2022 Excuse of the Year: Doubling Down

12/22/2022 by J. Nelson

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.

Time to Stop Making Excuses

12/04/2016 by J. Nelson

Oh, there are plenty of reasons to be frustrated with the world around us. And I do care who you voted for: I’m just not making excuses for letting it live on my shoulder and whisper in my ear.

I’m tired of tolerating increasingly thin justifications from friends and family to be – and remain – outraged. Never mind that I, too, am offended, righteously indignant, morally and socially insulted and feeling betrayed (I mean, Bad Santa 2? Really?). Why contribute to the stream of bitterness that’s become a raging river?

Yes, rationalizing has gotten hyper-stupid. After this year, our cop-outs have developed an overlapping quality where contexts mingle because we offer so many. It’s as though we need Venn diagrams or flow charts to see them clearly.

How many excuses do I make in a day? Well shit, I’m afraid to ask, for fear of being shown self-awarded behavior exemptions I don’t even know I’m making. But whether on a community level, a national level, or by ourselves in line at the grocery store, too many people seem to think they’re entitled to comfort zones in which their irritation reflexes and rude or hurtful antics can’t be called out for the warm-fart coping skills they are. Read more

Morality in the Morning

03/07/2014 by J. Nelson

Are we more dependable and trustworthy at breakfast than at dinner?

Are you tired of your account managers giving you the runaround about their weekly TPS reports? Try moving your meetings with them to the a.m.! According to a just-released study from the Association for Psychological Science (APS), straight answers are more likely in the morning than in the afternoon.

The APS study proposes that the rigors of everyday living erode our capacity to resist lying and cheating, using four experiments to substantiate what researchers call the “morning morality effect.” The morning morality effect basically means that, by the end of the day, our ability to process moral decisions and maintain self-control is about as effective as an empty can of air freshener.

The study also found that people with a greater innate propensity for theft, murder, and bullshit are influenced by the morning morality effect to a greater degree than those with a naturally heightened sense of moral awareness. In other words, unless you’re a codependent fixer, the colleagues you likely already avoid will get even worse toward quittin’ time, while the steadfast goody-goodies will be more likely to resist the temptation to act on their amoral thoughts.

(Still, ever notice how impatient the sanctimonious types can become by the end of the day? Sounds to me like the APS is sayin’ that, come four o’clock, even the cloyingly self-righteous can’t help plotting to kill their rich uncles.)