Easy road
America's hurtling toward disaster, one shiny object at a time.
I got a traffic ticket the other day. After dropping my youngest at camp, I approached a four-way stop with no other cars in sight, saw a motorcycle cop sitting there, stopped, and turned left. On went the lights and siren, and cosplay Erik Estrada was on me in a flash.
My immediate response was three-fold. I pulled over, checked to see which car Erik was after, and then checked the date when I realized it was me. No, it wasn’t the end of the month with some revenue quota on the line. Instead, it was “my bodycam recorded your vehicle not coming to a complete stop,” me saying “you can’t be serious,” and the cop wandering back to his bike to write me up.
While this was happening, I watched three cyclists completely blow the intersection and too many cars to count barely slow. I admit that when the cop returned, handed me the ticket and said, “Any questions?” I did indeed reply, “Yeah—why the hell are you doing this?” And I also admit a spirited discussion followed where I noted all of the above, the word “pathetic” was used, and I drove away shaking my head at the lunacy of it all.
It also got me thinking. Two weeks ago barely two miles away, a homeowner exchanged 30-odd gunshots with some would-be car thieves. Someone was stabbed in Evanston; another person shot. Kids wander into the local high school packing heat; others drown in Lake Michigan. But the priority is nabbing the dad who’s too tired to fight the allegation he didn’t come to a complete stop and instead opts to pay the fine and be done with it.
This kind of “policing” is easy. Catching actual criminals is hard. And as a metaphor for where this country is at just five months before the Presidential election, it’s pretty spot on. We’re increasingly a nation that embraces quick wins, and right now America is filled with people fiddling while Rome burns.
It’s clear a big chunk of voters here are rejecting an economy that’s the envy of the developed world and an accomplished, competent president to instead shrug at the prospect of an almost-as-elderly obese felon with a Cheetoh glow burning the whole thing down. The reason? Whatever random issue you want to pick. The topic du jour is inflation—a global phenomenon the US has tackled more effectively than almost anyone else1—and/or interest rates, where allegedly smart people like the governor of Nevada2 ignore the fact it’s higher interest rates that have clamped inflation. Both can’t be low, at least not right now.
But the big, hard question people are ignoring? The fact the election doesn’t come down to a choice over inflation or interest rates or any policy, even if Trump actually had an agenda beyond retribution. It’s a binary choice: one candidate believes in democracy; one doesn’t. I could list hundreds of reasons Trump (or his jelly-spined enablers) shouldn’t be anywhere near any lever of power, but that’s what it comes down to.
“In most democratic nations, voters typically cast ballots in response to workaday domestic concerns—prices, housing, employment, health care, crime and immigration,” E.J. Dionne wrote in the Washington Post this week, describing defending democracy as “a rather abstract issue” for a lot of the US electorate.
“Friends of the United States in Europe seem far more aware of the stakes in our election than we Americans are,” Dionne said. “They understand the threat posed to long-standing alliances among democratic nations and to a political consensus that transcended ideological lines in resisting extremism and authoritarian impulses.”
Europeans recognize the threat not only because of the outsized influence the US has on the planet but because of their shared history. Of course, no one ever got elected in the US by arguing things could be worse or that the rest of the world thinks you’re insane. The former suffers from the challenge of proving a negative, while the latter just feeds America’s natural impulse to spite the rest of the planet, even to its own detriment (Exhibit A: Retaining the imperial system. The prosecution rests).
What does get someone elected? Railing against incumbents with hollow assertions you could do better. Constantly misdirecting voters with one shiny object after another, especially around social issues. And false equivalence: declaring Trump’s conviction on 34 criminal counts (not to mention his indictment on 60 others) is a wash with Hunter Biden lying to buy a firearm, or those on the left pushing a “woke” agenda are somehow as big a threat to the future of the nation as those on the right actively seeking to undermine democracy and turn America into a theocracy.
The biggest case of false equivalence is, of course, suggesting Biden and Trump are somehow just a couple of guys vying for the presidency, separated only by policy differences. They’re not. But you see it daily in the calculations of senior Republican types such as Nikki Haley, who declare Trump dangerous, incompetent, an idiot, a threat to the nation, and whatever other DEFCON-1 alert you want to pick but … will vote for him anyway.
Five months to go, and it seems increasingly clear a combination of ignorance, stupidity, selfishness, and laziness will keep Trump right in this battle. And so long as the American people remain enamored by the easy road, we risk blowing through the stop signs until all that’s left is a smoldering wreck of a once great democracy.
A note about whatever this is …
After writing a few thousand articles for newspapers and magazines, I spent a long time trying a bunch of other stuff. I guess I figured what came (relatively) easily must by definition be less valuable, so I wandered in the corporate wilderness, becoming increasingly frustrated and doing work that felt increasingly lousy.
Sometimes with age comes wisdom, and I’ve realized finding something (relatively) easy ain’t a bad thing. So, this is a space where I’m resurrecting writing for myself, on topics weird and wild and wonderful.
Posts will appear when the mood takes me, but I do try to be consistently inconsistent—sometimes it’ll be a couple of days between drinks; sometimes a week. But if you subscribe, you’ll get a email letting you know I’m ranting. Again.
Let’s not overlook how companies opportunistically used “inflation” to pad profit margins by ramping up prices and reducing product sizes. They did it because they could, but there are signs the backlash has become too great to bear.
I’m being generous. Intelligence isn’t a prerequisite to holding elected office; in fact, it’s more of an impediment in today’s Republican Party.