it, necessarily – though I’m not about to start proselytising at every opportunity I get – but I’m not going to hold it against someone who finds it tiresome to defend their views in exchange after exchange against a hostile audience, particularly if some of those debates are about actual existential matters for them.
I have a few such cases myself. Non-binary gender identity, for instance. I’m at least fortunate to pass as binary and cisgender to people who aren’t clued in, and I’m happy to keep it that way until things improve for us. Most people who meet me have no idea, and I only reveal it to people who are likely not to be judgemental over it. But naturally, I get a bit personally invested in discussions of trans and non-binary rights.
“Autism-spectrum disorder” (I hate that term and typically just use ‘autism’) is another such case. A lot of people who meet me have no idea I’m autistic these days; they may think I’m just shy. I’ve gotten good at mirroring neurotypical body language in most cases (when I’m under periods of high stress, I’m less competent at it), though I still have a way to go where reading it is concerned. Nonverbal communication is a huge issue for us, since our body language isn’t the same as most people’s (or, for that matter, as each other’s). 90% of communication is said to be nonverbal, which, if that’s true, means we’re effectively being misread up to 90% of the time. It’s a small miracle any of us ever learn to communicate at all. Our unemployment and underemployment rates are terrible, and few of us ever achieve self-sufficiency, but not all of these matters are our fault – for instance, communication is a two-way street, and few people seem to possess an understanding of how we communicate, but that’s not our fault! And it shouldn’t be my job to have to educate everyone I meet as to how autistic people communicate – the fact that it’s not widely understood is a case of society as a whole failing a population with a significant mental disorder.
This is, incidentally, a reason I take such personal objection to the traditional self-centring of Western morality: “Treat others how you would like to be treated.” How you would like to be treated isn’t necessarily a universal preference. Some people seek fame; some people would find it a living nightmare. Some people like going out to parties; others like a quiet night in with a book. Some people like monogamy; some people prefer swinging or polyamory. The correct phrasing is “Treat others how they would like to be treated.” The fact that there are so many unstated assumptions in our society that are widely assumed to be universal has caused me severe problems in a number of major areas of my life.
But I get sick of educating everyone about it all the time. It shouldn’t be incumbent upon me every time I get a new job to explain to my supervisor how I communicate and that, for instance, if I come across as angry, the odds are actually 99% that it’s a sign that I’m stressed out and unable to mirror the expected body language. Having to explain the implications of autistic people having atypical body language over and over becomes tiresome. It shouldn’t be the job of marginalised populations to have to defend themselves at every point they’re under attack. That’s where allies need to step in.
So I’m of two minds of this. I get avoiding bringing up politics, particularly in contexts where there’s a great personal stake. But I do agree that we shouldn’t let toxic right-wing ideas go unchallenged, if we possess the energy to argue about it. It’s part of how we got into this mess in the first place. These people have to be reminded as often as possible that their ideas aren’t universal or even in the majority, and that a large number of people think their beliefs are outright immoral. (Which brings me back to “your preferences aren’t universal” again… but I don’t want to sound like a broken record.)
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
Steeplejack
@Miss Bianca:
I love “Two Plus Two”! Probably my favorite Seger song, although I always have to then listen to “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man.” Welded together in memory.
AnotherBruce
I’m from Iowa and I had a favorite Iowa song. “Pretty Vacant”.
Steeplejack
@Jeffro:
“Airquote Libertarians” could be a good band name. At least an album title.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Roger Moore: I meant to imply that throughout both of my replies on the subject, but to be fair, I never stated it outright. Obviously, I agree, though.
The Sulzbergers, at least, are clearly right-wing. I don’t know enough about some of the other major newspaper owners (Bloomberg and Bezos obviously being two exceptions), but I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them were right-wing as well. (Well, there’s Sheldon Adelson, whom I believe I can safely describe as a shanda fur die goyim.)
McClatchy is the one big exception I can think of among the major newspaper companies; their reporting is generally pretty good. The Miami Herald, for instance, was almost single-handedly responsible for Epstein finally facing charges.
@Aleta: Good points, and I agree here as well.
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
TomatoQueen
@Steeplejack: I had a look at that shop’s web page yesterday & was favorably impressed: not too much Wagyu, plenty of hanger & skirt, and some intriguing condiments. Pricey, but McLean would explode at a bargain of any kind. And, they deliver. Horseradish sauce for sure.
pinacacci
Worst Thanksgiving where I bit my tongue SO HARD was the one where the 80-something family friend went off about Obama detonating nukes off the coast of North Carolina because…something…false flag operation to make…something…democrats something something…such nonsense. Other people at the dinner didn’t even remember it when I talked about it later but man I was gobsmacked. Couldn’t say a word because it was so frickin’ ridiculous.
OH yeah, there was an earthquake, lady was blaming Obama instead of probably fracking. Now I remember.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Fairly cries out for some steakhouse-style creamed spinach.
Steeplejack
@Miss Bianca:
The housecat does all of those, plus some extras. She is old (19) and skinny (under six pounds) and can’t seem to eat much at one sitting. But her appetite is still good. So the result is that she likes a little nosh every few hours. And since I’m here most of the time and she’s on the Threadkill Tower Platinum Club concierge plan, it’s not a big deal. Except the occasional 4:00 a.m. one. ??
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Steeplejack: The adjective ‘libertarian’ was actually stolen from anarchists, and I for one would like it back. It was coined by the French anarcho-communist Joseph Déjacque to differentiate his brand of communism from the more market-oriented (though, crucially, not capitalist) mutualist strain originated by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. It was for many years used, and is still used to a large extent outside the United States, as an antonym for authoritarianism; so the phrase libertarian socialism is well understood not merely not to be an oxymoron, but in fact to describe the oldest form of socialism in existence.
However, in the United States, a subset of right-wingers adopted the adjective libertarian for themselves, and for whatever reason, it was allowed to go unchallenged. So now, when people hear libertarian, they think of what is in essence a pot-smoking Republican. The same subset attempted to hijack the adjective anarchist for themselves but fortunately, in that respect, were much less successful.
In any case, most of the self-described “libertarians” in this country are what I would describe as Airquote Libertarians here. If you support a hierarchy where bosses have more or less absolute power over their charges, you are not actually opposing authoritarianism. This country is full of “libertarians” who essentially think it’s a grievous injustice if the government prosecutes you for smoking pot, but that it’s perfectly fine if your employer fires you for it. They simply want to replace one set of rulers for another. In-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, etc.
It’s just another strain of what passes, in this country, for conservatism. Radley Balko, who’s done a colossal amount of invaluable reporting on police brutality and the prison system, is virtually the only one of these people in this country for whom I have any respect.
Anyway, I think they should almost all be described with air quotes. Most of these people aren’t advocating anything that is actually recognisably, in the original sense, libertarian.
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
opiejeanne
Or just serve this with the mashed potatoes: https://www.sunset.com/food-wine/pantry/kiva-cannabis-gravy-thanksgiving
This gravy should take the edge off the crazy uncles and everyone else.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
Ooh, hadn’t thought of that. Might have to reconsider.
NotMax
@NotMax
The timeless Horn & Hardart version.
Roger Moore
@(((CassandraLeo))):
That has problems because not everyone has realistic desires for how they should be treated. Some people expect everyone around them to cater to their every whim, and it isn’t good morality to suggest everyone give them what they want. You somehow need to keep that kind of thing within sensible limits, and your own expectations are a reasonable starting point.
Miss Bianca
@opiejeanne: Heh heh heh, I like it! I’ll have to remember that one if I ever have to endure Thanksgiving again with any of my RWNJ relatives.
“Shut up, Alex, and have some more gravy!”
Miss Bianca
@Steeplejack: Wow, I have a hard time putting “Two Plus Two” and “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” together in my head. Rather, “Two Plus Two” seems to get paired in my head with “Journey to the Center of Your Mind” from the Amboy Dukes – probably because both tunes seem really uncharacteristic of their respective artists’ later oeuvres.
Oh yeah, and probably because both Bob and Ted got played A LOT together on the Detroit rock stations of my youth. Almost as much as Led Zeppelin!
Steeplejack
@Miss Bianca:
“Two Plus Two” and “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” are linked in my brain as “early Seger”—the Bob Seger System—as opposed to his very different later stuff. But, yeah, they each link to other stuff in my brain as well.
NotMax
@NotMax
Nota bene: To make it more steakhousey, add a scant pinch of nutmeg.
Kay
@pinacacci:
I was at a local charity fundraising dinner during Obama’s first term where the GOP state senator who was the emcee made a Muslim joke about Obama that made everyone either uncomfortable or if they were at my table, mad. He then compounded it by turning to the band behind him – from Chicago, all AA, and trying to shake the band leaders hand, you know, because they’re the only black people in the room so naturally they have to validate his stupid racist joke and save his sorry ass, and the band leader wouldn’t shake his hand. Just stared at him. So sometimes you don’t have to say anything at all.
Steeplejack
@TomatoQueen:
I got a good impression too. It was my first time there, but I had previously researched it because Ming Tsai and Fanney Dora Sigurjonsdottir did something with Arctic char on Simply Ming, and I barely knew what that was, much less where to get it.
I’ll go back sometime when it’s less hectic. The goods on display looked great, and most of the prices were at least semi-reasonable. (The rib roast was definitely unreasonable, but it’s unreasonable everywhere and I knew that going in.)
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
Thanks for that recipe. Not sure if I want to go for the whole Peter Luger experience, though. In fact, if Bro’ Man proposes Brussels sprouts as an alternative, I could probably go for that. I thought of asparagus mostly because he recently got an Instant Pot and I’d like to see how it handles asparagus.
Steeplejack
@(((CassandraLeo))):
I always like your comments and usually learn something, but right now all I can think of is some stupid “This is an Arby’s” joke. Apologies.
And I pretty much agree with you on the substance.
debbie
@NotMax:
Heh, I haven’t spoken to my family since the election.
Currently, I’m watching a very angry discussion on FB between a good friend of mine and a number of her friends who, to her great surprise, are Trumpists. I don’t know them, but I’ve read their posts over the years and I believe this is the first time they’ve acknowledged their insane proclivities. My poor friend.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
Okay, possibly heretical question: how much frozen spinach (thawed) would you reckon as the equivalent of one pound raw? Asking for a friend.
opiejeanne
@Miss Bianca: None of my RWNJ immediate relatives are still alive, all of the cray-ass uncles are dead and gone, and the few idiots left are a first cousin in Missouri who has never visited us (I didn’t know he existed until my grandma’s funeral in KC) and now never will because I permanently disinvited his ass when Obama was in the White House. He came onto my niece’s Facebook page and swore at her about her politics (and she was still a misguided Republican then. She has since seen the light and moved so far Left she was a Berner in 2016). I lit into him, pointed out that she was not, in fact stupid, that she was entitled to her own opinions on her own fucking page, that he could express his on his own fucking page, and then I blocked him.
It killed me to do so because he was (WAS) the nicest guy you could want to meet, and honored our great great grandfather killed in the Civil War by naming his kid Levi. I don’t know what happened to him to turn him into this idiot.
Another first cousin is married to a gun nut who lost his cop job in KC, you can just imagine how bad he had to be, but they won’t come and visit us in Seattle and I’ve been extremely unavailable the past few years when they visited SoCal, if we were in town at the same time. I think she might be ok if she weren’t around him, but he’s a loudmouth who thinks everyone should be packing 24/7 so we wouldn’t have any more shootings. Right.
Raven
We have the perfect solution. We’re at the beach with the pups!
Betty Cracker
@Steeplejack: How DARE you?
Steeplejack
@Raven:
Which beach? I always liked Perdido Key and St. George Island (off Apalachicola).
Amir Khalid
@different-church-lady:
This will surely have been pointed out by now; but in case it hasn’t, it is Lord Attenborough’s surviving brother Sir David Attenborough who does the nature film narrations.
Chief Oshkosh
@NotMax: Oddly, some of the more liberal family members are married to true wackos.
You know, among my family members, the biggest dumbasses and true leeches on society are rightwing shitbirds with almost no redeeming qualities. They are convinced that they’re smarter and harder working than anyone, but they’re actually pretty dense and supremely lazy.
Although, come to think of it, they are smart enough to invite themselves to other peoples’ homes for the holidays.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
The frozen kind that comes in boxes? Would guess two.
The frozen kind that comes in bags? One might do.
Nothing untoward about using frozen. Defrost, drain very well and squeeze out remaining moisture. I actually favor using frozen chopped spinach when I make spinach souffle.
As for asparagus in the Instant Pot, have found 1 minute at high pressure generally suitable for trimmed stalks. If they are particularly thin asparagus, a setting of zero minutes at high pressure. Quick release in either case. Usual requirement for adding liquid to the pot, of course. If preference is for crispier, more al dente asparagus, could experiment using the low pressure setting. Either using a steamer basket or else laying them on top of the trivet in alternating criss-cross layers seems to work okay.
Steeplejack
@Betty Cracker:
LOL. Right after I posted the previous I realized I could check the Google, which I did. (One pound raw ≈ 10 oz. package frozen.) Just trying to be sociable, I guess, and your comment was my just deserts.
debbie
@Steeplejack:
From Google:
Steeplejack
@debbie:
Thank you, great mind thinking alike. ?
Chief Oshkosh
@CliosFanBoy: Oh, not by a long shot.
Gary Abernathy, for instance, should never be allowed near a computer.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Well whaddaya know? Live and learn, although seems skimpy to me in the case of frozen chopped as opposed to frozen whole.
Raven
@Steeplejack: We’re on 30a just west of Panama City Beach.
Gin & Tonic
@Raven: Enjoy your Thanksgiving. Hope the fishing’s good.
debbie
@NotMax:
I’ve made a few recipes that call for blanching fresh spinach and then squeezing out as much moisture as possible. You’re left with not much more than a small handful.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
I guess it depends on how creamy you want your creamed spinach. I would probably have extra spinach in reserve until the recipe was nailed down.
Good suggestion, though. I am liking it more and more. A Peter Luger dinner would not be bad at all.
Steeplejack
@Raven:
You can’t go wrong on that whole stretch of coast. Not a big fan of PCB itself, though.
MoxieM
I am excited to say that I get to go to my eldest nephew’s own first house, with his wife, and they are expecting a bebe. So exciting!! All the arguing (or talking, your choice) will be in Cantonese from her family, so I will be utterly ignorant of the content. Although I would love to know what some of the younger folks think about what’s going on in Hong Kong, since that’s where the family hails from. I’m bringing a pumpkin cheesecake with a gingersnap crust (sister is pie queen–can’t step on those toes!), and am very hopeful for the whole shebang. Have not had a large family gathering since I can remember, hay hey hei!
Gin & Tonic
@Steeplejack: Have you read Pete Wells’ recent zero-star review of PL?
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Roger Moore: But then we run into a problem if your expectations are unreasonable, or if your views of what others should reasonably be allowed to expect are skewed. As the quote goes: “If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole.” (Raylan Givens in Justified, a show which I apparently need to watch)
Warning: Wall of text incoming:
The actual problem here is that you’re not going to summarise an issue as fraught as real-world morality in a single pithy sentence. (I will now prove that!) “Treat others well” sounds nice and is about as pithy as you can get, but well is a word with a lot of wiggle room. “Treat others how they would like to be treated within reason” could be a reasonable amendment to my suggestion, but “within reason” also contains a lot of wiggle room. And so on. So if you’re going to define the wiggle room out, then you’ve departed the realm of a single pithy sentence.
The problem with the traditional phrasing of the Golden Rule is that it centres one’s own perceptions and preferences as the baseline for all morality. We are unintentionally instilling in children from a very early age the idea that others’ preferences are alien and beneath consideration in evaluating morality, which results in the othering of anyone who is different. Now perhaps a lot of people learn in adulthood that the Golden Rule is just a rough summary and that actual issues are more complex than that – but it’s almost solipsistic in a way, to simply write others’ preferences out of the morality we teach children.
It’s well-intentioned; I’ll give it that. I doubt any of the people who promote the idea actually have in mind the idea that others should be treated poorly. But we are subconsciously rendering others’ preferences as irrelevant in the morality we teach children. As a person whose preferences, for reasons I have described at length above, frequently deviate substantially from the norm, I have a particular grievance with this practice.
But yes, some people have unreasonable expectations. I can’t treat someone as the Queen of Sheba if they’re not. I’m sure most people would like to be given $1 million, too, but I don’t have $1 million to give away to anyone. But I don’t think anyone who reads the sentence “Treat others how they would like to be treated” is going to come away with the expectation that you should accommodate desires that you’re incapable of accommodating. The meaning I expect most people would get out of it is that, for instance, if you like parties, but one of your friends hates them, then don’t drag that friend to a party.
There’s also the issue that you can’t intrinsically know what someone’s preferences are without actually asking them. Which, duh. But that’s sort of the point of this whole exercise, actually. You shouldn’t just assume someone else’s preferences match your own, because often times they don’t, and you can’t know that without asking. It invites people to ask each other the question “Is this OK with you?” more often, which is a question many people don’t often stop to think about. We often assume we’re treating someone well by doing something we’d appreciate others doing for us, when in fact we may be overstepping boundaries or unknowingly committing microaggressions or any of a number of other things. And this occurs purely because, in most of these cases, we don’t ask.
And that’s the whole point of this exercise: challenging the idea that our unstated preferences and assumptions are universally shared; and more broadly, simply inviting people to examine those assumptions in the first place.
If I ever have a law named after me, I would like it to be this: Most people are no more aware of their unspoken assumptions than a fish is aware of water. (Acknowledgement to Terry Pratchett, as I almost certainly borrowed this metaphor from Small Gods, which I’ve probably read more than ten times.) To some extent, this is simply saying that everyone is biased, but even there, a lot of people think, Well, I’m not! Which, of course, isn’t true.
Going back to the limitations of any one-sentence model for morality: We simplify the world in order to make sense of it. Literally, our brains do this subconsciously. If we actually heard all the sounds around us, saw all the sights around us, remembered everything that happened to us, we would be unable to process our existence. The brain has to simplify the world in order for us even to make sense of it – reality is so complicated that the full experience of it would be comparable to going through Douglas Adams’ Total Perspective Vortex: we’d be overwhelmed by the chaos and scale of life and go mad with a sense of our own insignificance.
So, without even realising it, we aren’t getting a complete sense of the world. Our brain just discards signals it processes as irrelevant – which is, to some extent, based on our own memories and narratives, two elements whose intrinsic unreliability I will get to in a bit. This was a survival tactic necessary when we were still hunter-gatherers, just so we’d survive in the wild. And it’s carried over as we’ve developed agriculture and civilisation, because all we are now is essentially apes with nukes.
We like to think of ourselves as an enlightened species who have risen above our animal nature, but I would contend that our morality has really not risen above that of other primates. If you treat monkeys unfairly, they will get very angry. They have a sense of fairness, just as humans do. I would contend that monkeys and bonobos and many other primates may in fact be more moral than humans, since they are not destroying the very habitat that is necessary for everyone’s survival. And they are not the only animals that demonstrate an understanding of morality. But I digress.
In order to make sense of the chaos our brains process, we construct narratives about the world. We infer patterns using inductive reasoning from pieces of evidence we receive. However, any model we construct is, by nature, going to be an oversimplification. Again, reality is chaos. There are almost always going to be exceptions to models. (“Almost always” because there seem to be certain immutable laws of physics. Entropy will no doubt have its victory in the end.) Which leads to problems when there are, shall we say, exceptions to models. As the Fourth Doctor memorably puts it:
Here I’ll return to my issues communicating as an autistic person. Most neurotypical people have constructed a model of how body language works based on their own communication style and on their experiences of communicating with mostly neurotypical people. So they have come to an assumption that, for instance, a furrowed brow may indicate anger. (I don’t fully understand neurotypical body language, as indicated above, so I may still be misconstruing this. Don’t take my interpretation of it as gospel.) When they experience a person whose furrowed brow indicates stress instead, their brains may be unable to process the difference and simply reject it. If I tell you, “I’m not angry; I’m stressed,” you may simply flat-out not believe me, because you trust the patterns you’ve identified more than you trust my word about my own inner mental state and my body language.
So as an autistic person, I have quite the experience as “one of the facts that needs altering.” In point of fact, I experienced a flagrant ADA violation at a previous employer over precisely these kinds of issues, which is one reason I feel so strongly about it (and which has, to a large extent, solidified the latent antiauthoritarian political sympathies I was already developing). I won’t run down the whole story, but misconstrued nonverbal communication was a major part of the issue. Supervisors both assumed I was sending messages that I was not, and that I was receiving messages that I did not, based entirely on nonverbal communication – this, despite the fact that they were fully aware I was autistic, and that nonverbal communication posed me trouble.
It often felt like there was a personal dislike involved based purely on the fact that I was autistic. I have never had this level of trouble with any other bosses, and the entire ordeal made me acutely aware of how much a single person in a hierarchy can ruin the experience for others in the hierarchy based on little more than personal whims.
But I’ve digressed again. My overall point is that our brains filter facts out to make stories about how the world works. We do this because if we actually thought about the world in its full chaos, we’d end up paralysed with indecision, because we’d never be able to identify patterns and would therefore constantly second-guess every decision we made. This has, in many cases, been beneficial to our survival, but it also means that we frequently become fervently convinced of things that are simply not true. Many conspiracy theorists such as anti-vaxxers and global warming denialists are excellent example of this, but there are even more mundane examples based purely upon human memory.
The human memory is incredibly unreliable, to a point few people fully understand. Every time we think about a memory, our brain changes the memory. The way we remember the memory coincides with how we last thought about it. Think of the brain as random-access memory, with no undo command. Whatever modification we make to our story becomes our new recollection of it; it overwrites the old file.
So the human memory is, shall we say, extremely suggestible. It is why witness tampering is a crime. It is why eyewitness testimony is not reliable. It is why FBI agents write down records of conversations they’ve had with persons of interest immediately after they have those conversations. And so on. Just because we remember something happening a certain way doesn’t mean we’re remembering what actually happened. If we wrote down our recollections of the memory immediately afterwards, we will have a significantly more reliable account of it, but even that will not be infallible, because we’re unreliable narrators, since, for starters, we don’t understand or notice everything that occurs to us.
So we have narratives in our mind based on our interpretation of incomplete signals, which we’ve then simplified into patterns that we’ve constructed that leave out contradictory details, and on top of that, we’ve done this all based on memories that are not even reliable. It’s a wonder anyone ever says anything accurate about the world, much less that we’ve somehow managed, for instance, to split the atom, or to send human beings to the moon, or to cure smallpox.
And there’s one more problem: The narratives we construct may well be self-serving. Everyone is the hero of their own story, they say. Well, that may be the problem. If we’ve primed ourselves to think of ourselves as essentially good people, we may be loath to admit when we’ve wronged others. A hero wouldn’t behave insensitively to others, so if others feel offended by things we’ve done, they’re just being overly sensitive. (I’m not accusing anyone at this blog of having this attitude, but it’s certainly common among the right.)
Our need to believe that we, as individuals, are essentially good, and that we, as a species, are essentially good, has, I would contend, caused untold harm to countless individual humans, to humanity as a whole, and to the natural habitat we depend upon for our very survival. We have been almost single-handedly responsible for the biggest mass extinction since the meteor that killed off the dinosaurs. That does not, to me, sound like something an essentially good species would do. It sounds like the effects of a species that thinks primarily of short-term personal benefit acquiring the power to reshape its surroundings.
We have an entire worldview centred around this idea of humanism, that we should do what benefits humanity. But the very name, humanism, is a tell for how self-centred it is. Humans are not the sole occupants of this planet. We share it with an estimated 8.7 million other species, upon many of whom we depend for our own survival. Human agriculture, for instance, would not even function without the honeybee, which supports the production of some 87 leading food crops, and which – I cannot help but notice – has suffered significant threats in recent years.
By separating ourselves from our surroundings in our worldview, we have essentially created this perception that we are more important than nature. Rather than being a part of nature, we should bring it under our dominion. We have essentially redirected our violent impulses away from each other and towards nature itself.
And this is having catastrophic effects right now. The world’s largest rainforest has been consistently on fire. So has California. Hurricanes are increasing in size. Miami is flooding, and no seawall will protect it from sinking under the sea: Florida is built on a foundation of limestone, and no wall can save it from sinking. Others who live in less affluent areas will be even less lucky. A case could be made that the Syrian refugee crisis is already to some extent a result of climate change. I could go on and on, but what’s the point? We’re all acutely aware of what’s happening to the planet.
We think of ourselves as essentially good; and that there are these discrete concepts, good and evil, that are easy to identify; and that people and their beliefs can be neatly dropped into one of two categories. In reality, there are few unambiguously good and few unambiguously evil people. Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin and – what the hell – I’ll say Donald Trump belong to the latter category. For the former category? I’ll just say MLK was an apparently serial adulterer. Doesn’t negate the tremendous good he did in the world overall. But I’ll quote Pratchett (and Neil Gaiman), because why not:
And also:
This whole discussion, in fact, should immediately lay to rest the idea that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are easy to identify and to define. If they were, I wouldn’t have just written an essay about it; the single sentence I proposed above would have sufficed.
Our conception of morality is not merely centred around ourselves as individuals – it is also centred around ourselves as a species. And this has had catastrophic effects.
The Golden Rule seems relatively benign on its face, and the people who promote it as a basis for morality have good intentions. But there’s a commonly cited proverb about the road to hell which I’m sure I don’t need to recite here.
I’m not saying the Golden Rule is directly to blame for all the ills I’ve listed above. It’s at worst a reflection of a certain cultural attitude which is inextricably intertwined with many of them. The biggest problems, as I see it, are that we’re mostly unwilling to accept our own flaws, and in fact frequently become defensive when presented with them; and, as a related matter, that we’re unwilling to acknowledge our potential for error, and the fallibility of our own perceptions and memories. In fact, even if we make a conscious effort to keep that fallibility in mind, we’re not going to remain conscious of it 24/7. And it could, to some extent, backfire: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity,” as Yeats put it.
I think my biggest complaint with the Golden Rule, though, comes back to its anchoring around the self. “Do unto others as you would like to have them do unto you,” or, rephrased in modern language, “Treat others how you would like to be treated.” It makes your own desires the centre of the entire sentence. By rephrasing it as “Treat others how they would like to be treated,” we are removing our preferences from the equation entirely. We are no longer the centre of the discussion.
Now are there potential caveats? Yes. You can’t go so out of your way to accommodate others that you completely fail to take care of yourself; that’s a path towards ending up burnt out and unable to take care of anyone. There are certainly people who have unreasonable expectations, and there’s only so far anyone can go to accommodate those. You can’t know what people’s preferences are without asking them. And so on.
But at least, by making it a centre of our worldview not to assume that everyone wants the same things out of life, or communicates in the same way, or even has the same aesthetic preferences, we’re at least not placing their considerations beneath ours in our mental hierarchy. And if that helps make the experiences of minority groups throughout society less burdensome, we’ve created a massive improvement to their lives. That’s not nothing.
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
No, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Seems like there are a lot of “iconic” places that are coasting on their reputation and corporate drones on expense accounts. It just sprang to mind when I processed “steak, mashed potatoes, creamed spinach.” “Ruth’s Chris” wouldn’t have had the same snark weight.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Steeplejack: Lol, it works there, but it would’ve worked much better after that wall of text I just posted. That one… kind of got away from me. I didn’t start out intending to write that much!
Anyway, thanks!
JPL
@MoxieM: That is wonderful. Make sure that you let us know how it was.
OzarkHillbilly
Yep.
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
Whoa, went and looked up that review. Brutal. Thanks for the tip.
pinacacci
@Kay: That is appalling. Good on the band leader.
Steeplejack
@(((CassandraLeo))):
Thanks for that! I was about to post: “Seriously, this is an Arby’s.”
Still agree with the substance.
Raven
@Steeplejack: Have you been there since the hurricane? It really go pounded and recovery is very slow. From the beach I can see the high rises on PCB and there was almost no damage here. The poorer areas of Panama City and things east to Tyndall were really hammered.
Raven
@Gin & Tonic: It was almost totally flat this afternoon and that generally doesn’t make for good fishing. Last month when I was here it was so rough I couldn’t get 6oz weights to hold the bottom so, as Roseann Roseanna Danna would say. . . “it’s always something”! Good thing I love it.
different-church-lady
@Amir Khalid: DAMMIT, I hate it when I don’t do background on my stchick…
JPL
@Steeplejack: Pete Wells has a way with words.
Steeplejack
@Raven:
I haven’t been down there in years. Sometime before ’05 was the last time. But when I lived in Atlanta, and Mobile before that, I used to explore the Florida coast a lot.
I see episodes of Beachfront Bargain Hunt or something on HGTV and can’t believe how much the whole coast has blown up. I liked Perdido Key (near Pensacola Beach) because it was sort of out of the way, but now it looks like wall-to-wall condos from Gulf Shores to Pensacola. How time flies.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Steeplejack: Heh, no problem, and thanks. It certainly wouldn’t have been out of place there, lol.
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
Thanks for these notes. Bookmarked.
opiejeanne
@MoxieM: I make my pumpkin pies with a gingersnap crust.
Steeplejack
@opiejeanne:
Tell me more. (As in a recipe.)
J R in WV
@(((CassandraLeo))):
Love your comments! Usually well thought out and clear. But you make a serious error here:
It isn’t spelt Possomfuck, Arkansas. It is Possumfuck, Arkansas!!
ETA: No offense!! ;-)
Sab
@Steeplejack: Late to this thread: monster standing rib roast. Do you like hash? Do you have a meat grinder? After a day or two of roast beef sandwiches, we always ground up the remains of a rib roast with onions, potatoes, the leftover gravy and maybe a bit of seasoning (usually just salt and pepper), then baked at 350°. I love it, my family loves it, but due to some trauma in Coast Guard mess, my husband will not even taste it.
opiejeanne
Kamala Harris and Mindy Kaling cooking together:
https://youtu.be/xz7rNOAFkgE
opiejeanne
@Sab: Because that’s really close to shit on a shingle. It’s criminal to grind up a perfectly good standing rib like this.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@J R in WV: lol, I noticed that after I reread it, but by that point, it was out of the edit window. I think I might’ve gotten it right the first time I wrote it, too, but I was annoyed enough at having to rewrite it that I wasn’t thinking that much about spelling. (Less importantly, I also left out the full stop at the end of my customary closing paraphrase of Cato the Elder.)
Also, thanks!
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
Steeplejack
@Sab:
Hadn’t thought about grinding. Actually, haven’t thought about much except the prospect of a delightful prime rib meal on Thanksgiving. Maybe some vague idea in the background about doing something beef bourguignon-adjacent, if there’s too much left over. (God, did I really just write “too much”?) Maybe some sort of stew, but with the meat relatively intact (cut up into pieces).
Heh, there’s a story there.
J R in WV
@(((CassandraLeo))):
But, but… your name isn’t Tony Jay, you are not talking about Brexit, and your language isn’t a spittle-flecked rant!! But so long a civil rant!!!
Congratulations!
OT: I have arthroscopic knee surgery tomorrow, and our well has taken to working off and on, more off than on. Oh well. They will disinfect my leg going in. Right now (last time I turned on a faucet) it appear to be pumping, so I’m waiting for the water in the hot water tank to get hot again. Shower follows V soon. Wish me luck!
PS: Great comment, love it, just thought the length was amusing after getting used to Tony’s.
Steeplejack
@J R in WV:
Good luck with the operation tomorrow! As someone who was recently under the knife, I can sympathize.
J R in WV
@Steeplejack:
The last time we were on the Florida panhandle coast was 1972, and it was mostly mangrove and lush seagrass. Pretty but empty. Loved it.
Now, seems like industrialized river bank, only salty.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@J R in WV: Thanks! I’ve made several other comments of that length over the years, but it’d been a good, long while. I think I was long overdue.
I certainly can’t match Tony’s eloquence with vitriolic figures of speech. The Brits have so many colourful idioms and invectives that simply aren’t part of everyday American English, and quite a few that I’ve never even heard of, so he’s already got a massive advantage there that I probably can’t overcome.
This seems to be a superpower of the Brits. None of the invectives I’ve come up with will ever be as good as memorable as MetalOllie’s “tiny-fingered, Cheeto-faced, ferret-wearing shitgibbon”, for instance. Not to mention any of the memorable turns of phrase in The Thick of It. (To be fair, a number of Scots will bristle if you even call them British, and will take serious offence [warning: NSFW] if you call them English.)
Good luck with the surgery!
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
Sab
@Steeplejack: My meatgrinder is this clunky old metal thing that screws into the underside of the counter or overhanging breadboard. I inherited it from my mom who inherited it from her mom, and I am 65. Grandma was born in 1895 and married in 1920, so all of her kitchen tools were 1920s vintage. Some of my best kitchen tools are from her. Not an electric motor anywhere, but they all work well and are easy to clean.
Sab
@(((CassandraLeo))): Slightly off topic. My sister told me a couple of years ago that one of her sons is trans. My response at the time was sort pretty much duh. That explains everything about him that puzzled me before. And of course that makes him my niece. So this Thanksgiving, how do I deal with this. My husband is supportive but walking on eggshells. I am inclined to simply ask the kid “which gender are you now. I am fine with either, but you need to tell me, now or whenever.” Is that okay, or insensitive? I am okay either way, just want to not get ahead of things.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Sab: I can’t really say for sure how anyone else would react (particularly since, as a non-neurotypical, my preferences are bound to be quite unrepresentative to start with – for instance, I’m not as bothered when people accidentally misgender me as a lot of other trans and non-binary people are), but I think most trans people would at least be fine with others asking for clarification as to which pronouns and forms of address they prefer, as long as it’s not done in a demeaning fashion. That should probably suffice as an implicit answer to a lot of those questions; if they want to elaborate further after that, they probably will. My guess from what you’ve mentioned is that your sister’s kid is probably either a trans woman or non-binary, but there’s not enough information available for me to be certain.
(This also raises the issue that there aren’t non-binary terms of address for a lot of concepts in common usage – what would one call the non-binary offspring of one’s sibling? “Niece” and “nephew” are explicitly gendered, and I can’t think of any other terms to fill in here.)
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@J R in WV: Good luck on your surgery.
Sab
@(((CassandraLeo))): Thanks. That helps. Kid is in tough period in his/her life right now. My position is I just want to be supportive, not inadvertantly offensive. But he/she is the one in transition. The rest of us are entitled to know where he/she is in the process, or entitled to ignore it. I am happy to go along with whatever, but at some point we need to know, and in the meanwhile there we are, lost and confused. No big deal for us, but here we are. Just lead us elsewhere eventually.
Jay
@Sab:
it is often tricky, as trans identity is individual and not always binary.
best to just politely ask them about their identity and pronouns, approaching the subject with out any preconceptions about their identity.
Sab
@Jay: That’s what I thought. Fuck tiptoeing around. Ask “where are you now. Let me know if/when that changes, or don’t pretend to be offended.”
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Sab: I think the most important thing is to be supportive. It undoubtedly took a colossal amount of courage for the kid even to bring this up in the first place (to be honest, most people I know in real life still don’t know I’m non-binary, and I’m undoubtedly literally twice the kid’s age if not more), and they probably still haven’t come to grips with major aspects of their identity, either.
That’s pretty commonplace, from my understanding. It certainly took a long while for me to come to grips with my own gender identity, though that’s partially just because I wasn’t really aware of the existence of non-binary gender identities for literally the first three decades of my life. Once I did become aware of them, though, something clicked and I immediately thought, “Oh, of course. That explains so much about my life.” But even then, there were a lot of implications I hadn’t thought through, and I still keep noticing some of them – cf. the niece and nephew thing I brought up above.
I will add that defaulting to “they” as a generic pronoun when you’re uncertain of a person’s correct pronoun of address is probably less likely to cause offence, just because, in addition to being a non-binary pronoun, it’s long been a generic pronoun people use when context makes it unclear which pronoun is correct (going back to Chaucer), along the lines of: “If anyone has an objection, they should speak up.” They, in this context, refers to a single person in a less wordy fashion than “he/she” that also, crucially, doesn’t exclude non-binary gender identities.
But still, the best course of action is generally, in these cases, to ask. Granted, that’s my overall philosophy anyway, as elucidated at length in my wall of text above. There are, of course, wrong ways to ask. And to some extent, a lot of this is deeply personal, confusing, and probably painful, so the kid may not actually have definitive answers to a lot of these questions yet. It may be the sort of thing that requires time.
To be fair, a lot of trans folks pretty much know their identity almost immediately (at least once they’re aware that said identity exists). But knowing one’s identity and actually understanding one’s identity are two different matters entirely. The kid may not have answers for all your questions until they get older.
So I guess the best advice I can offer is: Ask politely for clarification when you’re uncertain without prying about it; be patient; and most of all, be supportive – make it plain that their identity doesn’t make you think less of them, and that you’ll be there when needed.
That said, I’m hardly this blog’s only trans or non-binary commenter; Sister Golden Bear is another good person to ask, and there are several others. They may, in fact, be more reliable resources than I am, since I’m not really familiar with the experiences of neurotypical trans people (not that all autistic people’s experiences are comparable either; for starters, all of us have different body language from each other). A lot of them posted in this thread, which will probably be a helpful resource as well.
I may head off for the night within the next couple of hours; I’ll try to remember to check back here tomorrow to see if there’s anything else I can answer, though. Can’t promise anything, since I’ve got a number of real-world commitments I need to attend to this week, but if I end up missing anything, feel free to ask me again in a subsequent thread, as there are fairly strong odds that a week from now, I won’t remember what thread this exchange happened in.
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
No One You Know
@(((CassandraLeo))): I really appreciate that you shared all this. I’m copying it wholesale. I’m so very tired of all the same things, and I doubt have the patience tp articulate it anymore.
The worst advice I ever got from the aspie community was that I was responsible for advocating for myself. I worked in health care insurance– as conformist as a bank, with less intelligence– and my boss refused to accommodate me because “I think everyone should be treated the same, because that’s fair.” His boss told him he could put me on an “improvement plan.” Which ended as these things usually do. It just took longer, because HR was more sympathetic than expected, but still worked for management.
Fishing around for another job. It’s getting really tiring, but there’s no option but to do it and hope for the best.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@No One You Know: You’re welcome, and thanks.
That’s awful, and it sucks that you had to go through that. You may have a strong case for an ADA violation, especially if you have evidence for that whole “everyone should be treated the same” spiel from your former boss… but of course, that’s a massive if, and it’s probably the #1 reason so many ADA violations end up unchallenged. Almost exactly the same thing happened for me – I didn’t have sufficient written records to make it worth going through the trouble of proving my case in court. I didn’t want to keep my job at that point, and I didn’t foresee a sufficient monetary settlement arising from the case to make it worth the frustration of reliving some of the worst moments of my life.
It was perhaps better for me that I wound up leaving that position, as I wound up taking a data entry job for a well-known TV ratings company (I’m not going to mention their name, though that’s in part because you’ve already guessed it) about half a year later, where I quickly got promoted to what’s probably the best position I’ve had. Unfortunately, the whole program got shut down a few years after that, but I found another position more quickly after that. (I suspect I would have been able to transfer to to another position for the same company’s radio department if prior commitments hadn’t conflicted with the training.)
I’m currently working as a quality assistant for a transcription company that deals primarily with finance and insurance (after a year of just transcribing dictations), so I fully get what you mean about insurance companies. (This is still probably the second best position I’ve held – I mostly miss the ability to listen to music while on the clock.)
You probably will find another position sooner than you think right now. If we’re given a chance to do things that fall within our interest and skill set, we often prove to be good at them, and sometimes get promoted rather quickly. (I got promoted at the TV ratings company within about three and a half months of working there, and apparently I was one of the few employees to get promoted that quickly in the 50+ years of the TV diary program.) Just keep scouring job listings, applying for postings, sending your résumé out, polishing your résumé, asking people you know about job postings (I actually found the TV ratings job through a friend), and so on.
Most importantly, don’t get discouraged. Easier said than done, of course, but if you’ve got enough specialised knowledge to get hired for a position in insurance in the first place, then sooner or later, you’ll probably be able to find something at a firm that isn’t so… let’s say judgemental. A position as an analyst who doesn’t interact directly with customers sounds like it might be ideal for you, though I don’t know how many of those there are, as I haven’t really looked into insurance positions. (Insurance remains fairly impenetrable to me; much as I love David’s posts, I feel like I still understand at most about 60% of what he writes.) I have idly contemplated going into finance someday, but given that I just received a position at my current work and am still enjoying it a lot, I probably won’t for a while.
(I’m also idly wondering right now if anyone has written primers for employers of autistic people about how we communicate. If you choose to disclose your diagnosis to your next employer, and such a thing exists, it might be ideal just to hand that to them at the same time – perhaps it’s written in a way that would be more comprehensible to neurotypicals than most of us would be able to get across in person, anyway. Now I really hope someone has written such a guide. If I remember, I may do some searching later this week.)
Anyway, good luck.
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.