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I am a sophomore at Nathan Hale High School in Seattle, Washington. I have friends from all walks of life and believe that I would be perfect for your panel. I do not play any sports, although I had a brief stint with the lacrosse team my freshman year. I am a big fan of the entertainment industry. I have very diverse tastes in TV, movies, books, theater, and music. I cannot say no to quality entertainment, whatever the genre. I am obsessed and fascinated by pop culture, and I love reading the newspaper and magazines.
That's the beginning of an essay I wrote in 1997. I was fifteen, and applying to be one of USA Today's 'teen panelists'.
The world of teenagers is very different from how it was in the fifties and sixties. Most males are concerned only with sex and drugs. Females seem mostly concerned about how to avoid them. Of course, there are the few lonely souls who dare to be different, but they are labeled as 'weirdos' or 'faggots' and are generally ignored. To be popular and successful as a teenager, one must be willing to conform to what the media and their peers tell them.
It's utterly horrific, obviously, and the most surprising thing about it is that I got the panelist position. Based solely on the 'strength' of this essay. I was one of USA Today's go-to teens for like two years outta this. Shit's still on my resume.
Looking back on my panelistship (complete with overly artsy photo shoot), I sort of built up my essay in my head. Like, it must have been good for the journallati at USA Today to send me from Pacific Northwest obscurity to their gossamer pages, right? I must have expressed something incisive, or creative, or clever. Or at least grammatically fucking correct.
In this age of single parents and families in which both parents are working, the role of mother and father begin to mean less and less. Oftentimes parents would like to be home with their kids, but can't, because they have to work a double shift so the aforementioned children can keep ordering pizzas and watching cable.
It's genuinely terrible, and it only gets worse from there.
Maybe the scariest thing about modern technology isn't the triviality, or the ubiquitousness, but the permanence. If this essay wasn't saved on a 12-year-old hard drive, I never would have read it again. It could have remained, in vague worthwhileness, in my head and my nostalgia.
My parents sent me a whole DVD of Word files they excavated from my old hard drive. They all have the original file names, but I'm starting to think I should just label them Cringe1, Cringe2 and onward, to mortifying infinity. There's one called 'White Racial Identity' that I'm thinking about just deleting.
We forget the extent to which we construct our childhood from input far more diverse than its actual events. History, movies, other people's recollections, aborted friendships, it all gets folded into the way you think you had it when you were a kid. These pictures and texts from my childhood seem like some sort of alternate reality to my 'real' upbringing, the one I keep in my head. It's easy to forget that it's actually the other way around.
My goals for this year are pretty simple. I want to get my licence (drivers) and get the heck out of this hell-hole we fondly call Nathan Hale, and the dungeon we fondly call High School. I am sick of all the b.s. politics, the pandering, the social ladder, and assignments intimately describing myself to someone I hardly know.
Accomplishing these goals will involve drivers-ed and Running Start [that's the early college acceptance program I left high school to go do the following year].
The only thing that will make this year any different from last year is that there will hopefully be less creeking. [I got thrown in the creek behind our school. A lot.]
That's from another essay I found, another 'describe yourself' exercise that I was apparently getting sick of. I've only made it through about three of the files--bad writing is so much worse when it's you--and the main thing that strikes me isn't the thudding cliches or the inorganic metaphors, it's the deafening bitterness. I had completely edited this trenchcoat-mafia shit out of my adolescence.
Looking back, I had it pretty great. I had friends who liked me, teachers who challenged me and parents who went to bed way before my curfew. Why was I so eager to get away?
I liked it better when 'youth is wasted on the young' was just a cute saying, and not a conclusion supported by 48 megabytes of Word Perfect files. I don't know if I'll make it all the way through them, but the only thing I keep thinking is, 'Thank God I didn't keep a diary.'
'Avatar' is James Cameron's James Cameron-est movie, if you know what I mean. The only thing clunkier than his machinery is his dialogue, and he's always been more interested in the non-humans in his stories than the humans.
'Avatar' is the purest distillation not only of the Cameron approach to filmmaking (lots of non-human character development and 'how it works' scenes, not much zoom on the human population), but also his worldview. During most of the movie, when I should have been shock-n-aweing over the visuals, I was thinking about the narrative. A few things struck me:
- With all the talk about the 'next generation of special effects',
it's funny that they ended up being a delivery device for a storyline
that was so retro it could have starred Steven Seagal. There hasn't
been an 'Anglo dude infiltrates the natives and finds himself entranced
by their simple ways' plotline in a Hollywood movie for decades.
- James Cameron's ideas of indigenous peoples seem to be informed
entirely by corporate diversity training videos and 1980s National
Geographic photo captions. They speak with mother earth! They thank the
animal for its spirit after the hunt! Their g-strings match their
spears! I was pre-emptively cringing in anticipation of the scene where
we find out that they use every part of the horse-beast after they kill
it.
- The movie's not remotely interested in the way that complexity
expresses itself in indigenous societies. Some of the best movies of
the past decade have explored they way that idealistic concepts like
paradise and love let us down. The savages aren't always noble.This
was, perhaps not coincidentally, the decade where James Cameron took a
break from movies to go scuba diving.
- Not only is 'Avatar' collectively retro, it's individually retro
too. Cameron obviously still thinks in Bad Guys and Good Guys. It's not
enough that the jingoist soldier destroys a benevolent civilization. He
has to say 'drinks on me, boys!' as he copters away. Cameron's not
interested in the evil we do when we're driven by good intentions, or
poor priorities, or keeping our jobs. In Cameron's world, indigenous
people lose their homes because America, and the corporate interests it
proxies, hates them.
- It's also rare in a movie to see a team of good guys motivated almost exclusively by doing the right thing. No one is motivated to save this planet because they might get famous out of it, or rich, or published in Nature. No, they want to save the Navi because, like, we're all connected, man.
- I take this aspect of the movie seriously because I deal with
real-world examples of this phenomenon all day at work. Some of the
most abundant mineral deposits in the world really are underneath
indigenous populations, and we as a species haven't come up with a just
or acceptable way of dealing with this.
- Of all 'Avatar's' retro elements, the ending may be the one most at
odds with reality. If an indigenous or local population in, say,
Bolivia rose up against the oil companies operating there, would the
companies just shrug and say 'oh well, we'll get the oil elsewhere'?
- A company in that situation would throw everything it had at the
community. The movie got that right. But a company that fails with
helicopters on Monday will be back on Tuesday with tanks. And on
Wednesday with planes. And so on. In a fight between two entities, one
with profoundly more power than the other, the guy wearing the g-string
doesn't win in the long run.
- And that's the central lie of 'Avatar': That all it takes is
rage, willpower and a white guy for indigenous peoples to rise up and
resist the capitalist forces trying to uproot their lifestyles. On the
planet we live on, though, the bow and arrow loses to the helicopter
every time.
My parents sent me a DVD with a bunch of pictures they salvaged from old slide canisters. In the middle of birthday parties, Halloweens and two surprisingly robust and glowing young people who resemble my parents was this:
When I was four, my family lived in Sweden for a year (Linkoping, represent!) and apparently we took a weekend trip or whatever down to Denmark once. I knew this when I moved here, in a vague sort of way, but I didn't know that I would be staring at the photoevidence of this trip 23 years later in a rented room in a chavvy apartment in a yuppie neighborhood in Copenhagen.
Things haven't changed much. That castle is still there, same as the vikings and Shakespeare left it. My brother still photographs better than I do. The beanie-hoodie-elastic-pants combo is still alive in near-daily implementation. With the exception of my aging, slightly less Verbal Kint posture, that picture could have been taken last week.
In the middle of a week of Breaking Newses on two topics I care about, global warming and health care, I've strangely found myself thinking more about immigration. Specifically this:
There is a near consensus in America that unlimited immigration via entirely open borders is not viable. What frustrates me is that, among many of the folks who style themselves immigrant advocates or pro-immigration, there is an utter refusal to articulate specific, workable views about what the limits should be, let alone to abide enforcing limits that are duly signed into law. One pernicious effect is that restrictionists are the only game in town for folks who want to enforce some limits on immigration.
I'm always complaining that whenever the topic of immigration comes up, we forget that the reasonable parts of the left and the right are so close on the issue that they're practically spooning. We just don't notice because five seconds after the topic comes up, they get smothered by a duvet of idiocy from the radicals.
So what should America actually do?
...we should reconceptualize immigration as recruiting.
Assimilating immigrants is a demonstrated core capability of America's political economy — and it is one we should take advantage of. A robust-yet-reasonable amount of immigration is healthy for America. It is a continuing source of vitality — and, in combination with birth rates around the replacement level, creates a sustainable rate of overall population growth and age-demographic balance.
But unfortunately, the manner in which we have actually handled immigration since the 1970s has yielded large-scale legal and illegal immigration of a low-skilled population from Latin America. It is hard to imagine a more damaging way to expose the fault lines of America's political economy: We have chosen a strategy that provides low-wage gardeners and nannies for the elite, low-cost home improvement and fresh produce for the middle class, and fierce wage competition for the working class.
I never thought of the ability of America to assimilate immigrants as a competitive advantage until I lived in Europe. I totally agree that this is a pretty fundamental competence, and could be utilized far more than it is now. You think of all the well-educated people in the world whose entrepreneurship and talents don't go anywhere because their home countries don't have the capacities, and you wish we would start courting, rather than discouraging, them.
The article mentions Australia and Canada as two countries who have developed skills-based immigration programs, from which they have benefited greatly.
It's amazing toggling between the immigration cultures of Denmark, Australia and America. In America, the attitude is 'well, somebody's gotta clean our toilets and pick our fruit.' In Denmark it's mostly 'They don't belong here! Cloth on head bad!' And in Australia, it seems to be 'bring 'em on!'
There are, of course, nuances to these, but it would be great for a country to really run with the recruitment model and see where it got them. It's depressing that throughout Europe, this is as politically impossible as making Ramadan a national holiday.
I was talking to my friend Brock, a scientist at Berkeley and the smartest guy I know, on IM last night:
Brock: Dude what's up.
Brock!
yo
I'm reading nobel speeches! So much nutrition!
what you up to?
Brock: Just shouting you out. How are ya?
Merry Fucking Xmas and all that.
Are we gonna change the world in CPH this week or are we toast?
I'm going to a big-ass protest on saturday. Though literally no one I've talked to knows what we're actually protesting. It’s the James Deans leading the James Deans.
Brock: Good on ya, man, I admire you.
Yeah, always hard to channel general dissatisfaction.
seriously. No one knows what the fuck they're doing
I’m just going because I want to be photographed holding a sign that says The Climes They Are A-Changin'
you been following this whole shit?
Brock: Kinda, but it's rather like electing a pope.
All behind closed doors.
Let's hope this ends with someone from the Hitler Youth as well
Brock: From here, I can only cross fingers.
Write letters, promote discussion, etc, but there hasn't been a whole lot to follow.
do you particularly care about this issue? Being a scientist and all?
Brock: Fuck it, we need total climate Nazis right now.
I think it's terrifying.
So you're on board with The Whole Gore Yards
what do you think we should do? Or they should do, or whatever?
Brock: I am pretty convinced that life will change dramatically within our lifetime due to climate change.
And I actually think it's probably way too late.
Yeah? I defer to your judgement on this, scientifically
what did it for you, originally?
Brock: Hmmmm good question.
I've seen some really compelling data.
If you just measure CO2 levels, that freaks that shit out of me.
So you're directly convinced by the science . Not through a Bono-shaped conduit, like the rest of us
Brock: It correlates spectacularly well with global temperature.
I've seen that graph too it's insane
Brock: That it's unlinked is statistically irrelevant.
And if you extrapolate into the future....
That's when it gets really really scary.
Because there is no reason to think that the relationship will change.
what do you think the politicians should do, particularly?
Brock: Dramatically invest in economic incentives for cleaner living.
That's vague but we need to jump over this hurdle where action for climate impedes economic viability.
It would be great to point to a country and be like 'lets be like them!' but everyone is kind of dropping the ball it sounds like
you like any particulars?
Brock: Forest credits for tropical countries.
Keep the carbon in trees and out of the air.
oh yeah Brazil's experimenting with that, right?
Brazil is turning their shit around.
If every tropical country did the same it would help.
any new stuff coming out from the scientific side?
new revelations, new solutions?
Brock: Unfortunately, way too much negative publicity and that's it.
A few dumbasses joking about manipulating data really does a lot of damage.
Is there a new emerging scientific consensus? Either on the problem side or the solution side?
Brock: Well, I think that's the scary thing, that the scientific consensus is that we really really really fucked up on this.
Solutions seem completely unrealistic at this point.
We need to basically cut in half CO2 emissions immediately.
no way, it's that bad?
Brock: If you look at the projections, it's really bad.
Jesus, the Day After Tomorrow is starting to look more and more like a documentary
Brock: I mean, if population change keeps expanding.
It's bad man.
so as the science emerges, it's actually getting fucking worse? What's the timeline?
Brock: Dunno, I gotta defer on this one.
It's irresponsible for scientists to overpredict.
true. Especially in these trying times of abundant Palintry
Brock: Yet this causes tremendous understandable frustration on the part of citizens and enemies of science.
Science is not, never has been, never should be, political.
This conversation helps me know what to protest on Saturday
My sign is staying the same though
This is the best punctuation mark-related sonning ever:
The former attorney general tells Esquire:
All the internal investigations are over with, no finding of wrongdoing, no finding that I misled Congress.* So I'm gratified by that, but I'm certainly not surprised by it. But anyway, it creates impressions. And yeah, it takes some time to work through that. And that's what I'm trying to do now.
And that asterisk?
*Editor's note: A 2008 Department of Justice investigation was referred to a federal prosecutor and remains ongoing.
Can more journalists start putting little stars behind the bullshit quotes they get from their sources? Stories about Cheney are gonna start looking like the fucking Milky Way.
It's always nice, and depressingly rare, to read something about a political issue written by someone who knows what the fuck they're talking about.
The most likely scenario, I'd predict, is that the bill gets watered down to remove the death penalty stuff, is passed, and then, like all Ugandan laws, goes on to be rarely and haphazardly enforced.
The whole thing's really good.
This is a really great 'full catastrophe' piece about Detroit, one of America's most robust and baffling tragedies:
The troubles of Detroit are well-publicized. Its economy is in free fall, people are streaming for the exits, it has the worst racial polarization and city-suburb divide in America, its government is feckless and corrupt (though I should hasten to add that new Mayor Bing seems like a basically good guy and we ought to give him a chance), and its civic boosters, even ones that are extremely knowledgeable, refuse to acknowledge the depth of the problems, instead ginning up stats and anecdotes to prove all is not so bad.
This is from Guernica:
There is such a dire shortage of protein in the city that Glemie Dean Beasley, a seventy-year-old retired truck driver, is able to augment his Social Security by selling raccoon carcasses (twelve dollars a piece, serves a family of four) from animals he has treed and shot at undisclosed hunting grounds around the city. Pelts are ten dollars each. Pheasants are also abundant in the city and are occasionally harvested for dinner.
OK, so that's the bad and the ugly. What's the good?
It’s possible to do things there. In Detroit, the incapacity of the government is actually an advantage in many cases. There’s not much chance a strong city government could really turn the place around, but it could stop the grass roots revival in its tracks.
[...] In many cities where strong city government still functions effectively, citizens are tied down by an array of regulations and permits that are actually enforced in most cases. Much of the South Side of Chicago has Detroit like characteristics, but the techniques of renewal in Detroit won’t work because they are likely against code and would be shut down the minute someone complained.
Just as one quick example, my corner ice cream stand dared to put out a few chairs for patrons to sit on while enjoying a frozen treat on a hot day. The city cited them for not having a license. So they took them away and put up a “bring your own chair” sign. The city then cited them for that too. You can’t do anything in Chicago without a Byzantine array of licenses, permits, and inspections.
In central Indianapolis, which is in desperate need of investment, where the city can’t fill the potholes in the street, etc., the minute a few yuppies buy houses in an area and fix them up, they immediately petition for a historic district, a request that has never been refused. [...]
In most cities, municipal government can’t stop drug dealing and violence, but it can keep people with creative ideas out. Not in Detroit. In Detroit, if you want to do something, you just go do it.
This reminds me, strangely enough, of my trip to Italy last year. I attended a fundraiser organized by my buddy Giacomo for earthquake victims in Abruzzo. Their idea was to raise a bunch of money, fill a van with sandwiches and sound equipment, and drive down to Abruzzo and throw a dance party. The night I was there we raised like 2,000 euro, and the next week, they did their Movable Techno Feast.
It struck me that weekend how similar America and Italy are. We know that the government isn't going to do anything for us, so we take some of the responsibility. Everyone I talked to at the Abruzzo fundraiser had a 'if not us, who?' kind of attitude, the same one you found in a lot of America after Katrina and 9/11. You can't count on the government for everything (or, quite possibly, anything), so you do it yourself. This goes from small gestures to huge movements, from sponsoring a bell-ringing santa to endowing a college fund.
There's a kind of vitality and independence there that I really like. One of the symptoms of growing up in a well-functioning social democracy (Denmark, Switzerland, etc) seems to be the ebbing of this 'let's make this happen fellas!' drive. Government will take care of you. You're hit by a bus and you keep your job, your home, your car, your kids. A friend of mine here in Copenhagen gets a monthly stipend from the government for being allergic to wheat. Because gluten-free food is more expensive. We roll our eyes at this, but there's a logic to it.
It's sort of sad to think that a generation or two of well-functioning government and social harmony might just neuter Americans of everything we like about them. It's also sad to think of the profound price we pay for our individualism. I'd trade some of that DIY urban renewal in Detroit for a government that actually addressed its failures and their impacts on the individuals picking up their trailings.
For now, though, I just keep reading great articles about the people doing their best to salvage a city out of Detroit, and cross my fingers that no one with any authority notices them.
