Mitch's Blog

NYTimes.com:

Trump seems to imagine an American autarky: a closed nation, self-sufficient and indifferent to the rest of the world.

…

Imposing tariffs, expanding territory, a new Mexican war and a traditional vision of the American people — these are what the nation needs, Trump says, to be “great again.” In which case, MAGA cannot possibly refer to anything in the 20th century, when the United States essentially built the modern international order, as much as it must refer to some time in the 19th century, when the United States was a more closed and insular society: a second-rate nation whose economy was many magnitudes smaller and less prosperous than our own.

All the timelines. Mastodon, Bluesky, Discord, RSS, Tumblr, newsletters. All of it.

Keeping up with the news is a colossal waste of time and source of needless stress. You can stay on top of everything you need to know in five minutes a day, most days.

This morning, I didn’t listen to any podcasts while walking. Ninety minutes of thinking, interacting with the dog, listening to the world around me, feeling my breath go in and out, and my feet walking the earth. I did not die.

Isaac Asimov was one of my heroes when I was a boy and into my 20s. Years after he died, I learned about truly awful behavior he engaged in routinely.

For many years after that, I held Asimov in contempt.

But now my respect for him is restored. I once again admire him today, for the qualities I admired in him before I knew about the other things. I admire his talent, work ethic, intelligence and nerdy charm.

Harlan Ellison was one of my heroes as well. His reprehensible behavior was always apparent — even his friends say oh yeah Ellison could be a colossal asshole. But I continue to admire his talent, intelligence, work ethic, loyalty and courage to do the right thing, publicly and loudly.

I was a Mel Gibson fan until he went publicly Nazi. I haven’t been able to watch anything with him in it since.

I never was a Harry Potter fan but I admired J.K. Rowling personally, before she became a professional transphobe.

Orson Scott Card was one of my favorite writers in the 70s and 80s. I haven’t read his work since he became a professional homophobe. I don’t miss it either — there are still about a million great works of fiction that I will never have a chance to read. Even without Card, I have no shortage of books to love.

Everybody loved Bill Cosby, me included.

Sometimes I can compartmentalize feelings about a public person I admire when horrible and credible allegations surface against them. I can still admire their good qualities and hold those qualities up as a standard to aspire to myself, while eschewing their bad qualities.

Other times I can’t compartmentalize in that fashion, and I can no longer tolerate a person I admire who reveals themselves to be personally reprehensible.

An in-depth longread by Derek Thompson at The Atlantic.

This solitude epidemic is not the same as loneliness. Despite public statements to the contrary, we’re not in the middle of a loneliness epidemic. We’re just choosing to be alone, Thompson notes:

… compared with 2003, Americans are more likely to take meetings from home, to shop from home, to be entertained at home, to eat at home, and even to worship at home. Practically the entire economy has reoriented itself to allow Americans to stay within their four walls. This phenomenon cannot be reduced to remote work. It is something far more totalizing—something more like “remote life.”

…

the cardinal rule of contemporary apartment design is that every room is built to accommodate maximal screen time.

…

Despite a consumer economy that seems optimized for introverted behavior, we would have happier days, years, and lives if we resisted the undertow of the convenience curse—if we talked with more strangers, belonged to more groups, and left the house for more activities.

Social media and other screen time means we’re never truly alone, which is part of the problem. We don’t get time to recharge.

But Thompson ends on a hopeful note. He quotes political scientist Robert D. Putnam, author of the seminal 2000 book Bowling Alone:

” I have a view that is uncommon among social scientists, which is that moral revolutions are real and they change our culture," Robert Putnam told me. In the early 20th century, a group of liberal Christians, including the pastor Walter Rauschenbusch, urged other Christians to expand their faith from a narrow concern for personal salvation to a public concern for justice. Their movement, which became known as the Social Gospel, was instrumental in passing major political reforms, such as the abolition of child labor. It also encouraged a more communitarian approach to American life, which manifested in an array of entirely secular congregations that met in union halls and community centers and dining rooms. All of this came out of a particular alchemy of writing and thinking and organizing. No one can say precisely how to change a nation’s moral-emotional atmosphere, but what’s certain is that atmospheres do change. Our smallest actions create norms. Our norms create values. Our values drive behavior. And our behaviors cascade.

The anti-social century is the result of one such cascade, of chosen solitude, accelerated by digital-world progress and physical-world regress. But if one cascade brought us into an anti-social century, another can bring about a social century. New norms are possible; they’re being created all the time. Independent bookstores are booming–the American Booksellers Association has reported more than 50 percent growth since 2009–and in cities such as New York City and Washington, D.C., many of them have become miniature theaters, with regular standing-room-only crowds gathered for author readings. More districts and states are banning smartphones in schools, a national experiment that could, optimistically, improve children’s focus and their physical-world relationships. In the past few years, board-game cafés have flowered across the country, and their business is expected to nearly double by 2030. These cafés buck an 80-year trend. Instead of turning a previously social form of entertainment into a private one, they turn a living-room pastime into a destination activity. As sweeping as the social revolution I’ve described might seem, it’s built from the ground up by institutions and decisions that are profoundly within our control: as humble as a café, as small as a new phone locker at school.

Since last year, I have been making more of an effort to get out into the community, in my own introverted, nerdy socially maladroit way. I’ve joined the Masons and rejoined the board of the La Mesa-Foothills Democratic Club. Also, inspired by this whimsical Tumblr post, I’ve started a personal calendar of local community events that it might be fun to go to. All of this is a start.