Faith in people

I'm over at Legal Insurrection reading about Nancy Pelosi putting the nix on impeachment of President Trump. It's a new entry on Legal Insurrection so presently it has only three comments. The piece is written by Fuzzy Slippers and it contains a bit about Tom Steyer going ballistic.

You know, for a billionaire, the guy is a total dope.

An angry worked up crackpot dope.

With money to burn on his crackpot conceits. All while calling Trump narcissistic. Actually, they both are.

And his Twitter followers are equally idiotic. There are not two working brain cells to rub together between the whole group. Just look at them. He rages vacuously. His dopey followers still think Hillary won the election and it was stolen by Trump. There will be no talking sensibly to these people.

While an earlier piece on Legal Insurrection written by William Jacobson has 52 comments. It's older so has more time to collect comments. It's about Nancy Pelosi having fear in her eyes making excuses for antisemitic comments made by their new Islamist congresswoman, Ilhan Omar. Jacobson goes on to explain that Pelosi recognizes a very serious problem within their caucus, one that is ruinous for their party's ambitions.

Here are two comments to the article:

This disgraceful act of moral cowardice and bankruptcy by the goose-stepping, collaborator Dumb-o-crats, in feckless obeisance to their most odious, radical and bigoted members, and, in service of Islamic totalitarianism and supremacism, will not be forgotten by all Americans possessing moral probity and clarity, irrespective of religious faith or political allegiance.

Then, responding to that:

The number of such Americans diminishes by the day. Such is the power of identity politics fueled by the racial spoils system known as affirmative action. 

I think they're living too much online. Generally, real people are not like this. These are the outliers receiving outsized attention. I'm seeing quite a lot online about Ocasio-Cortez arguably among the least important members of Congress because of her newness and rawness and because she is so outrageous and so stupid. As if she represents the future of politics. As if she represents her generation. She does not.

I skip nearly everything about her. Why feed the beast? But, out of curiosity I did watch one of her cooking videos. She took half an hour to peel sweet potato. She is an idiot. She spoke entry-level politics as she peeled it. So the video is about her talking politics not about cooking a sweet potato.

First, whatever she intended for the sweet potato, it's better roasted in its skin. Then its starches turn to sugars concentrated instead of diluted in water, and it virtually leaps out of its crisped skin. So, she doesn't know what she's doing and she doesn't know what she is talking about. Yet all the questions and comments from her stupid supporters that run up the screen as she is talking are sincere. They're dumb, but sincere. Except for the few conservatives who interject sly contrary remarks that go over everyone else's head. Like cartoon foxes among fuzzy little bunnies.

It's a deplorable, poorly edited, very poor quality video that no sensible person would upload.

You only have to step out a little bit and interact just a trace to know young people at large are not like this. All millennials do not live in their parent's basement pining for socialism up to their necks in debt for educations in intersectionality.

Sunday I thought, "Go meet some young people."

So I did.

I stepped out to the new food court for the most expensive meal possible there. Just sitting by myself on the back end of the sushi bar put me in contact with everyone working there, eventually each worker came up to the sink on the other side and had a few words with me, and the few customers who circled around to the back next to me and behind me. To a person, they are all normal and upstanding people out to have a nice relaxed time.

Then I walked over to the deli-sandwich counter and interacted with the workers there, a different sort altogether, and each person is perfectly normal hard working, considerate, kind, conversant and knowledgeable, actually thoughtful. Well balanced emotionally. Absolutely nothing such as you read about online.

The place is packed with young people, everyone younger than me, working class and with very young families and every single customer that I passed by and acknowledged, even little children, all respond gracefully, sensibly, kindly. Everyone is so impressively nice and well mannered.

One thing stuck out that still has me shaking my head.

I thought that I sensed early warning to go to the bathroom, but false alarm.

While in there (very nice bathroom by the way, updated splendidly from the previous occupants) they were playing a happy upbeat but exceedingly repetitive tune that sounded like ABBA. Except just a bit less interesting than the usual ABBA, a bit mundane. Something I hadn't heard before. Something new. The group is quite old, they broke up due to divorce, but I think this song is new.

Out of the stall and washing my hands, no need to because nothing happened in there but now men came in and I didn't want anyone to think that I don't wash my hands, I said to a young man who I never got a good look at because of the unspoken rule about not looking at men in pubic bathrooms or else you'll be taken for a perv, "That's a happy little ditty."

He said, "what?"

     "That's a happy little ditty."

"Yes. It is a happy song. It's upbeat. It sounds like ABBA."

     "It does sound exactly like ABBA. I hadn't heard this before."

He sensed somehow that I didn't care much for ABBA. "Whatever you may think about ABBA and their style of music you must agree they are a very good solid group."

I looked at him a little more closely. He's about thirty years old. A rather rough hewn looking fellow. Dressed black and white. Black Levis, white shirt, black leather vest. Black hair, tanned skin. Unshaven. He does not look anything like one imagines an ABBA fan would look like.

Understand, this is a young man talking to an old man trying to convince me I must appreciate ABBA and not just casually dismiss them and their music. He is speaking to a stranger. In a bathroom!

I considered saying something about singing in English because English is the language of songs, and not just any English, American dialect is the global language of music. But I passed on that to allow him further ABBA defense. I was interested in a young man defending ABBA. I thought that was wild.

It was a happy tune. It is ABBA. Neither one of us would actually buy the music or attend an ABBA concert, but both of us cannot deny their universal appeal. They have, after all, sold 400 million records. And their concerts are sold out. But the man who I'm talking to wasn't even born when ABBA was most popular.

In that short dialog he showed more common sense than very many conservative oldsters that I interact with online. He is open. He formulated his own reasoned opinion, and stood up for something unusual. I don't see that same quality among my own generation who I see as generally more thoughtlessly dismissive. It's like a blast of fresh air.

In the span of a few seconds his solid defense of old music to an oldster, a stranger, reaffirmed my faith in the sensibility of young people. And that's only one minor example among very many examples shown in the span of an hour packed in there compacted among people half my age. Online his generation is described as senseless but my experience with them daily is contrary, and it only takes a moment for their very real genuine sensibility to show through. I see them raising families. And I see them doing excellently. The young people I meet, and there are quite a lot in immediate surrounding, right here in this building, all give me faith in the future.

Just now, it happened again. On my way outside I encountered a new neighbor, a young black woman holding a small girl in her arms. Her daughter has the most outrageous hair piled up such as you see in the old films, "Our Gang." The girl waved at me.

A little angel in the arms of young woman.

"I'm glad you moved in."

     "Why?"

"The previous renter had a yappy little dog that barked every time someone walked by. The dog thought he had to protect the hallway beyond his own door."

     "I know." Apparently the apartment left evidence of a previous little dog."

But then she asked, "Are we noisy?"

Apparently her daughter acts up sometimes but nothing is heard through the walls. "No. Nothing comes through."

     "Good."

She was concerned about her neighbor's perception of her enough to ask. That is not how her generation is characterized online. Her daughter is precocious toward a tall white male. All of the little kids are precocious toward me and that is not how young children are described online. Rather, they are described as overly protected to the point of being helicoptered and wary of strangers. But the kids around here are curious and they show it, they each want to interact with the white dude.

We walked together to the front door. She went down there to bring up her mother. Now, it's three generations of black females in one spot at the front door. The woman holding the child tells her mother, "Get the door for him." The grandmother, my age, backs up, goes back outside to hold open the door.

For me.

I don't need no help with no g.d. door.

But I gladly accept the grace.

That situational awareness, that grace, is not how urban interracial interaction is described online. These young people all around, so splendid, give me faith in America's future every single day.