Bad At Small Talk

Let’s say you start a race at noon on a Sunday. It doesn’t have to be a long race, but for the sake of this analogy, we’ll say it’s a half marathon. It’s a race still measured in miles (so no metric conversion required for us, Americans) and has a name that is easy to refer to, so ok, here we go...

You are about to run your first half-marathon. That’s 13.1 miles. Let’s say you trained really hard and are prepared to finish this half-marathon. You run at an inordinately even pace, and every single mile you run takes you exactly 10 minutes. 

Ok, quick check on the facts so far for those of us who loathe word problems: 

What is the goal = finishing a half marathon 

How long is the race = 13.1 miles 

When did you start = 12:00 p.m. (noon) 

How fast = 10 minutes per mile (or 6 mph) 

Any acceleration to consider = no, zero acceleration over the entirety of the race. No pace change. 

OK back to the problem statement…you start the race at noon, you run an exact pace for the whole thing. What time do you finish? 

The answer is 131 minutes after you started. You take the total length and you multiple that by the pace and you end up with 131 (13.1 miles x 10 minutes/mile). That means you would cross the finish line at 2:11 p.m. (120 minutes equals 2 hours with 11 minutes as the remainder). 

Ok bonus question: if everything else above was the same, but you started the race at 11:00 a.m., would you finish the race earlier than 2:11 p.m.? 

YES! Of course you fucking would because you started the goddamn thing earlier. It’s a simple logic problem. It requires no understanding of the numbers. It has nothing to do with how good a runner you are, how prepared or otherwise. You could sprint the whole of the course. You could show, that from 12:00 on, you are the most graceful gazelle in runner’s shorts. If you perform under the same conditions outlined above, with the same grace, but started at 11:00, or 11:30 or 11:59 a.m., you would finish that fucking race sooner.

Dr. Fauci, in an interview on the Trump-despised CNN, simply explained (with a level of diplomacy that deserves the Nobel prize for tongue-holding) that it follows logic that if the U.S. would have responded to the coronavirus emergency earlier, more lives would have been saved. He also added that factors that go into those types of decisions are complicated and somehow in the response to CNN’s Jake Tapper, did not actually cast any aspersions at this administration which, and I’m going to be as objective as possible here, has not been optimal in its response to this outbreak. Because of this interview snippet, #FireFauci popped up on twitter and was retweeted by...get this...hold on to your hats...our president - TweedleTrump himself. 

The spread of this pandemic appears to have a pace. It’s not as simple as miles per hour, but there’s lots of science and modeling tracking how it moves through populations and how efforts to curb the spread are changing the shape of the model. You certainly by now have heard the phrase “flatten the curve”. I know the science of it all doesn’t compete with the golden barometer of Trump’s feelings, but it’s producing useful understanding of the outbreak. Containment and mitigation strategies are essential combat tools and their implementation is based in a time-domain. There is no way around judging the efficacy of any effort made on when it was initiated. If mitigation efforts would have been started sooner, even if nothing else in the way the administration responded changed, it stands to reason that less lives would have been lost to the pace of the spread. Any scientifically literate person could draw that same conclusion. And let’s be reminded that Fauci is where he is because he is a world leader in the scientific literacy of immune response. He is not by Trump’s side because he is a sniveling sycophant. And because he is the former and not the latter, the eggshell ego in charge of this entire fucking country right now is perpetuating a Twitter conversation which is calling for Fauci to be removed from his post. Meanwhile, Trump and his mouthpieces have been rewriting the timeline of the administration’s response, pushing it back a few weeks at each speaking engagement. Displacing blame everywhere within ear shot claiming perfection.

This is one of Trump’s bronzed classic moves. If you have been unequivocally proven inept, or let’s just say wrong, use your present power of authority to simply restate the circumstances you were wrong about and then dare the public to go back and fact check you. Then when that happens, you can point to any number of ambiguous, marble-mouthed responses as being taken the wrong way and clear up any misconstruings with the facts of the day claiming you had a feeling that the facts that have emerged were going to emerge the way they did because you are some magical soothsaying instinctual genius. Jesus, the rinse-repeat is exhausting.   

Oh, by the way. Antibiotics don’t work on viruses. It’s ok if you, Jane or John Q. Reader, don’t know that. I think I’m safe to assume that you are not informing the public conversation on the seriousness of this coronavirus outbreak. It’s not ok that Trump doesn’t know that and stands in front of countless cameras and their respective microphones and says stupid shit like that. It should not be so easy to roll ones eyes in exasperation at what the President of the United States is saying, day in-day out, but I think my eyeballs are so calisthenic at this point they can see inside my own brain. 

I’ll try to not let this bleed into my opinions on the impeachment hearings. I don’t quite know what to make of it all, really. I’m fearful that things are broken enough that we’ll end up with a jury hung on a stalemate and the inevitable, capital-N, Nothing happens. The only real hope of this not to be a protracted root canal of a situation, it would seem, is if Mitch McConnel finds his sack of scruples in some unkempt corner of his turtle shell. That’s a not a very hopeful hope. Anyway, I’m intrigued by a recent phraseology of defense of Trump by the loyal punditry. This idea of every contestant on the Impeachment Match Game that supports the quid pro quo claim at the heart of the hearings is some masterfully placed mole from the deep state. The Deep State. It’s perfect. It sounds like a video game or a Bond hyphenate. It’s insinuation of secrecy dovetails nicely with the intended audience’s penchant for conspiracy theory fan fiction. 

So, all of these folks with first-hand involvement in the impeachable concerns have been paraded in front of the cameras to espouse some version of the same story in slightly different timbres, one after one, questioned and answered, berated and defended. The most interesting of those might have been the testimony of Gordon Sondland. Not only did he dispense of the level of solemnity that the others postured, he was also the most Trump-friendly of all the witnesses thus far. And largely due to his flippancy, his admissions, and candid recollection of the conversations with Trump could be/should be the most damning. So, what was the reaction of the peanut punditry. 

“Sondland is clearly an operative for the Deep State.” 

“The reason we elected Der Trump to office was to rid DC of these type of swampy swindlers like Sondland.” 

Both of those sentiments are gems and largely for the same reason. Trump has influenced the national discourse to such a degree that it is knee jerk to suggest that any battle lost is clearly the work of a rigged system. Sondland’s testimony does not look good for Trump. Response: Sondland was clearly a Deep State operative beset upon this rigged hearing processional. 

Stepping back for a moment, let’s take a look at how Sondland ended up in his ambassadorship, shall we? A billionaire who made his billions in the real estate market, decided to exact some monetary influence on the 2016 election. If you had to guess whose campaign to which he contributed, which would you guess? Yep, Donald J. Trump. In fact, he didn’t just drop a few thousand on a gold-lined, bone china dinner, he paid $1M to Trump’s campaign for president. One million dollars (cue Dr. Evil pinky-to-lip)!  

Wanna guess how much he gave to anyone else’s campaign? Zero million dollars! 

Let’s sum up the details on Sondland so far, then. 

Experience in politics: Zero 

Experience in foreign affairs: Zero 

Level of wealth: Billions 

Support of Trump: Millions 

Gordon’s current title: United States Ambassador to the European Union. 

Elected or Appointed? Appointed 

Appointed by: Trump 

With all the above openly known and accepted, part of the public record - facts, yet given the indemnifying nature of his testimony, Trump talkboxes, like Judge Jeanine, have turned to suggesting this shadowy figure was placed to corrupt Trump’s efforts to de-swamp DC as a part of nefarious Deep State conspiracy. But, Josh, Judge Jeanine is so obviously a caricature of everything that’s wrong with Fox News’ yellow journalistic opinioneers. Nobody believes what comes out of her foaming mouth, do they? That’s a whole other box of hair, but Yes, Yes, people do take Judge Jeanine Pirro as one of the few straight talkers in a world full of fork-tongues liars posing as legitimate journalists. If she says Sondland was a plant by the Deep State, it must be true and worth repeating on every social media platform, and if possible, with the caps lock on. 

It would seem unachievably delusional for articulate persons to perpetrate such an about-face with such ignorant conviction. Yet…yet, I’ve seen this bologna repeated and linked and liked by dozens of people with whom I share the goddam social media cesspool with. That perhaps points to Trump’s biggest influence on public discourse…granting the right to be openly doltish right out in the public sphere. It is perhaps the leading contender explaining such ardent support of this buffoon – he too has no qualms about flipping his own script with his only compass being the subjective, self-serving ends justifying any means necessary. 

Despite this attempt at an explanation, I will not ever understand the blind allegiance to Donald Trump. I don’t see a single shred of evidence in anything he does publicly or policy-wise that would warrant this die-hard fandom and exaltation. I get wanting to give people with opposing ideologies the benefit of doubt. I get remaining hopeful that such a strange election result will bring upon some positive change. Shake the tree a bit. I get wanting to support the president that you voted into office even in times when they become unpopular, but we are well beyond all that at this point. Aren’t we? Is there not enough evidence available that this dude just kinda sucks as a human. I’ve spent enough time on that topic, but it continues to vex me. 

Back to Gordon Sondland - the Deep State operative. Picking up somewhere midstream…Sondland gives Trump a bunch of money for his campaign. Trump gets elected. Trump appoints Sondland to a post he doesn’t at all deserve. Trump, being Trump, steps in his own shit. This time the wrong/right people were involved and don’t turn a blind eye. Those people are called on by Congress to testify and recount the indiscretion. Sondland was one of these witnesses and explained what went down under oath-bound subpoena. Sondland’s flippancy about the level of discourse shared between he and the POTUS looks pretty bad for Trump. Trump supporters, incapable of admitting any fault, any stain, or nit to be picked now suggest Sondland has been a spy this whole time..? What in the actual Fuckasaurus Rex is going on? Please just examine the logic of the argument for one minute. It shouldn’t take longer than that. 

Trump has filled his advisory boards and ambassadorships with patrons of his brand. It doesn’t matter to Trump if the institution crumbles around him as long as the brand is protected. Time and time again that has been patently clear. There is nothing illegal about this practice. I would submit it shows a complete disrespect for the nuanced balance of world politics, but Trump has never been about nuance and grace. He operates on scratch for a scratch economy that keeps large puddles of money from drying up while changing hands. Sondland paid into the brand and was rewarded with an ambassadorship. This should be a red flag for anyone concerned about our relationship with the EU, but I’m betting that the average Trump supporter isn’t considerate of that. Sondland was not a logical choice by any reasoned measure of political appointment. It is not reasonable for, say, a pawn shop mogul to drop a million dollars into SpaceX and then expect to be the pilot on the next private space flight. That expectation would defy logic, defy reason, and endanger the effort on whole. 

Sondland, like Trump, wanted power for his money, and like Trump, he now will rollover on anyone to save his own keister. That’s the dog-eat-dog environment Trump has fostered his entire public life. Now someone has popped up that’s been just as good at existing within it and everyone cries foul? It makes no sense to be mad at Sondland for behaving the way he has, if none of that ire has ever been directed at Trump for always behaving the same way. What’s good for Peter is good for Paul, right? These two men are very similar people, except one had a reality TV show and the other is an actual billionaire of his own making. Being so stridently in belief of Trump’s innocence but so quickly and outlandishly condemning of Sondland’s testimony mixes logical fallacies like a child’s watercolor set resulting in the same shit color on the brush. 

I don’t know if Sondland will be the one key that unshackles this gridlock, but I know it smells fishy that people close to Trump are now only able to defend the president against Sondland’s admissions by claiming Deep State involvement…bogeymen are constructed out of fear.

Last night I saw Built To Spill perform for the umpteenth time. I could figure out the value of umpteenth, but I just don’t feel like it right now. Suffice it to say, I’ve seen Built To Spill a lot. BTS has been my favorite band since my sister’s college boyfriend put “Car” on a mixtape for me when I was still a pretentious teenager in small-town Ohio. My senior year of high school, the band released Keep It Like A Secret, which might be the single album I’ve listened to more times front-to-back than any other (My folks might argue that it was Weird Al's eponymous debut that I discovered the summer I turned six). Also, during my senior year of high school, an abutting of near misses was coming to it's adolescent head with a good friend of mine for whom I also carried a torch throughout most of high school (sweet run-on sentence segue, Josh).

Her name was Jessica and our relationship went something like this: 

• Freshman year Josh catches feelings for Jessica (doesn’t tell her). 
• Freshman year Jessica starts dating one of Josh’s oldest friends 
• Sophomore year - status quo. 
• Summer after sophomore year Josh starts dating a girl from the next town over 
• Jessica becomes single (Josh’s oldest friend goes off to college).
• Junior year Josh breaks up with girlfriend because he catches feelings for Jessica again after being in such constant and close proximity (still doesn’t tell Jessica) 
• End of Junior year, Jessica starts dating a bona fide prick. I'm willing to admit here that my impression of this dude was colored covetously, but he did have certain qualities I abhorred. He could very well be a super guy at this point in his life, and I hope he's doing well, truly.
• Josh, securely in the friend zone, becomes a shoulder to cry on through all the mistreatment and petty fights with aforesaid boyfriend. 
• Senior year rolls around, Jessica's still with boyfriend, but they are in break-up/make-up mode - classic cycle after dizzying cycle. 
• I confide my feelings for Jessica in a mutual friend. Mutual friend divulges to Josh that Jessica at various times has also had feelings for Josh. Oh great, now ya tell me.
• Springtime,  senior year, Josh finally tells Jessica about the current iteration of his attraction to her as more than pals, makes mix tape and includes BTS’s “Else” 
• Jessica doesn’t know quite how to handle it, says she needs time but not space (that phrasing clearly haunted me because a couple decades later I recall it plainly), breaks up with boyfriend, Josh and Jessica continue to hang out, but boyfriend also still kinda in the picture. It's sinuous.
• Josh gets tickets to BTS at The Grog Shop with plans to take Jessica in hopes they play "Else", and a magic twinkle settles in her eye that she can't rub out. And at that moment, nothing would matter, and Josh and Jessica would kiss at some point outside of the club, and Josh's brooding boy heart would swell and tumble around in his chest like a street performer. 
• Jessica agrees to go, wants to go.
• Josh is pumped.
• ON again/OFF again boyfriend finds out and issues ultimatum effectively pulling the plug. 
• Jessica acquiesces to boyfriend and they get back together as the date of the show nears. 
• Josh and his pops go to see BTS at The Grog Shop (one of the best shows I’ve ever seen - shout-out to "Captain Chronic" for holding it down with me in the front row). 
• Josh asks Doug Martsch to come play his graduation party
• Doug politely indulges his teenage fan and asks the date.
• Josh replies and Doug submits his regret that BTS will be in Minneapolis that date.

Sorry, we're getting off track...Now, there were some extenuating circumstances that seemingly contributed to Jessica staying with her boyfriend at the end of senior year. I would have argued a faint rouge of battered wife syndrome applied over a rich-kid lords influence over poor-girl foundation. This feeds into the fact that they had already planned to attend the same college in California together. Rumor had it that his parents were helping pay for her schooling. I don't know, maybe I made that last part up to help explain the stilted wobble away from how I saw things going down. All in all, most of it can be chalked up to bad timing and teenagers generally being dumb bundles of hormones and ganglia incapable of properly expressing themselves. In fact, that informs just about all the near-miss quality to our mini-saga. High school, amirite?

For all of that summer, the song “Else”, on my favorite record, which I listened to often, would heart-wrenchingly remind me of my failed attempt at making something happen with Jessica out in the open. It’s a beautiful song on its own, but I loaded it down with the gravitas and pretense and responsibility of being the soundtrack to, not a love-lost, but love never-realized. I’m not sure which is worse, really. 

I am getting to a point.

Last night BTS played “Else” and it was just as beautiful as it has always been. I was at the show with my wife and I wrapped my arms around her when the opening chord struck. Weird move for a song that holds so much history and is a prickly reminder of the high school one-that-got-away, right? 

Yeah, so here’s the point: As soon as I met my would-be-wife freshman year, opening weekend, at a party amongst hundreds of others, I was drawn to her. I thought she was cute and had this simple sense of style that I could sense was free of artifice, but I didn’t know how deep my feelings would drive until we became friends throughout that fall and winter. I knew those feelings were real, like really real, when at some point, as I listened to “Else”, I stopped being reminded of Jessica 3000 miles away at a Christian college in California and started thinking of Sarah (my eventual wife). That switch flip elicited the bravery to risk our budding friendship and tell Sarah how I felt about her. Recall that relatively recently that hadn’t gone so well for me...but the outcome was different this time around, thankfully. 

“Else” sort of unofficially became our song, and then more officially when we elected for it to serve as the backdrop for our wedding processional. It was the first song we and the world before us heard after being pronounced wife and husband. So, with Sarah standing in front of me watching Doug Martsch and company play our collective favorite song from their catalog, I wrapped my arms around her and she sunk back into my chest and looked up at me lovingly, knowingly, as I kissed her forehead. I love those moments; I live for those moments, a romantic at heart, and it reminded me of the commutative property of music. Music has the ability to be transformative, but our experiences also have the ability to transform music. Thanks, Doug, for writing that song. Thanks, Sarah, for changing its meaning.

I intended this to be a quick one here today to comment on the latest couple of brain busters (read: insane goofballisms) coming from the person holding the highest office in all of the United States. It took more words than I expected, but let's have a look.

First a comment about the Tim Cook/Apple denial (he claims to have said “Cook” but it was soft and fast in between “Tim” and “Apple”), rescinding and subsequent wholly inadequate explanation (he did say “Tim Apple” after all, but he did so as a way of saving time by combining the first name and the company name because apparently it takes an absurd amount of time to produce one additional syllable by including the man’s last name) – holy shit. 

Let’s ignore how weird denying a simple slip of the tongue is and get to the heart of this exchange. It is such an obvious extension of Trump’s own narcissism that he called Tim Cook, “Tim Apple”. By the way, he’s done it before with the CEO of Lockheed-Martin, calling her Marillyn “Lockheed” instead of Marillyn Hewson. Trump doesn’t understand any world where hugely successful and respected business people don’t plaster their names all over everything they foist up on the pedestals of their remarkable business prowess. Why doesn’t he understand that? Because that is the façade he’s operated under his entire life. People will think you are big and powerful and successful the more things that bear your name. Need respect amongst the elite real estate moguls of 1980s NYC? Build a skyscraper and put your name across the front. Need a non-profit as a tax shelter? Call it by your name, etc, etc and so on  so forth. 

The way it all unfolded, though, if we may return to the weirdness, is Classic Trump – never admit a mistake regardless of how inconsequential and how idiotic a denial might end up sounding. He is one of the most egoistic, least self-aware people to every command an audience. This statement said without sarcasm in the age of Youtube star millionaires and Instagram influencers raking in small fortunes by taking pictures of their finely tuned buttocks in Kate Hudson’s athletic clothing line. 

Secondly, his address of the most recent tragic crash of the 737 that killed all 157 passengers aboard… In lieu of exhibiting a modicum of compassion, any feigning extended sympathy for the families affected, our walking twitterhandle-in-chief decided to decry the complexity of modern airplanes.  He punctuated his insight with “I don’t want Albert Einstein flying my airplane”. Well, on that we can agree, for a couple reasons: 

1) Albert Einstein died in 1955 

2) Albert Einstein was a theoretical physicist not a trained airline pilot. 

Trump also suggested pilots these days have to be computer scientists from MIT, which I realize is just a shortcut for “smart people”. Here I feel compelled to bring up that I also don’t want a computer scientist, or a brain surgeon or a cardiologist or Nobel laureate flying a passenger plane…unless they are also trained passenger plane pilots. What is going on? Just because you don't understand how a modern airplane works, doesn't mean it is impossible for anyone else. Something tells me the nuances in the physics of flight at any stage of the evolution of air traffic might be a little outside of Trump's grasp.

Regardless, this passing tweet does two continually damaging things. Two fleecings taken from the first two pages in the Trump playbook. It suggests that the advancement of scientific achievement (an apropos substitute for enlightenment) is inherently unsafe and shouldn’t be trusted and it plays into the legitimization of the irrational that is hallmark of the common denominator of his base.  You don't have to put forth any effort or policy that might raise the collective intelligence if you can proffer the dumbing down of discourse to be lapped up and lauded.

Here’s the rub: By the time this is all done, Trump will have successfully devalued truth and demonized intelligence amongst a strong cross-section of the population, effectively sucking a meaningful portion of our national identity into his vacuous vapidity. I’ve frequently expressed the opinion that one shoestring of hope in this administration is the impotence of Trump, the executive branch, but my oft-held belief is wavering under the threat of irrecoverable damage to common thoughtfulness. If there is one reason that otherwise honorable people who voted the ignoble into office should feel bad about their decision, it is this.

The trouble with numbers…numbers are more or less confirmable in this day and age. Gone are the storied times of grandpa’s braggodocious lies about walking 4 miles, uphill each way, to school when he was a kid. We have Google maps and a historical residence directory that can be used to confirm just how far the old fart walked. We have topographical maps that can help us understand the land features and change in altitude from one point to the next. Similarly, we have modern digital photography which provides scrutinizable evidence of the sums of things captured in said pictures. Trump doesn’t seem to get this, and his blatant disregard for hard evidence as it pertains to numbers, and otherwise, is unfortunately part and parcel of his presidency (probably long before, but I wasn’t forced to pay attention then). Moreover, it all started on day one. Trump didn’t have a million and a half people at his inauguration. It wasn’t a crowd bigger than any other President. It wasn’t bigger than the previous president. Why do I know that? 1) Trump lies about everything 2) Every first-hand account says otherwise 3) Photographic evidence. 

This brings me to the most recent spate of bald-faced public deceit gurgled up from the festering ulcer of a voice box in the President’s throat. The El Paso rally that he held recently for some reason was counter-rallied by hometown boy and rumored 2020 democratic hopeful, Beto O’Rourke. Quickly the numbers as relayed by the president – I need to stress this is The. President. Of. The. United. States – a max of 200-300 people at Beto’s rally compared to anywhere from 69,000 to 35,000 to 8500 to 10,000 depending on when you tuned in. He finally settled on 10,000 in the stadium and the remainder of some 5 digit number waiting with bated breath outside per the chance that the golden glow of his weird coif might dander some regality at their feet. When challenged on the fact that the stadium he was in only legally held 6500 due to fire code (which he misquoted as 8500), he proceeded to explain how he was able to convince the El Paso fire department to squeeze in some extra for an even 10K in attendance. 

Ok, let’s go all the way back to the early claim of Beto’s paltry crowd size. I am loathe to include pictures in these little essays, but please do reference the images from that speech. Beto O’Rourke is pictured on stage with a very sizable crowd receiving his words. Is it the 7000 that would have maxed out the arena? I don’t know. Can’t tell from the pictures, but it sure as shit is not only 300. I can count more than 300 individual people’s faces from just one of the perspective shots that have been published. So, why lie about how small Beto’s crowd was? Ok, pause, we’ll get back to that. Now let’s try to wrangle in the overstuffed claim of Trump’s crowd size, by first examining corroborated stories and their respective sources. The fire chief, to whom Trump ascribed the grace of breaking regulation to get more people in the stadium, patently denies that occurrence. No conversation was had and under no circumstances would he have squeezed in an extra 3500 people. Next, first hand reporting suggested that a couple thousand were outside at most. I haven't heard a final tally if one was ever actually conducted, but it's likely not in line with Trump's insistence. So in total, if we’re generous with on-hand accounts, there may have been somewhere close to 10,000 people in or around the arena, but that’s a far cry from 10K inside and another 25K or 35K waiting in the wings. You can’t just lie about numbers. As the POTUS, you shouldn’t lie to the public about anything, but empirically, you cannot lie about numbers. Numbers can always be checked. It’s just further proof of this man’s utter disassociation with truthfulness. 

Let’s now play the revisionist and pose a couple scenarios in which we could have potentially given passes for misquoting numbers in this context. 

Trump could have said something to the effect of: “This is such a great crowd filled with great people who came out in support. It feels like 10000 people are cheering back at me.” 

OR 

“We packed the house tonight and I am told there were over 10000 more waiting outside that unfortunately couldn’t get in. I am so grateful for the turn out.” 

Wanna know why neither utterance was possible from the onset? Because it requires a bit of humility, self-awareness and gratitude to pull either off. Of which, Donald Trump has zero amount. Why is any of this important? Why are you asking so many questions in your own essay, Josh? I’ll ignore the latter and address the former. It’s important because it showcases the exact machinations of Trump’s existence. He cares diddly-squat about truth. He’ll extend himself about the breadth of a frog’s hair in service of honest discourse. He only cares about winning, and in doing so, priority numero dos is making his opponent feel little. He operates from pure ego land. It’s actually pretty astonishing to witness. In the context of commenting on the K-9 squad, he plants lines like “wouldn’t I look great walking a dog on the White House lawn” and then postures this feigned huckster grin as the cheers wash over him. His base are willing participants in the charade cranking the handle of the meat grinder not knowing they’re all next in line for the chute. It is an odd thing to behold, but nothing is more obvious than the fact that Donald Trump only exists to make Donald Trump feel better about being Donald Trump. That people still support this is odder still. Support conservatism all you want. Be a flag-bearer for the Grand Old Party. Align yourself along the narrowest of byways to make sure your religious beliefs are not impugned or that your guns will never be regulated. These are all things that make some sense on some quasi-rational level. But Jesus H. Christ holding an AK, the dude at the top of this heap is a goddam buffoon, metastatically so.

In ways meaningful and minute, reinvention is inescapable. You reinvent yourself every morning after a night’s sleep even if the details of your reinvention don’t change much. I am inclined to suppose we all reinvent ourselves without even knowing it from time to time. Lemme step back a half-stride. Maybe “All” is much too broad of a stroke. Some people certainly don’t on any significantly impactful level; some people wear their lots in life like a big comfy blanket, content to go with the flow, and in the flow, they find an ease in processing through life’s environs. Others of us feel like our fishy scales are pointed the opposite direction, and the water we’re swimming in is always either too hot or too cold. 

Perhaps the wide-angle lens I started with should train more on the fact that there are times in every person’s life where reinvention is more readily available than other times. Moving to a new town, switching schools, leaving high school and entering college. Taking college’s mistakes and readjusting in grad school. Pumping yourself up for a job interview to bolster those qualities an employer might find desirable. Entering the dating game again after a marriage and subsequent divorce or fresh widowing. The frictional forces at these times are somehow less resistive. These are some of the least risky times for reinvention, opportunities that will encounter the least amount of fallout from the viewing public. Historically, in the vast majority, one’s viewing public is just a few close families and friends, but it’s wholly different today where one person’s reach far surpasses the closer knit of their fabric. Reinvention in light of today’s online avatar worship might be a couple thousand Facebook friends or couple hundred thousand Instagram or Twitter followers (as well as the close family and friends who knew you before your IG game blew up). An adjacent modus involves utilizing the distinction between real life (flesh and bone) and social media presence exploitatively to create an alternative existence for your ideas. This lattermost exposition is what I’d like to take a closer look at. 

I was triggered by a specific example as I write this, but this is not specifically about the person in question. Though, I may use this person’s particulars with which to illustrate my point; I don’t know yet I haven’t gotten that far. 

I find the idea of mis-authenticating yourself to serve an on-line profile, or an impression you want ascribed, or even one you’ve been able to cultivate, via social media platforms troubling. I’ll put aside a deeper discussion on authenticity (and whether it even exists) for a later date. Social media has changed the game on so many levels. I’m so Andy Rooney in my nostalgia for simpler times to decry its existence entirely, but much of its upshots I find itchy. One poignant example is its heralding of this new era of the personality vs. persona paradoxy, in which a cult of personality can be entirely detached from the person pushing it out into the world. We all do this in small ways, of course, however it is fascinating to me how the digital world has become so closely connected to our every minute reality that the line between the two becomes indistinguishable. This makes it a perfectly constructed vehicle for reinvention, but what of the disconnection from the people that know you outside of the ones and zeros? 

I know plenty of people who annoy the shit out of me via their cultivated online presence, pandering hashtags, and choice, emoji-laden quick takes, who I enjoy spending time with in person. I get it, colliding spheres of influence and influencers have created this amalgamated Westworld of a place where awaiting hordes trip over clever quips and a good hair day in volumes that aren’t available in everyday interactions with human flesh. Social media is a respite from the relative obscurity of physical life in which we carry around with us all the days that came before. An online presence, in this way, lends itself to convenient (and painless) disembodiment and thus a ripe playground for fantasy. Fantasy that looks a lot like reality. Let’s also at this point shelf a deeper digression into the evils of social media pressures. 

The corner of this that currently interests me is the inspiration social media provides to completely change one’s real-life being to better match the reinvention fantasy. The example I keep in my mind’s eye has changed their physical appearance, style and profession at the behest of new identity in the age of Facebook followers, twitter hearts and Patreon subscribers. I suppose I find this particular case interesting because I know there was a consorted meeting to premediate this reinvention with specific targets and specific ends. It all seemed very fake to me at the time of the execution, but now this person is living in the character created and ushered into the world at the bloom of social-media-personality-dom. 

What’s the point? Well shit, I don’t know, man. It just bothers me, so I wrote about it. I guess it’s that reinvention, as natural as it is incrementally, feels disingenuous when carried out so abruptly with such discrete pre-meditation, and I wonder if the vehicle of social media has irrevocably changed self-identity in this way that flies in the face of searching for one’s authentic self in favor of creating a self that adheres to some notional acceptance by others on a wider scale.

I seem to keep coming across this one similar sentiment being shared on podcasts and in interviews I’m spending my time with. It’s either a Jungian synchronicity or a case of Baader-Meinhof or a result of my vicarious wanderlust seeking out a certain style of candor in interviews from entertainers that make their living on the road. In any regard, there is this common thread expressing a period of required de-gassing after coming off the road.

Sturgill Simpson recently talked it about on a podcast I was listening to and it reminded me of the other times I’ve heard entertainers like comedian Bert Kreischer or U2’s Bono discuss this post-tour period or reorientation. Sturgill was expressing that if he spends 2-3 weeks out on the road steady hustling, it takes him 3 or 4 days to re-assimilate once he returns home, to feel normal around his wife and kids again, and get back on a schedule that regular folks generally adhere to. He goes into a room in the back of their house in self-mitigated exile and zones out until his organs re-align. Bert Kreischer has a policy in his house that the day after returning, no one bothers him because he’s a mess from the road, and he generally only goes out for long weekends, though his moves usually involve long flights and time zone shifts packing a lot into a small chunk of time. The Kreischer family calls it “re-entry”. If Bert was intended to be out on the road for 3 days, it’s an automatic +1 for his period of re-entry, so he’s essentially disconnected from his other realities for 4 days in total. As another example, Bono is rumored to have an apartment in NYC somewhere as a haven to hunker down in for two weeks or so to re-adjust before returning home after a stateside U2 tour. That seems a bit excessive, but Bono is a different kind of animal altogether. 

Hearing these stories has lead me to consider the plight of the independent, weekend warrior-type entertainer. The band, artist or comic that is trying to make a name for themselves on the road. My band, Yellow Paper Planes, has endured this sort of touring leading up to and following the release of our debut “Building A Building” - seeding those grass roots. We spent a solid couple of years getting on the road for long weekends of shows (Th, F, S), usually once a month sometimes twice. This, to some, may not seem like hitting it super hard. There are bands that sell everything and sublet their apartments and zig-zag all over for weeks, months, years at a time committing to the road full-time. I’m not trying to compare the level of commitment or the plight. I’m merely convening on what my experience has been with respect to this idea of “re-entry”, which, by the way, in case it was not obvious, takes reference from an astronaut returning from space and having to figure out how to be terrestrial again. 

All things considered, I have come to think the weekend warrior move may be the toughest row to hoe. There are variations of course and everyone has their own shit pulling them multiple directions at any given time, but in our case, we each have day jobs, two of us with families, and generally have to use vacation time to stretch out on Thursdays and Fridays. You get to Thursday’s gig and you’re shaking off the week that led you there. You drive some more, you visit a radio station or hang out for a podcast or some other such thing and then play your show on Friday. Friday night things are feeling pretty good. It’s the proper weekend now so people are usually pumped to party, so sleep is little and beers are much. Repeat on Saturday, and by the time Saturday’s show is over, you’ve got your sea legs.

It takes until load out of Saturday night, each time, but you start to settle in and get that tickle in your giblets telling you that you could do this forever (or at least for a long while).  Then, Sunday morning comes calling you to make the long drive back home. So three shows, three load-ins, three load-outs, probably a sum total of a dozen hrs of sleep on some strangers floor and maybe enough cash to keep the gas tank full and buy breakfast in the morning… that also brings up a good distinction of economy. We’re not going out to foreign towns to healthy embedded crowds, to guarantees and rider fulfillment and a provided motel room. We travel in a 4Runner packed in like a Tetris screen, not a tour bus or anything with enough stretching out space to get comfortable to sleep in. There’s very little creature comfort on the road at this level. Not a complaint, just painting the backdrop. You go get on the road in hopes that a few handfuls of new faces will light up when they see you play and hear your music. Maybe two or three like you enough to buy some merch, and someone buys a round of beers to cheers your performance. There’s a famous line by the likes of B.B. King that goes “They pay me to travel; I play for free”. Our version is “No one pays us to travel; and our compensation is that 45 minutes on stage together playing our hearts out (and a split of the door after production and door guy fees)”. That 45 minutes is not to be undervalued. 

So, yes, back to Sunday. Sunday is for driving home, for coming down. We unload at our practice space and go our separate ways to begin the re-assimilation process, and for me personally, I get about as much time as it takes me to get from Jeremy’s house to my own (12 minutes or so). There’s no being left alone in the den with a set of headphones and an edible. We don’t have a den. There’s no sojourn to a secondary location for napping and regaining composure, certainly there is no apartment in Manhattan. There is a rambunctious six-year-old who hasn’t seen her dad all weekend and her mother who has single-parented for three days. There’s an old house that creaks and thuds when people move that doesn’t care that I haven’t slept all weekend. And none of these entities owe me any sort of “re-entry” period. I can’t wait to get that full-limbed hug from my daughter. A part of me had longed all weekend for some of that energy. I want to be a set of sympathetic ears for my partner, my best friend and supporter of my dreams, who has been immersed in that energy all weekend and needs a break. I don’t want to be left alone, but, Jesus H. Christ, sometimes it would be sweet to just be left alone for a while to catch bearings. 

An existence in multiple states at once might be one of the more difficult ways to exist, both psycho- and physiologically. This idea, of course, is not limited to the struggling independent entertainer supporting themselves or a family during the week and chasing a dream on the weekends. Multi-modality is something I think a lot about and I’m sure will come up time and time again in this blog. The point I'm getting to, I think, is that the weekend warrior doesn’t ever really recover from the war. Always to be nursing a deficit, yet somehow willing to jump right back into battle knowing that recovery is just not an option. The pattern repeats itself: long week at work trips right into a long drive to a gig, no sleep (at least not good sleep), dehydration, another long drive to the next town, no sleep, etc. and so on. Why suffer such a both-end-candle-burning? It has something to do with that 45 minutes.

Is the Space Force somehow different than NASA? I gather it is intended to be more aggressively defensive, but I have been trying to retrieve some clarity on its mission and unsurprisingly, it is not forthcoming. There is video of President Trump describing its establishment as a necessary entity to secure our future…in space. He intimates in his bluster that there will be battles over the post-orbital skyscape in the very near future and that the U.S. needs to proactively implement a Guardians of the Galaxy type force to protect…what, exactly? Pence suggested that the U.S. dominance over “space” has been challenged by adversaries. There is apparently an affront on our GPS satellites…China proved it could shoot down something once and Russia has a laser, I guess. Is Japan building a chain link fence around the moon? I just don’t understand it. And insomuch I am asking the deeper why? 

Here’s what I think (that’s why you came, right?). The obvious is that he needs a distraction from the imbroglio surrounding this administration. But perhaps in a rare breeze of self-awareness, Trump has realized that he has very little control over what comes and goes through this mostly impotent government under his administration. He likely has had a segment of his personal staff investigating big-impact “things” that a president can do without needing another branch of the federal government’s approval. Some young upstart over a lunchtime brainstorm eked out “you could start a new branch of the military”. Trump got all excited because he’s savvy enough to understand what his base likes. Anything military will endear them. Read on for a dramatized estimation of how this conversation went down: 

“Great idea! (let’s be honest there’s no way he gave a compliment to this peon) How about a military branch only concerned with what goes on in the ocean?” 

“Sir, we have that already. Actually, we have two branches serving our concerns on our shores and in international waterways. The Coast Guard and The Navy.” 

“Ok, how about one that is mostly planes and helicopters, we could call it Sky Force!” 

“We have that already too, sir. It’s called the Air Force.” 

“Ooh that’s good, ‘Air’, yes I like that better.” (let’s be honest he didn’t admit that a pre-existing idea is somehow better than what he just came up with) 

“let me ask you this? Do we own the moon?” 

“No, sir, the moon isn’t really an entity to be owned.” 

“Oh, we’ll see about that. Anyway, how about a Moon Force?” 

Plucky upstart then interjects, “Maybe expand that to include all of space, Sir?” 

“That’s what I said, Space Force. Do it.” (goes back to eating his Chik-Fil-A) 

A straight-faced Mike Pence appeared on public broadcast to pronounce the Space Force the sixth branch of the U.S. Armed Forces with plans for full implementation by 2020. As best as his dead pan is capable, he mustered enough insinuated exclamation points to make it seem like an energized assertion of American dominance over…again, what exactly? 

This is one of the chief tenets I find problematic about this entire administration. The dealings in vagueries. The inability to elaborate in such a way that gives one confidence that they have even a topical understanding of what is being presented. Space is a vast notion. Surely there is a better way to describe the jurisdiction of this new branch. A little more precision, a little more measured language wouldn’t go astray. I’ve been trying to consider if I would find a Space Force proposal so preposterous if Obama’s administration had proposed it. I think I would, but I can’t be sure. I’m not immune to my own biases. However, when public address always feels like it’s coming from a first-day-on-the-job, door-to-door, snake oil salesmen, these cynical biases seem warranted, necessary, almost inextricable at this point. 

Had Pence or Trump or the Secretary of Defense come onto the stage and stood apost at the podium and explained that in order to secure the future of U.S. intelligence and protect U.S. infrastructure, such as global positioning comm-links, satellite monitoring, etc., and to protect the ambitious explorations of NASA, we are creating, out of the Air Force, an extension of defenses into extra-orbital space (with a tongue-in-cheek reference to it maybe being called a Space Force, if you will), I have to think it wouldn’t get panned so harshly by every skeptical free thinker in the press or otherwise. 

But of course, then comes the resounding rally cry of Fake News’ blatant anti-Trumpism to assuage any notion of possible fair play in the reporting. The Space Force will MAGA! CNN and liberal media are just trying to keep a good man down…when in fact, what has been presented, in the way it has been presented is simply asinine. It has come off as half-cocked and under-considered. Try to imagine if Truman would have come on the radio in 1947 and said “There’s lots of things, bad things, flying around and putting America in danger and so we’re going to spend a lot of money building planes and other things that fly so that those bad people, and believe me there are some really bad people, not necessarily Russia, but also maybe Russia and others. We’re going to establish the Air Force to protect the air from those people and keep America powerful in the AIR!” Now, since we’re in this imaginary, period-piece, thought exercise, also try to consider a 1947 where no foreign power had ever engaged in aeronautical combat yet (which obviously isn’t the case, but try). Some people listening in on the end of the tubes, might raise an eyebrow or two at such an odd proclamation. 

“But Joshua, in 1947, Harry S. would have recently decimated The Pacific Theatre, and with the help of the Allies in Europe, put an end to the Third Reich thus concluding victoriously the second World War.” 

Aha, but remember we’re considering a 1947 without airborne warfare. It's not even on the tip of the most militaristic tongue in this 1947. In this 1947, airplanes have only ever been used as people and cargo movers, ways to access difficult terrain and expedite the exchange of information… so no A-bombs, no air strikes over Berlin, no Pearl Harbor to goad the U.S. onto the world stage in the first place. Given these constraints, I have to feel like some people, even ardent supporters, would have thought it odd, at least, hopefully…I don’t know. Maybe the Truman analogy is a bridge too far. Too obtuse, requiring too much of history to not have occurred to fully accept. Granted. Let’s go again. 

Try to imagine, instead, that you are a problematic president who’s administration is embroiled in turmoil and scandal that seems to be closing in on your legitimacy in office. Let’s say you brashly claim on a regular basis how accomplished you have been so far, but the tale of the tape suggests that you haven’t been able to accomplish anything of note despite your stumping, ramrodding and shoe-horning. Try to imagine instead of addressing the complicated problems facing modern society, reparation after natural disasters, city centers with toxic drinking water, racially-fueled violence and enduring prejudices inflamed by your existence, that fame is the most important thing to you. Let's extend farther and pretend that you've spent the entirety of your life rich and out of contact with normalcy in any regard and that your development as a human was arrested somewhere in the early 80's. Someone then suggests in a closed-door meeting that you can start a new branch of the armed forces without Congressional approval and that it can be called the Space Force, and it will be the biggest most expensive military endeavor ever…actually now that I put that way, I get it. I’d probably do the same thing.