I don’t know any Secret Service agents, do you? So I wonder: Are Trump’s protectors scratching their heads here, or are they constipated by commitment, courage, and back-up plans?
On the drive over from Trump Tower, were any lost in the mind-expansion of checking corners for blind spots vs. bail bondsmen?
During the arraignment itself, in that crowded corridor and beyond, was a kaleidoscope of Law & Order characters among the jailers, journalists, U.S. Marshals, FBI, Trump staffers, lawyers, indicted officeholders, real estate groupies, and celebrity gossipers. So many doors, so many suits and ties! How were they able to tell the cops from the crooks or the Bozo’s from the Serpicos?
What did their earpieces confirm, that Agent Larry had just cracked, stripping off his suit like a Chippendale to sing atop one of the bulletproof Escalades?
And all that standing around time! Were agents eavesdropping on slouchy beat cops, lipreading for lunch ideas? Did Hernandez show up sportin’ floods again? Best thousand-yard stare anyone? Was Trump’s close knit group of operatives ostracized by ordinary officers?
Between the badges, body armor, and batons, who coveted whose utility belts? Was there insecurity among the tactically secure? How were female personnel able to withstand this gravity crushing, time-bending black hole of mansplaining?
What sabotaged the straightfaced? In this patriotastic vortex of professional protectors, how did the jokers keep from messing with their workmates? Who elbowed their neighbor when the Lieutenant gave in and scratched his balls? Who sneezed when the former President walked by? Who wondered if their, a-hem, secret “service” smelled as badly as they feared?
Were there convos on contradictions among Trump’s bullet-catchers? Would any admit to being curious about consequences for the rich and well-connected?
As each who swore an oath to “protect and defend” stood by their professional honor and obligations, how many feared an impending end to what inspired their pledge?
Finally, with all that heavyweight allegiance to law and order, what were their excuses for any lack of curiosity?
Putting out fire with fire –mentally mitigating a bad choice with bad choices 2, 3, and 4– is Where Excuses Go to Die’s “Excuse of 2022.”
Our new Counter-Enlightenment American Moral Culture confuses foot-stomping with tenacity and self-congratulatory ethics with fairness. Personally, I see an inhospitable ocean of tangled and misled self-interest. Here are but a few examples that exclude Kanye, Elon, Putin, and Maggie Haberman.
• LA City Council member Kevin DeLeon ––scandalized, despised, and stigmatized–– refuses to relinquish his seat despite leaked audio of his racist views, calls for his resignation, recall attempts, walk-outs by fellow council members upon his arrival at meetings, and now physical altercations with constituents protesting his occupancy. Me, I see a double down that reveals a man-child in need of attention, mistaking that attention for position and position for integrity.
• Referring to Maricopa County’s election system, Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake recently told a Turning Point USA gathering, “I’m not going to just knock that house of cards over. We’re going to burn it to the ground.” Me, I see a person mistaking craven for inspiring and populist for decent.
• Like someone in sneakers on an ice rink, newly minted Republican Congressman-elect George Santos seems to be slipping all over career freezing contradictions regarding his claims of Jewish-Ukrainian lineage, his alleged descent from Holocaust survivors, his education, his employment history (is anything this guy claims true??). Backed into a corner, his accounts and renditions are all over the explanatory map. Here, I see a double down on par with a prison snitch or at minimum a proud citizen of the The United States Of Until You Get Caught.
• Tanner Horner, a FedEx driver with no previous criminal history, recently backed his delivery van into 7-year-old Athena Strand on or near the driveway of her family’s home. Reportedly, she was not seriously injured, but Horner later admitted to authorities that he’d “panicked” and pulled the girl into his van, killing her to keep her from telling her dad. And as if choosing to cover up vehicular negligence with murder isn’t bad enough, Horner is now also facing three unrelated charges of sexual assault of a minor. So I think we all see the double down of extraordinarily poor decision making happening here.
I admit these example are blousy, media-driven, and bat-shit. But when’s the last time you doubled-down, say, while driving? Maybe you made a lane change with a little less room than you thought you had, and you got honked at in return. I’m sure a bunch of you Ghandis out there just ignored that honk, but those of us who aren’t so evolved may have middle-fingered our way into some version of payback.
Who among us hasn’t, at some point, admitted to ourselves or others, “I don’t know what I was thinking”? Who hasn’t heard themselves trying to justify a solution that was worse than the problem? Who hasn’t doubled down? For that matter, who hasn’t experienced dismay over a double-down that’s backfired? The darker side of doubling down can be quite humbling.
I’m certainly guilty of going too far in the name of saving face. When it came back to haunt me, my guilt, ego, principles, good intentions, and a bunch of other things all collided to cause an embarrassing end result, one in which my credibility drained at my feet. With nothing I could do to stop it and no wealth to throw at it, only anger remained –which guaranteed a bad end.
We’ve all put ourselves through this sawmill. And while individual results clearly vary, doubling down is the Excuse of the Year because of how far we’ve taken it, or where, in this entitled age of poor coping skills, it has taken us.
I moped for a minute when I learned of your esophageal cancer and transition to quality of life care, then swiveled from the keyboard to my view of downtown Los Angeles. It’s a romantic, rent controlled, southeast panorama you might appreciate, stretching from Griffith Park all the way to wonderful, ill-favored Vernon. As the street elevation rises, this 96-year-old brownstone is a last stop before the Tesla Hills, allowing me to joke about living “at the feet of the snobs.”
Mike Davis at the Los Angeles Sixth Street Viaduct Entrance
It seems fitting writing you on a 104° day, but despite my window capturing so much of LA’s heat dome, it isn’t big enough to hold my gratitude for raising your critical theorist’s fist high in the air.
Thank you, Mike, for City of Quartz, a treasure of tormented topographies and asshole suits. That book warned me of “lurking cyber-fascism” at a time when “cyber” seemed strictly limited to William Gibson. While I admittedly struggled to understand some of it, it still felt like holding a road flare.
My dawning awareness of the “spatial apartheid” of private and pseudo-public spaces through the lens of LA redevelopment –Bunker Hill and Century City most alarmingly– was as perception-altering as any figurative burning bush I’ve encountered. Although to me, your work is more akin to witnessing a burning bank.
And thank you for that Ecology of Fear chapter, “Beyond Blade Runner.” What a fun and horrifying read! There’s no better narration of the ominous social organization of urban environments. Your all-too brief look at Columbia Savings and Loan CEO Thomas Spiegel’s office-turned-Alamo-war-bunker alone was worth the 1998 dollars I spent to own a copy. I imagine you smiling as you wrote it, so here’s where I’ll also thank you for your humor. It runs rampant through your darkest of examinations of anti-utopia. No, you’re not exactly known for Chavez Ravine zingers, but to those who say Mike Davis isn’t funny I ask, uh, “In Praise of Barbarians,” anyone? Also, I call you oppressors.
6th St. Viaduct pre-2016 Demolition • Author Photo
Speaking of oppression, thank you, Mike, for affirming that my indignant rejection of bread and circuses is neither sick nor wrong. I’ve faced the fallout from questioning mass consumption since my fellow sixth graders were writhing and squealing over Rod Stewart’s 1978 radio hit, “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” (gross, no).
Further, thank you for corroborating –in spirit at least– that it isn’t mentally deranged to envision oneself dying a worthy death at the hands of the state. Try explaining that one to the nuns (and then family therapists).
Thank you, Mike Davis, for wondering aloud why the American working class has no political party of its own.
Thank you for inspiring me to graduate from my post-punk, Generation X naiveté by revealing enemies far more insidious than Daryl F. Gates, Tipper Gore, and Pete Wilson.
Finally, thank you for whatever input you had in choosing LA’s Metropolitan Detention Center as the City of Quartz cover photo: I read a copy machine bundle of the LA Weekly’s lengthy excerpt of the book during my stay at MDC, as well as while confined to the modules of Men’s Central Jail. You connected me to resistance, yes, and to municipal and policy wrongdoing, which were helpful to my understanding of the city I love. You insisted I learn civic responsibility, too. But finding MDC on that cover just as I was learning the value of human endorsement no less than anointed my own pencil-on-yellow-legal-pad observations. As a pretrial prisoner facing the wake-up call of a lifetime, your work made me feel recognized. What I and those around me endured at the hands of our LA Sheriff’s jailers was authenticated by the presence of that image.
Goodbye and thank you Mike Davis, Urban Theorist–Activist–Scholar, for this lump in my throat. Mine is just one of the many Los Angeles minds you’ve enlivened.
“Follow the money” applies to everything, most of all to Supreme Court Justices.
CAR GUY 101: knowing the parts in the machine –any machine– is essential to comprehending how it can be affected by the elements.
I just took in this excellent piece by the award-winning publisher of “The Hightower Lowdown,” Jim Hightower. The guy is funny, and I wish I could say it made me laugh. It didn’t. But it did offer me insight that went beyond what I already knew about SCOTUS, and it reminds me to take less pleasure in the disintegration of norms and barometers (which laughs tend to abet).
The notorious “Powell Memo” (a.k.a. “Attack on the American Free Enterprise System”) was drafted in 1971 by Lewis F. Powell, Jr., and it’s a good example of something about which I knew previously zilch. Yet from it, Hightower notes, SCOTUS’ current conservative majority has drawn, uh, major inspiration.
In keeping with the period, corporate attorney Powell was not unlike Robert Duvall’s Godfather character, Tom Hagen, head lawyer for the Corleone family. As a Phillip Morris board member, Powell’s own “family” was Big Tobacco. In fact he represented the Tobacco Institute, the notorious research arm of the tobacco industry. This is important background info.
Powell’s so-called “memorandum” was a confidential letter to the Chairman of the Education Committee at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In it, he discussed what he termed the “Neglected Opportunity in the Courts” and proposed that corporate cash could and should lead to more corporate-friendly rulings by SCOTUS.
The heading itself is scary enough, given how little room it leaves for misinterpretation, but the memo actively urges “weaponiz[ing] the courts to serve business interests.” Powell wanted to use the courts as a tool to save capitalism. By rewarding Powell with a Supreme Court nomination just two months after writing his memo, Richard Nixon showed he was a man who also knew how to use a tool.
And so began the “operationalization” of the Court that brings us to the present day. From the 12+ year old Citizens United v. FEC ruling that allows unlimited corporate funding of campaigns and elections to Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, in which corporations were portrayed as rights bearers for “the humans who own and control [them]” and beyond, Powell’s dream of a pro-business court was coming true even in opinions by presumably “liberal” justices (though hardly to the same extent as those on the other side of the political aisle).
So now, with a super solid and uber conservative majority, why limit judicial activism to just pro-business decisions? As they lingered over the wording of their destruction of a woman’s right to privacy around her so-called private parts, SCOTUS made it virtually impossible for inmates to win release as a result of ineffective lawyering (see Shinn v. Ramirez), it effectively removed all prohibitions against the use of excessive force by federal law enforcement in violation of the 4th Amendment (see Egbert v. Boule), and with Carson v. Makin it achieved a trifecta of rulings that support the union of religious schools and federal money.
Did I mention that all of the above came down during June alone?
Now that Roe is dead, it’s easy to envision many people feeling both empowered and powerless. I fear modern day adherents to the Powell doctrine. I fear we’ll use our rapidly changing nation as a continued excuse to take our anxieties out on each other. If any part of you agrees that Americans are being pushed into an every-man-for-himself/herself society, then no moving part is more critical than your informed vote.
Do not give into despair. Find out where your excuses go to die. Learn the machine. Arm yourself with yourself.
The cloying earnestness Schwarzenegger’s personal message to everyday Russians made me feel:
Clumsy, because he’s so sincere it’s hard to watch.
Charmed, because his self-worship is infuriatingly courteous.
Silly, because his accent has gone from Rubik’s Cube to heart-shaped box of chocolates.
Stupefied, because he’s made some of the world’s dumbest movies, yet here we are…
We could’ve lost two minutes here, but that’s montage fatigue – and forgetting I’m not the one being addressed. He begins by referencing bodybuilding because of course he does! From there however, I could neither look away or roll my eyes. This clip is a solid example of what one can do with a platform big or small: be real, and be of some use to others.
If we are to be remembered not for what we say, but for how we make others feel, this video reminded me of what personal grace looks like.
…all the better coming from Governor Barbarian McRobot
With the Swiss having dropped their treasured neutrality to join sanctions against Moscow, events in Europe are feeling more like lyrics to a CLASH song every day.
The last time average people coming together made my chest swell this much was when we Angelenos gathered to watch a Space Shuttle fight LA traffic following the Endeavour‘s 2012 goodbye aerial tour of the Southland. (Out on the sidewalk, the unity was breathtaking, trust me.)
And now I’m feeling inspired, uneasy, and thrilled to see organizations, executives, soldiers, civilians, and nations showing character in the world despite countless excuses to turn away. The global outpouring of support for Ukraine is a true marvel. The roar of crowds in world-wide protest of anti-democratic aggression is filling my heart the way Clash frontman Joe Strummer’s conflict-romanticizing lyrics have for decades.
Turkey is closing off strategic access points to the Black Sea. Ballets and concert halls are shunning pro-Putin conductors and dancers. The EU and Canada have closed their airspace to Russian aircraft. Brexit Europe is collectively buying Russian-made jets to give to Ukraine’s air force pilots. Berlin is sending weapons to Ukraine knowing they well may be used by accountants, taxi drivers, dentists, teachers, and teenagers (talk about playing with fireworks!). Anonymous is threatening to expose Putin’s secrets and target Russian infrastructure. Oligarch jets and super yachts are being tracked and seized. Energy conglomerates are divesting, and in Moscow a hacked car-charging station blinks, “Out of Service. Glory to Ukraine. Glory to Heroes.”
Because big banks can freeze all the funds they want, Strummer was right: “Without people you’re nothing.”
So the world is now conducting its first-ever plutocrat guerrilla war, turning off the Russian economy like a light switch. Risking retaliatory cyber strikes, the collapse of its own markets, and even a nuclear temper-tantrum, it has made a ground zero of the Russian Central Bank. As of this writing, even China has agreed to serve as mediator in talks between Russia and Ukraine, an important hub in their own Belt and Road Initiative.
Political tablecloths in nearly every nation are being ripped from under dinner plates. As Paul Massaro, Senior Policy Advisor at the US Helsinki Commission for Security and Cooperation (and human Russian corruption alarm) observed, “It’s a weird feeling to see almost every policy recommendation you’ve ever made implemented within the span of a week.”
This stopped being a David and Goliath tale as soon as it began, instead becoming Goliath versus all the Davids. It has galvanized the globe in a way even COVID couldn’t, for the time being even relegating our own neo-Nazis to their Florida sandbox to chant support for authoritarian dictators amongst themselves. We don’t even know yet how huge this is, but as with all lessons, “knowing” comes after feeling, and today we’re feelin’ it like I’m feelin’ the Ukrainian woman who posted instructions on how to pilot Russian armored vehicles captured (or towed away by farm tractors). If he hadn’t died in 2001, Joe Strummer would already be singing about her (and the discrimination reportedly on display at refugee checkpoints.)
In the early days of the Clash, the band metaphorically referred to London’s elevated highway, The Westway, as a means to reach out to the world. Ukraine is reaching out today, reminding us of how precious and worthy democracy is. Thankfully there are road signs to help America find the way she has lost.
And speaking of the United States, where is America in all of this? For the most part, right where the world needs her, in the passenger seat, using her mad coordination skills, kickin’ down big cash as well as “those Washington bullets,” and enjoying her favorite pastime, rooting for the underdog.
Expect an answer, get an accusation. Request specifics, get whataboutism. Ask for sources, listen to the claims of invalidated media. Try and catch even a hint of responsibility, and reach the end of the discussion hearing none.
We zig-zag, rather than discuss. We dodge debate like an NFL quarterback running for the end zone.
Sharing information is less about reading, considering, and proposing than about tossing headlines and social media posts at one another. We might as well bestow “Blame” and “Me” with special interest group status.
This has been the experience of many Americans lately, whether discussing restaurants, mandates, or Covid common sense. Co-workers, family, friends, and every other swingin’ TikTok in between argue over justifications and resentments, all of which leap from a narrow “yes” or “no.”
Agreeing to disagree isn’t what it used to be. Rarely are so many so proud of being so obstinate. It’s as if someone started a rewards programs for foot stomping and blindfolding. Trying to get a straight answer from a devout anti-vaxxer, for example, is like debating a barking dog.
Why?
Maybe we’re lazier now. It’s easier to follow a politician who exists on Likes, baiting, and tantrums than to read policy, and maybe frequently renewed health and science data has normalized our being unable to keep up. But someone’s got to, and too many Americans seem tired of caring: about public health and safety, about equity, and frankly, about each other.
Such a degeneration of discourse has worsened one of America’s current perfect storms. It has enabled our individual-obsessed, consumer natures, making it easier to anticipate less, expect more, and attach conditions to rare concessions.
“Yeah but..”
“Yeah but..”
“Yeah but..”
It’s no way to get anywhere and there’s no excuse for it, but such is the result of becoming a calculating, self-congratulatory, sound bite society.
I can only separate myself from the obscuring of accountability and the grinding down of fellowship when I remember to get character or become one.
“What’s in a name?” isn’t a trick question. It’s a dumpster for opinions.
Before Andrew Cuomo walked out the door, the 56th Governor of New York signed Senate Bill S3332, amending the language of New York state law to replace all instances of the words “inmate” or “inmates” with the words “incarcerated individual” or “incarcerated individuals.”
Our national dialog on the power of names, be they for sports teams or co-worker pronouns, gave rise to SB S3332 and its approval. To those who wonder what purpose the bill might serve, the idea is to leave no stone unturned in seeking ways to lift negative reinforcement, terminology, and training. And considering how indelibly the American public has been trained to recognize those behind bars, it’s no surprise that some are crying, “Them too? What, they’re guests now?”
As if the premise of recognizing humanity wouldn’t include people who have broken the law.
But yes, widening the front lines of the identity war to include the incarcerated is already goading some into throwing up their hands. “New York lawmakers must have tortillas for brains,” whistles a Law Enforcement Today editorial, “because that’s the only way someone could wrap their mind around this legislation and think it actually is going to somehow make attaining gainful employment and housing easier after someone is released from prison.” The piece goes on to call the legislation dumb and pointless.
Which it might be, if SB S3332’s aim was to make those things easier. Instead it’s an attempt––finally––to limit the countless ways in which we make it unnecessarily harder to prevent recidivism and promote post-incarceration success. The same dismissive article also quotes the text of the bill:
“Studies have shown these terminologies have an inadvertent and adverse impact on individuals’ employment, housing and other communal opportunities. This can impact one’s transition from incarceration, potential for recidivism, and societal perception. As a result, this bill seeks to correct outdated terminology used to refer to incarcerated individuals.”
Since humanitarian acknowledgement isn’t revoked at sentencing, what’s so objectionable about putting it on paper? When you live in a concrete box, simple gestures are magnified. Encouraging offenders to see their bottom as a bounce is a matter of life-and-death. It’s something that starts with correction’s leadership and lives in the very paperwork of confinement.
Imagine living inside a Department of Motor Vehicles, say, one that’s located inside of a parking structure. If you can picture this, you have a good grasp of what it’s like to live in prison. Forget about having a visitor or buying Chapstick without the right authorization: white, blue or canary. And 20 to 40 times a day, you identify yourself using only your last name and inmate number, a number technically assigned to a case file, not a person. But nobody knows the difference after a while. We’ve gotten used to thinking of inmates as numbers, and the narrowness of this thinking is reinforced with every “Inmate, wait here!” and “Inmate, where’s your permission slip?”
“If you can’t do the time…” yeah-yeah-yeah.
This continual degradation or any of the other downsides to human warehousing is not actually a part of the punishment to which one is sentenced in a courtroom. One is sentenced to a period of confinement and/or time during which one is disqualified from fully participating in society. Everything else––including the dehumanization that we enable by allowing it to persist beyond the perimeter walls––is “bonus justice.” I’ve written about that before here and here, and it’s just as true for names as it is for actions.
What do we civilians know about the soul grinding effects of this genericized use of “inmate,” “felon,” and “convict,” be these “names” spoken or documented in court transcripts, work assignment evaluations, or in the language of social services law, county and general municipal law, civil rights, election, and labor law? It’s long past time we end this bonus justice.
Personally, I favor “adult offender,” because one can stop offending, whereas one can’t stop inmating or feloning. It can be damaging to conflate one’s actions with who they are, and downright damming to assign that misnomer linguistic permanence.
Yet some folks still can’t or won’t see past a name. There will be those who hear about the NY legislation and insist, “They did something wrong: No special treatment for inmates!” These taxpaying geniuses couldn’t care less about how a reduction in denigrating terminology can serve the ultimate goal of redirecting offenders rather than simply recycling them. But if they don’t care what certain names can do to a person, could they grasp what their continued use will do?
Because:
-They will reduce self-direction, until “follow the yellow line to the showers” becomes the only way to live. -They will reduce self-image to the point where scoring oneself a roll of toilet paper (or a fix) = a good day. -They will reduce self-esteem in such a way that it can only be regenerated via prison codes and philosophy. -They will reduce a need for self-expression and replace it with a need to enforce.
The question is, then, are we so unwilling to let go of our preconceived ideas of what others “deserve” that we’re ok with such a cost?
“I confused things with their names: that is belief.” ––Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words
How a story makes us feel should not be the measure of its historical worth.
America’s Interstate Highway System, constructed from the 1950’s through the 1970s, saw massive multi-lane middle fingers run through poor neighborhoods and communities of color. These were districts lacking tourism, valuable land, and political power. In many instances, like in Oak Park, Alabama, they had targets on their backs.
Obliterated in the late 1950s to make way for Interstate 94, Rondo was the backbone of the Black community in St. Paul, Minnesota. By the time I-94 opened in ’68, Rondo had lost “homes, churches, schools, neighbors, and valued social contracts.” With 15% of its population displaced, 300-400 Black-owned homes destroyed, and the loss of its chapter of the NAACP, Rondo would never see its diverse and thriving trajectory fulfilled as it might have.
Alabama’s Highway Director Sam Engelhardt, whose State Senate campaign cards read, “I STAND FOR WHITE SUPREMACY SEGREGATION,” ensured that Interstate 85 would wipe Oak Park, a neighborhood of Black civil rights leaders and its active voters, right off the map.
In other states, transportation infrastructure indiscriminately zigzags where it could have continued along a straight path, flattening Black neighborhoods despite the availability of alternate routes. So went the golden age of American road building.
Yet today, “Remember Rondo!” hardly has the same ring of social acceptance as other historical reminiscences about harm caused, like “Remember Pearl Harbor” or even “Remember the Alamo.”
And why should Remember Rondo —despite its grounding in historical fact—be considered by so many these days to be anti-American blasphemy? Does its viability make you hate America, as The Heritage Foundation, Turning Point Academy, and GOP Senator Ted Cruz all insist it will? Is it really an “attack on white people,” such that teaching history of this sort is, in the words of radio talk show host Michael Savage, “exactly what was done to the Jews in Germany in the 1930s…the road to the death camps”?
Yikes! Here I thought it might inspire someone to help protect us from future historical offenses.
Critical Race Theory and culturally responsive education aren’t the same, but they are under attack by those intent on misrepresenting them. And enemies of either would have you reject unheard voices and believe that racial equity is anti-American. It’s not.
Cruz’s recent claim that Critical Race Theory, originally conceived as a framework for understanding the relationship between race and American law*, “is every bit as racist as the Klansmen in white sheets,” is idiotic. Lawyer Cruz well knows this. In its broader conception (also never shamefully hidden behind white robes) CRT provides a path to addressing the inequalities that are historically embedded in our political, social, economic systems—because only by acknowledging them can we work to change them.
Former economics professor Michael Harriot puts it this way: “A complete understanding of economics includes the laws of supply and demand, why certain metals are considered ‘precious,’ or why paper money has value. But we can’t do that without critically interrogating who made these constructs and who benefited from them.” And he’s not even talking about changing those constructs. Neither, for that matter, is enlightening students about the literally structural racism found in the Interstate Highway System a) a statement about individual racism or b) necessarily a demand for change. It’s really just an acknowledgement ofa more complete historical truth.
But for the record, it’s highly unlikely that Critical Race Theory is being taught to your precious child: it’s rarely even taught to undergraduates for all its complexity. What is hopefully part of junior’s upbringing is culturally responsive education, which is less a thing than an overdue recognition that kids learn best when they have ways to connect what they learn to their own lived experiences. Brown University calls culturally responsive education, which was conceived in 1994, BTW, “a pedagogy that acknowledges, responds to, and celebrates fundamental cultures [to] offer full, equitable access to education for students from all cultures.”
Equitable access is muy anti-Americano, no?
And again, neither Critical Race Theory nor culturally responsive education explicitly advocate for, for example, calling out a Texas Legislature that threatens to withhold state funding to state universities refusing to “Remember the Alamo” the ‘right’ way, though it turns out, according to a consensus of historians, that the 13-day siege wasn’t about the mean old Mexican army after all. The Texians defending the Alamo—alongside their Tejano brethren, who have since been written out of the story—were fighting to preserve the slavery they depended upon for their cotton trade. When the Mexican government told ‘em to pay up in taxes and/or free their slaves, the ranchers turned to a carpetbagging former congressmen, a Louisiana con artist and knife-welding crackpot named Jim Bowie, for help. And they were defeated handily by the army of General Antonio López de Santa Anna.
Despite this defeat, and despite the widespread theory that Davy Crockett might have actually surrendered before he was executed, Texas lore demands fealty to the false narrative of white heroes who single handedly took on those dirty Mexicans and fought valiantly to the death.
Now look, I know everyone and their mother omits things from and/or embellishes their favorite personal stories. But when it’s a matter of a historical record on which the future gets built and funds get allocated, it’s not okay for the “natural” or “patriotic” way of seeing things to minimize the contributions of one group while inflating and celebrating the contributions of another. And if you care about truth in history, you’ll want to correct that record. Do we really want a government that deliberately stands in the way of that?
Of course, not everyone is interested in complex truths, which both CRT and culturally responsive education enable. Us-versus-them is much easier of a narrative to create, promote, and consume. The worst part is that recent politics, fake news, and American social trends all demonstrate that truth itself is beside the point these days.
But once more, how a story makes us feel shouldn’t be the measure of its historical worth.
Increased benefits or not, the past 15 months have exposed what little regard Americans have for waitstaff and retail help.
The entitlement of the Paid Not to Work narrative pales in comparison to clip after clip of retail and restaurant employees being yelled at and assaulted. Whether due to COVID protocols or the public’s general lack of coping skills, no wonder strip mall manpower isn’t rushing back to fill these domestic abuse scenarios disguised as employment.
I know a few hireable candidates who couldn’t care less about their old gigs, and it isn’t because Biden bought ’em a piece of Easy Street.
Relocation and career changes play a part, as do schooling, childcare, eldercare, and job applicants who remain unvaccinated. Clips of customer tantrums are the new Cops!, and all that viral phone footage plays an arguably bigger part in why 42% of restaurants and small businesses report an inability to fill job openings. Tik-Toks showing rage and verbal harassment reinforced the service-business dread of countless grocery workers. Infrared depictions of how our sneezes end up in Alaska don’t help.
From fast food to gourmet and everything in between, no food service employee is free from questioning whether or not it’s worth going back.
According to a server-friend at a popular LA eatery, neither do efforts to match pre-COVID efficiency while being met with insults and accusations of laziness — including from one’s own employer or corporate overlord.
Even the energy of those thrilled to finally be out and about can contribute to a lack of awareness about the many new obstacles to rapid service waitstaff now face. With a longer journey from grill to street table, this includes taking steps to ensure dishes remain piping hot for as long as possible. Says my friend, “If the food’s not hot, forget a decent tip.”
Ditto when a customer whose starting pointing is mask resistance instructs you to “go tell the chef to,” and you try to explain why you’re no longer allowed to do that.
There was also the post-Covid discovery that waitstaff had been assigned additional duties like busing their own tables (this was once the job of a bus staff). Wiping down the walls was a new one, and in between seatings, it’s now mandatory. So far the employees agree: this new “side work” eats up the time it would take to serve a full table, effectively eliminating at least one potential tip. “And when you don’t have a lot, you count on your tips – a lot.”
Welcome to Restauranting, post-COVID. For my friend and colleagues, being spoken to contemptuously has been yet another bonus, especially when managing the line of patrons waiting to enter an establishment. All staffers now get to help with this cattle call. “And out there,” I was told, “the insults are quicker, louder, and fueled by a mob.”
Further fun add-on expectations include:
Filling to-go orders, which have exploded in number for most restaurants
Prepping to-go condiment and utensil packets with all the usual landfill waste; never to exclude card-stock event promos and specials
Preparing bins of pre-wrapped table settings
Napkin folding and the resetting of street tables and fake plants
Answering phones using approved post-COVID etiquette
Navigating client demands related to food allergies and the substitutions the restaurant is no longer willing to make (all while car exhaust wafts across the “patio”).
It’s a post-COVID world, after all, and if the “undeserving poor” would just put down the Netflix and get back into their low wage boxes, everything would be so much better for everyone else’s 401k. Besides, some employers are even paying more than minimum wage, you greedy shirkers, and others are offering a handful of benefits. Not, like, sick days or paid family leave, but beggars can’t be choosers!
Or can they?? Can even underpaid people dare to dream that the supply and demand magic of capitalism might one day work for them, too? That the high demand for their labor might command a higher price paid in the form of livable wages and better working conditions?
Veteran waiters learn to take a lot in stride, like patrons who leave their dentures on the table, or a full diaper. Stuck ay home at the height of the pandemic, they may have even begun miss cranky regulars known for sending orders back, but that will sure disappear fast!
Of course some of these realities were present before the pandemic, but c’mon. After a year away from waiting tables and given the current climate, wouldn’t you be looking elsewhere, looking higher, or cozying up to connected friends and family? Wouldn’t you be digging at the dirt for a better environment to work in than a slop-trough with 16 televisions and a bunch of sniping customers?
So some are slow to go back. Duh. Many others are hesitant to put a target on their backs as first-timer restaurant employees. People do request interviews and then don’t show up. Is that because they’re on the white water rafting trip Congress gifted them, or did something better become possible?
Sure, there are those out there collecting and coasting on the government’s dime, middle fingers held high at this nation of chokehold apologists, oligarchs, sex-crime politicians, and groveling, racist swine. But it’s not the free ride the American way of life is paying for that’s keeping you from your bacon burger: in no small part, it’s the abuse, stupid.
Shaming someone back to your sports bar isn’t gonna work. But if you think it will, bring that burger over here so I can lift the lettuce myself and hock one for my friend.
