The elderly man in front of me is reading a document in Hebrew on his computer. Beside him, at another table, a young woman is sketching on a tablet. I’m trying not to be too obviously nosy but from where I’m sitting, it looks like she’s drawing a nature scene. In front of the elderly man, at a window table, three young people are laughing. The very pretty young woman at that table is wearing charming blue Starface blemish stickers on her cheeks and forehead. I wish they’d existed when I was a teenager.
After a bit, the people move on and new customers take over the tables: the woman next to me humming a gentle tune under her breathe, an older woman with a cup of coffee and her phone, a young man coding on his laptop, another young man surfing the web, Reddit, I think. In an unsurprising turn of events, Elon Musk, the former golden boy of Reddit, has become extraordinarily unpopular on that site. This person, who craves adulation, could have been among the most beloved people in the world and instead chose to be among the most hated. An odd decision.
I dreamed last night that I was about to die, trapped in a hole, a huge drill blocking out the meager sunlight and closing in on my position. Knowing I couldn’t escape death, I tried to hurry it and awoke with a jolt, feeling an immense pressure on my chest. Weird dream, better than the one in which I purchased a huge mansion and spent $1.5M unsuccessfully attempting to repair the roof.
My eldest son and I had a rhetorical discussion recently about morality in an amoral or possibly immoral construct such as the current government. He hypothesized that “good” people, i.e., moral people, would struggle to survive because they abide by a set of morals and mores that are disregarded by government leaders. Thus, in order to survive, one must also act amorally or immorally, a less violent “kill or be killed” argument.
I took the position that it’s possible to stand against such a construct without becoming amoral or immoral, “good trouble” as John Lewis and, more recently, Cory Booker proposed. For example, I suggested that one could spam the Department of Education’s tattle tale email address that’s designed to flag teachers and schools for teaching topics the current administration has banned (DEI, gender, etc). (Do we really support the idea that an “Everyone is welcome here” poster is too dangerous to exist on a classroom wall? If it is, I think people should clearly articulate who is welcome. And why. Out loud. So all of us can hear it.) Spamming an email address could, theoretically, result in a DDoS complaint but could also have the beneficial result of rendering the email account unusable, which, I argued, is a moral response to an immoral construct.
At one point, Trump’s proposal to annex Canada was raised. My son, far more game-literate than I am, reminded me that in the video game series, Fallout (which both of us have played), the US invaded and successfully annexed Canada in 2059. What would happen in today’s world, if Trump ordered an attack? Would it, we discussed, be immoral for the armed services to disregard such an order? In addition, would it be immoral for individuals drafted into service to serve OR to refuse to serve during such a war? If US citizens took up arms in defense of Canada would they be committing treason? What do you think? Would you resist a war against Canada? Or Greenland? If you have children of an age to be drafted into serving, would you advise them to resist?
Later, I had a similar discussion with my youngest, asking for his perspective as we were driving to an appointment. In brief, he said that morality is defined by the person and once defined has to be followed or else it is merely an ideal. Therefore, if one finds a construct such as a government to be immoral, one must stand against that construct, even if that resistance results in danger to one’s position or even one’s safety. Something to consider ….
Gus has joined the coffee shop crowd. He’s short. His hair is in his eyes. He’s very loud. And he loves pup cups. Do you think we could be friends? Also, his person tied him to a table and he pulled it over. She was embarrassed. Gus was not. Honestly, even though the table landed on me, I was rather delighted.
Much love.
