If I had been 30 or 35 years younger in 2016, I would have voted for Donald Trump.
I would have selected him because, in my callow youth, I equated “outsider” with “good.”
I was too young in the 1970s to care about Watergate, except that the televised hearings interrupted my favorite cartoons, but I still absorbed the basic cynicism about government that was Nixon’s legacy.
The ugliness of the nation’s response to Vietnam, the burgeoning military-industrial complex, the rise of lobbyists and their hidden and not-so-hidden agendas, the proliferation of nuclear arms — all of it got into my DNA in a generalized, non-partisan way.
It ultimately led to a generation — or more — of people like me who came of age believing that all career politicians, Republicans and Democrats, were smarmy and not to be trusted. (I’m sure older readers will attest that governmental distrust did not begin in the 1970s.) I also believed gridlock was good, so a government that was mewed up in debates and didn’t accomplish anything was less likely to hurt anybody.
See? Cynical.
As we Watergate kids grew up, some of us became content creators whose projects underscored and extended that pessimistic worldview. “The X-Files,” for example, combined Nixonian distrust and paranoia with a healthy dose of public-health anxiety (vaccines, carcinogens and the rest) and urban legends to create a heady broth that influenced yet another generation.
These same misgivings and paranoia begat the modern iteration of Fox News, which begat QAnon, which begat a thousand and one memes where facts take a backseat to smarminess, conspiracy and the quick comeback.
All of which is to say that there is an undeniable appeal in the outsider, the maverick, the person who promises to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, to borrow an old expression, by tossing a grenade into the political system and chortling gleefully amid the ruins.
Donald Trump would seem to fit that bill. He comes from the corporate world. He has a healthy disdain for the status quo. His very presence irritates all the right people.
Eighteen- or 20-year-old me would likely have punched Trump’s ticket based on those qualities alone.
What I’ve come to realize over the decades, however, is that blowing things up isn’t enough. The guy with the live grenade in one hand needs to have blueprints in the other and a construction crew right behind him.
Trump is all about the destruction. The destruction of civil discourse. The destruction of democratic norms. The destruction of the rule of law, except where it benefits him.
In the last several months alone, we’ve seen him flounder through a pandemic, civil unrest and now an impending election. His administration’s lack of response and denial of science have contributed to the sickness and demise of more than 170,000 people.
Yet, somehow, he still has the active support of some 40 percent of Americans who have apparently made peace with the misogyny, racist dogwhistling, and election meddling. They are still fascinated by the guy with the grenade.
I’m convinced that, for many voters, politics is like being a fan of a particular sports team. No matter how awful the record, no matter how many people the star player assaults, it’s still their team. To abandon the franchise is to risk that worst of appellations: the fair-weather fan.
Good governance, of course, is not about blowing things up or backing the same horse, time after time. It’s about making laws to protect people and help them live better lives.
In my older and somewhat wiser years, I prefer to believe that many career politicians subscribe to a similar definition. They have dedicated their professional lives to working within a system of carefully delineated — yet imperfect — checks and balances to bring about their vision of what better lives look like.
They may disagree about what tomorrow should be. Some may be more willing than others to cross certain lines to get there.
And for those who are in it just for the money or the glory, or for those who step off the straight and narrow, well ... that’s why we have a free press.
Mavericks are fun to read about in novels or watch in movies. We cheer when they cut through the red tape by coercing a confession with force or punching through problems.
But real society shouldn’t work that way, not and call itself civilized. Trump is not building anything; he’s tearing it all down. Along the way, he’s gone from outsider to insider, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy about the inherent corruption of politics.
Let’s stop glorifying the maverick mindset and start appreciating those who work for change from within, through diplomacy and collaboration. Maybe that way, future generations can grow up with a healthy skepticism, minus the cynicism.
Or maybe I’m still cranky about missing my cartoons during those endless Watergate hearings.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Sunday, August 23, 2020
Thursday, August 20, 2020
Why Schools Can't Reopen This Fall
Schools cannot open or reopen this fall.
Because they never closed in the first place.
Schools, you see, are not brick-and-mortar structures, desks and hallways. They are not cafeterias, musty locker rooms and student art on the walls.
Schools are people.
First and foremost, they are children and young adults bound together in a learning community.
They are professionals who have made careers out of introducing others to a world of ideas and knowledge.
They are support staff who nurture young bodies and minds, physically and emotionally.
And they are the community that surrounds these people — parents, grandparents, neighbors, government officials, clergy and taxpayers.
So when many governors — including Ohio’s Mike DeWine — ordered districts to close last spring in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, they were shuttering buildings, not schools.
Because the business and passion of education continued.
Schools changed because of these orders, to be sure. The student’s desk moved to the kitchen table. The classroom shifted to a computer screen or a thick packet of activities. The cafeteria became a line of cars in a parking lot, picking up bagged lunches for the next day or the weekend, delivered by workers smiling behind their masks.
Some teachers went live on Zoom, delivering content in real time. Others recorded their lectures and posted them on YouTube.
I know teachers who visited students’ homes and presented lessons through screen doors or open windows, who answered emails in the wee hours of the morning as students worked through challenging math problems or complicated reading passages.
I know principals who mailed birthday cards and planted yard signs to honor the Class of 2020. Don’t forget technology resource workers who delivered wifi hotspots and diagnosed troubles with tablets and laptops.
And students responded. They submitted work through Google Classroom or email. They dropped it off to front offices or sent it by snail mail. They scheduled one-on-one conferences through video chats.
They persevered even in the face of incredible odds. Some became the primary breadwinners after their parents were laid off. Others cared for younger siblings. At least one of my students was diagnosed with the virus. Would it be OK, they asked politely, if their work came in a little late for the next couple of weeks?
Was it easy? No.
Was it equitable? Sadly, not always.
Were there trade offs? Of course. Students lost out on sports and other extracurriculars. They missed socialization with friends.
But was it school? Undeniably.
Now the nation’s administrators face tough choices — from the kindergarten to the collegiate level: How to juggle students’ educational, social and emotional needs during a still-dangerous pandemic.
How do kids go back to classrooms safely when they could be asymptomatic carriers, spreading a virus with no vaccine, no proven treatments and a variety of long-term side effects even for its many survivors?
And what effect will that return have on the nation’s healthcare system? Will hospitals be overrun with cases? And what happens when flu season begins in earnest?
I feel for every administrator wrestling with these issues, compounded by contradictory messages at the federal level, financial considerations and pressure from stakeholders across the political spectrum.
Many schools are opting for online-only classes again this fall. Some are advancing a hybrid solution — partially online and partially in-person. Others are going back full-tilt.
All have to remain flexible and be prepared to walk back plans if numbers spike or a governor speaks.
Regardless, none of them are truly reopening schools. Because you can’t restart something that never stopped.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Because they never closed in the first place.
Schools, you see, are not brick-and-mortar structures, desks and hallways. They are not cafeterias, musty locker rooms and student art on the walls.
Schools are people.
First and foremost, they are children and young adults bound together in a learning community.
They are professionals who have made careers out of introducing others to a world of ideas and knowledge.
They are support staff who nurture young bodies and minds, physically and emotionally.
And they are the community that surrounds these people — parents, grandparents, neighbors, government officials, clergy and taxpayers.
So when many governors — including Ohio’s Mike DeWine — ordered districts to close last spring in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, they were shuttering buildings, not schools.
Because the business and passion of education continued.
Schools changed because of these orders, to be sure. The student’s desk moved to the kitchen table. The classroom shifted to a computer screen or a thick packet of activities. The cafeteria became a line of cars in a parking lot, picking up bagged lunches for the next day or the weekend, delivered by workers smiling behind their masks.
Some teachers went live on Zoom, delivering content in real time. Others recorded their lectures and posted them on YouTube.
I know teachers who visited students’ homes and presented lessons through screen doors or open windows, who answered emails in the wee hours of the morning as students worked through challenging math problems or complicated reading passages.
I know principals who mailed birthday cards and planted yard signs to honor the Class of 2020. Don’t forget technology resource workers who delivered wifi hotspots and diagnosed troubles with tablets and laptops.
And students responded. They submitted work through Google Classroom or email. They dropped it off to front offices or sent it by snail mail. They scheduled one-on-one conferences through video chats.
They persevered even in the face of incredible odds. Some became the primary breadwinners after their parents were laid off. Others cared for younger siblings. At least one of my students was diagnosed with the virus. Would it be OK, they asked politely, if their work came in a little late for the next couple of weeks?
Was it easy? No.
Was it equitable? Sadly, not always.
Were there trade offs? Of course. Students lost out on sports and other extracurriculars. They missed socialization with friends.
But was it school? Undeniably.
Now the nation’s administrators face tough choices — from the kindergarten to the collegiate level: How to juggle students’ educational, social and emotional needs during a still-dangerous pandemic.
How do kids go back to classrooms safely when they could be asymptomatic carriers, spreading a virus with no vaccine, no proven treatments and a variety of long-term side effects even for its many survivors?
And what effect will that return have on the nation’s healthcare system? Will hospitals be overrun with cases? And what happens when flu season begins in earnest?
I feel for every administrator wrestling with these issues, compounded by contradictory messages at the federal level, financial considerations and pressure from stakeholders across the political spectrum.
Many schools are opting for online-only classes again this fall. Some are advancing a hybrid solution — partially online and partially in-person. Others are going back full-tilt.
All have to remain flexible and be prepared to walk back plans if numbers spike or a governor speaks.
Regardless, none of them are truly reopening schools. Because you can’t restart something that never stopped.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Thursday, August 13, 2020
Cleaning up on hygiene
Have you ever read something that you knew you shouldn’t, but you couldn’t help yourself?
When I was 13, it was “The Exorcist.” That novel gave me nightmares for years and made me hate pea soup. It wasn’t much of a loss. If you’re going to associate a food with demonic possession, you don’t want it to be pizza or ice cream.
Last week, the piece I couldn’t avoid was “Your Body Is a Wonderland” in the Aug. 3 and Aug. 10 issue of The New Yorker. In it, Brooke Jarvis reviews two books on skin, a topic that always makes my own thin layer of external tissue crawl with the thought of microscopic critters feasting on me day and night — especially night.
(Although I know it’s been widely debunked, I still can’t shake the fear that we swallow a certain number of spiders in our sleep each year. It’s another, less-publicized reason to wear a mask. If eight-legged freaks are going to lay eggs in my stomach, they’ll have to gain entrance through my ears.)
The books Jarvis reviews are “Clean: The New Science of Skin” by James Hamblin, and “The Remarkable Life of the Skin” by Monty Lyman. Both appear to address the way we have dissed our epidermis over the last few generations and to extol the virtues of a back-to-basics approach.
Hamblin’s book sounds especially odd. He is a medical doctor who no longer showers, although he “occasionally rinses.”
I went through a phase like this in grade school. I would retreat to the bathroom, fill the tub with water, and then sit beside it, splashing with my hand every once and a while to satisfy my parents, who were listening outside the locked door because apparently there was nothing good on TV.
Instead of bathing, I would read books and comics I had smuggled into the bathroom. My vocabulary was increasing at about the same rate as my B.O.
This went on for a while. I don’t recall a come-to-Jesus moment when my friends confronted me because I was stinking up the classroom — it was the ’70s, and nobody smelled too good — or any teacher phoning home to inquire ever so carefully about why I looked greasier than usual.
One day, I just started to groove on bathing again.
Dr. Hamblin hasn’t outgrown his inner second-grader. He argues we are better off not stripping away the body’s natural biosphere with abrasive soaps and chemicals, only to add them back with commercial moisturizers.
Jarvis makes a point to say that Hamblin still endorses handwashing, however, so coronavirus conspiracy lovers need not apply his rhapsody on the unwashed body to any spurious arguments about herd immunity or letting viruses ooze all around us unchecked.
Fair enough.
The takeaway is that Americans have been sold a bill of goods about cleanliness, to the tune of about “a hundred billion dollars” in 2019. What most Americans today take as a given — wash the body with soap, the hair with shampoo — is not natural, but rather the consequence of generations of marketing decisions to make us feel perpetually dirty.
If I can get serious here for just a moment (it may surprise some of you to realize I was trying to be funny before), this cleanliness manipulation is a reminder that many of the assumptions undergirding our lives —about gender, race, beauty, education, transportation, faith and civic duty, to name only a few — are not some profound expression of natural law or eternal truth, but the result of coordinated campaigns that benefitted somebody, somewhere.
Follow the money, goes one old saying. “Nothing happens until somebody sells something,” goes another.
All of which isn’t to say that I’ll be swearing off either soap or showering anytime soon. Nor do I plan to read Hamblin’s or Lyman’s books.
A few pages of skin creepiness is more than enough for me. If I want to be scared this summer, I can always reread “The Exorcist.” Or just watch the evening news.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
When I was 13, it was “The Exorcist.” That novel gave me nightmares for years and made me hate pea soup. It wasn’t much of a loss. If you’re going to associate a food with demonic possession, you don’t want it to be pizza or ice cream.
Last week, the piece I couldn’t avoid was “Your Body Is a Wonderland” in the Aug. 3 and Aug. 10 issue of The New Yorker. In it, Brooke Jarvis reviews two books on skin, a topic that always makes my own thin layer of external tissue crawl with the thought of microscopic critters feasting on me day and night — especially night.
(Although I know it’s been widely debunked, I still can’t shake the fear that we swallow a certain number of spiders in our sleep each year. It’s another, less-publicized reason to wear a mask. If eight-legged freaks are going to lay eggs in my stomach, they’ll have to gain entrance through my ears.)
The books Jarvis reviews are “Clean: The New Science of Skin” by James Hamblin, and “The Remarkable Life of the Skin” by Monty Lyman. Both appear to address the way we have dissed our epidermis over the last few generations and to extol the virtues of a back-to-basics approach.
Hamblin’s book sounds especially odd. He is a medical doctor who no longer showers, although he “occasionally rinses.”
I went through a phase like this in grade school. I would retreat to the bathroom, fill the tub with water, and then sit beside it, splashing with my hand every once and a while to satisfy my parents, who were listening outside the locked door because apparently there was nothing good on TV.
Instead of bathing, I would read books and comics I had smuggled into the bathroom. My vocabulary was increasing at about the same rate as my B.O.
This went on for a while. I don’t recall a come-to-Jesus moment when my friends confronted me because I was stinking up the classroom — it was the ’70s, and nobody smelled too good — or any teacher phoning home to inquire ever so carefully about why I looked greasier than usual.
One day, I just started to groove on bathing again.
Dr. Hamblin hasn’t outgrown his inner second-grader. He argues we are better off not stripping away the body’s natural biosphere with abrasive soaps and chemicals, only to add them back with commercial moisturizers.
Jarvis makes a point to say that Hamblin still endorses handwashing, however, so coronavirus conspiracy lovers need not apply his rhapsody on the unwashed body to any spurious arguments about herd immunity or letting viruses ooze all around us unchecked.
Fair enough.
The takeaway is that Americans have been sold a bill of goods about cleanliness, to the tune of about “a hundred billion dollars” in 2019. What most Americans today take as a given — wash the body with soap, the hair with shampoo — is not natural, but rather the consequence of generations of marketing decisions to make us feel perpetually dirty.
If I can get serious here for just a moment (it may surprise some of you to realize I was trying to be funny before), this cleanliness manipulation is a reminder that many of the assumptions undergirding our lives —about gender, race, beauty, education, transportation, faith and civic duty, to name only a few — are not some profound expression of natural law or eternal truth, but the result of coordinated campaigns that benefitted somebody, somewhere.
Follow the money, goes one old saying. “Nothing happens until somebody sells something,” goes another.
All of which isn’t to say that I’ll be swearing off either soap or showering anytime soon. Nor do I plan to read Hamblin’s or Lyman’s books.
A few pages of skin creepiness is more than enough for me. If I want to be scared this summer, I can always reread “The Exorcist.” Or just watch the evening news.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Tuesday, August 4, 2020
Wing, wing, who’s there?
Given that much of the world is on fire, literally and figuratively, I hope you didn’t miss National Chicken Wing Day on July 29.
Yeah, every food, article of clothing and hobby has its own day. I used to scoff at such foolishness, but since this damn pandemic bound me up tighter than a block of cheese, I celebrate every single one that is of interest to me, no matter how inconsequential. It’s the little things, ya know?
So, National Chicken Wing Day. If you’re late to the party, it’s fine. The wings will taste just as good, unless you order them from [name of area business redacted. Imagine it’s one you really, really like so that you are suitably outraged].
According to information found in a random tweet, which is at least as trustworthy as Dr. Demon Seed in the Breitbart live stream that has everybody all riled up, Americans prefer flats to drums by a ratio of three to one.
If you’re like me, you’re saying to yourself, “Flats? Drums? What the h-e-double-hockey-sticks is the difference?” (Having already sworn earlier in the column, I cannot curse again without receiving an R rating, which would cause my audience to plummet from 15.07 to 3.07 readers, the .07 being my mom, who gamely tries each week but then quits when I’m not funny.)
I had to look up “flats” and “drums” as they relate to wings. As I suspected, drums are the really good ones and flats are the ones I leave for somebody else, popularity be ... darned.
I’m not well-versed in chicken, so I don’t know which part of the poultry tree growers use to harvest each type or how long wings take to ripen. Maybe the drums stay on the tree longer, since they’re bigger?
Just kidding. Everybody knows chicken wings grow in the ground, like potatoes, and the really hot ones come from closer to the equator, while the mild ones are native to the northeast.
Another distressing factoid is that the average American eats 90 wings each year. If a standard wing weighs about 3.5 ounces, then the average American eats ... a lot of wings.
Calm down, logisticians. That equals almost 20 pounds of wings a year, which is a figure math-aletes can calculate in their heads, but which took me several long, laborious steps on the computer, followed by a short break of three hours to relax on the couch with a cold compress on my forehead.
Numbers, numbers, will no one rid me of these meddlesome numbers?
Regardless, America consumes more chicken wings than it has unused doses of hydroxychloroquine stored in the bunker beneath the White House that the president regularly inspects. A goodly number of these are consumed on Super Bowl Sunday (the wings, not the chloroquine), which is kinda sorta the unofficial National Chicken Wing Day.
I’m not the biggest fan of chicken wings, truth be told, because I hate any food that’s too messy to eat without a bib. Chicken wings fall into this category, especially when coupled with pizza. Together, they create a perfect storm of greasy sauce and poultry residue on your fingers — and when a cat saunters across your lap while you’re eating them, a purrfect storm — just as your spouse asks you to pretty please turn up the volume on the TV to cover the disgusting sounds you make while chewing.
So while I’ve never walked away from a platter of chicken wings, I’ve never sprinted toward one, either.
Which begs the question, when is National Moist Towelette Day?
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Yeah, every food, article of clothing and hobby has its own day. I used to scoff at such foolishness, but since this damn pandemic bound me up tighter than a block of cheese, I celebrate every single one that is of interest to me, no matter how inconsequential. It’s the little things, ya know?
So, National Chicken Wing Day. If you’re late to the party, it’s fine. The wings will taste just as good, unless you order them from [name of area business redacted. Imagine it’s one you really, really like so that you are suitably outraged].
According to information found in a random tweet, which is at least as trustworthy as Dr. Demon Seed in the Breitbart live stream that has everybody all riled up, Americans prefer flats to drums by a ratio of three to one.
If you’re like me, you’re saying to yourself, “Flats? Drums? What the h-e-double-hockey-sticks is the difference?” (Having already sworn earlier in the column, I cannot curse again without receiving an R rating, which would cause my audience to plummet from 15.07 to 3.07 readers, the .07 being my mom, who gamely tries each week but then quits when I’m not funny.)
I had to look up “flats” and “drums” as they relate to wings. As I suspected, drums are the really good ones and flats are the ones I leave for somebody else, popularity be ... darned.
I’m not well-versed in chicken, so I don’t know which part of the poultry tree growers use to harvest each type or how long wings take to ripen. Maybe the drums stay on the tree longer, since they’re bigger?
Just kidding. Everybody knows chicken wings grow in the ground, like potatoes, and the really hot ones come from closer to the equator, while the mild ones are native to the northeast.
Another distressing factoid is that the average American eats 90 wings each year. If a standard wing weighs about 3.5 ounces, then the average American eats ... a lot of wings.
Calm down, logisticians. That equals almost 20 pounds of wings a year, which is a figure math-aletes can calculate in their heads, but which took me several long, laborious steps on the computer, followed by a short break of three hours to relax on the couch with a cold compress on my forehead.
Numbers, numbers, will no one rid me of these meddlesome numbers?
Regardless, America consumes more chicken wings than it has unused doses of hydroxychloroquine stored in the bunker beneath the White House that the president regularly inspects. A goodly number of these are consumed on Super Bowl Sunday (the wings, not the chloroquine), which is kinda sorta the unofficial National Chicken Wing Day.
I’m not the biggest fan of chicken wings, truth be told, because I hate any food that’s too messy to eat without a bib. Chicken wings fall into this category, especially when coupled with pizza. Together, they create a perfect storm of greasy sauce and poultry residue on your fingers — and when a cat saunters across your lap while you’re eating them, a purrfect storm — just as your spouse asks you to pretty please turn up the volume on the TV to cover the disgusting sounds you make while chewing.
So while I’ve never walked away from a platter of chicken wings, I’ve never sprinted toward one, either.
Which begs the question, when is National Moist Towelette Day?
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
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