Where We Are This Week 02/24/2023
Biden's Trip, David Silva's son, and the Last of Us - no spoilers.
The problems we’re beset with as a society are so enormous, it’s hard to grasp what exactly they are. It’s like trying to look at Monet’s Water Lilies all at once; it’s impossible to take in the panoramic display from one position. You have to move around the room, following the scene as it unfolds - but even then, you’re just left with a magnificent feeling, not an understanding of the complete image.
That’s where we are - except with an admittedly less magnificent feeling. It’s like all of us are distributed into this giant room trying to assess the whole by focusing on the small portion that’s in front of us. Or even better, it’s like solving a puzzle of Monet’s Water Lilies with no hint at what the final image is, and each of us has a few pieces in our pocket.
Can you imagine that scenario? How hard it would be to come to a consensus on where to start, what the final image will be, and getting everyone to cooperate in a concerted effort towards the agreed destination?
It sounds impossible. And it very well might be. But, we at least have to start sharing what pieces we hold in our possession. I’m putting my pieces on display, and if we can’t agree on how we see them, can we at least agree on where the edges are?
If this makes sense to you, I urge you to share this with someone you’re close to. It helps me, and hopefully, it helps us.
The Last of Us
I know when it happened the first time. I was driving home on I-24 listening to Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’ when the song became unbearable.
I don’t know what had changed; I had heard that song hundreds of times. Maybe it was because my wife was pregnant at the time. Maybe it was because I was spending more time contemplating my purpose as a husband and father. My thoughts didn’t linger long on why I was feeling that way but on whether or not I was going to skip to the next song.
I used to listen to my sister play that tune on the piano in the bonus room of my parents’ house when we were kids. It was one of the songs in her rotation along with Für Elise and Send In the Clowns as she’d feign site-reading, and play from memory. And then, as an adult, I’ve played the record in my living room countless times. Just this time, as the sun was coming through my windshield, it was proving to be too much.
Art’s voice, the lyrics, the composition; they’re all so sparse, poignant, and perfect. Garfunkel lead’s you through two choruses and verses before strings and the rhythm section join in. Until that point, the title track of the record is so pure and true it’s actually hard to listen to. It’s not until the band starts in and the song gets larger than life that the sincerity and intimacy are alleviated, and I can enjoy the emotional comedown of the second half of the song.
This is The Last of Us. Thank goodness for the infected zombie-like humans and the apocalypse for breaking up the heart-wrenching storyline. As soon as I begin to dwell on the relationships, and the loss depicted in the show, it’s interrupted by fungus-ridden mutants and their accompanying mayhem.
When I played the game ten years ago, I remember being struck by how moving the story was. But I’m a decade more mature now - hopefully - and the limited storyline has had the full premium episodic treatment, and it’s having a much bigger impact.
The show’s core themes are loss and redemption; and the idea that a stubborn reluctance to relinquish hope in an otherwise hopeless situation is a virtue. Maybe it’s part nostalgia for the 21-year-old who played the game 10 years ago, or maybe it’s my understanding that ruin lurks behind every shadowed corner - something the show epitomizes frequently - that makes the show so heavy. That existential angst just hangs on, doesn’t it?
Not only is it refreshing to watch a series done so beautifully - and its atypical route to the small screen - but it’s reassuring to see writers who have such a command and understanding of the human experience.
Media these days tends to be so preoccupied with political point-scoring that the story suffers. The Last of Us is a reminder that not everything has to be tinged with political messaging - though some will undoubtedly project their own upon it - and it may be the case that the show thrives without it.
I’m not sure if the post-apocalypse narrative is exactly what our society needed at this tenuous moment in history, and it’s not the type of care-free entertainment that I can see myself rewatching endlessly, but, is it possibly the best thing I’ve seen since the first season of True Detective? Yes. Do they still have the chance to blow it? Also, yes.
But as long as the showrunners continue to break up the human tragedy with the intermittent gunfight or horde of infected - every zombie show is good for at least a few of those - I won’t have to consider pressing ‘skip.’
Biden Goes Abroad
It’s a tank! It’s an F-35! No, it’s only President Biden - not exactly the reinforcements Zelenksy has been pleading for but I’m sure he hasn’t given up hopes of extracting as much as he can from the armament wellspring that is the United States.
“Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia,” Biden said as he addressed a crowd in Warsaw, Poland after his visit with the Ukrainian president. Biden’s speech marked one year from Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine. While Biden’s proclamations were many, this one is almost certain to be wrong.
He also stated that “autocrats only understand one word: no, no. no,” which is rich coming from the administration that colluded with tech companies to suppress stories that weren’t to their liking and from the president of a country that consistently governs by executive order - but I digress.
It’s not that the president doesn’t actually intend to assist in Ukraine’s victory over their neighbors, he does - at least, ostensibly. It’s just that our track record of bolstering governments doesn’t hold up in the long term - the NATO-spearheaded regime change of Libya last decade has led to open slave markets inside the country, Hong Kong is no longer sovereign, and most recently, whatever fledgling democracy had been established in Afghanistan has been eradicated.
If I were a Ukrainian diplomat, I would be skeptical of the long-term support from the West, and start heading to the negotiation table with Russia. Oh, but wait, they tried! We know that early last year, Ukraine and Russia had already agreed on ending the war around April, but Boris Johnson, on behalf of his Western allies, flew to Ukraine to urge them to dispense with the deal - Johnson and his cohort weren’t ready for the war to be over.
The ongoing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan is a crude foreshadowing of what could befall the Ukrainian people post-American withdrawal. No doubt Russia will also see America’s failed efforts at nation-building in the Middle East as the blueprint for success in Ukraine. All the Taliban had to do was outlast American interest in the region to regain control; Russia has the time - and, given their voluminous style of warcraft, the bodies - to kill.
I repeatedly talk about the actual consequences of conflict, and I don’t mean to sound like a broken record here, but while the West is busy posturing, Russians and Ukrainian lives are being lost - over 300,000 in the first year of the war. Conceivably, an enormous portion of those could have been avoided if the West was actively advising Ukraine to settle with their aggressors. Again, here’s a simple reminder of what a wartorn country looks like after the United States quits playing with its food, and leaves the dinner table:
But if Biden isn’t visiting East Palestine, Ohio, then he’s certainly not visiting Baghdad, is he? Russia isn’t exactly losing this war either. Every once in a while, Ukrainian forces are able to recapture slivers of what they’ve lost, or force a retreat of the Russian military. These instances receive enormous media attention from the Western press, but make no mistake, Ukraine is not in the driver’s seat.
To reiterate: this is not a pro-Russian or pro-Ukrainian stance, it’s pro-human. For a more complete - though now slightly outdated - summation of my thoughts on the war, see below.
When the saber-rattling between Russia and the West either becomes too expensive, too dangerous - it already is - or ceases to be politically useful to America and its allies, the so far endless supply of financial and military aid provided to Ukraine will be quietly put to an end.
What then? What becomes of the sacrifice men and women made for their country? How far can the conflict be pushed before a peaceful resolution isn’t a possibility any longer? How many more lives are our leaders willing to cajole into perdition before abandoning them? The war appears to only have a handful of potential outcomes, and outright Ukrainian victory doesn’t seem to be one of them.
Russia only has to outlast Kyiv’s usefulness to the West.
Viability
Elsewhere on television, my wife and I are currently watching All or Nothing: Manchester City. In the series, the 2017-2018 season of the Premier League club is documented. If you have any interest in sports or football, it’s worth watching. I still remember that season pretty well, City won the league going away by almost 20 points (that’s a ton), and Liverpool’s Mohammed Salah’s record-breaking 32 goals.
Despite not holding the best of memories for a supporter of the club from the other part of Manchester, getting a behind-the-scenes look at the brilliance of City’s manager, Pep Guardiola was enticing enough. For the uninitiated, Pep is a sort of eccentric, mad genius of football who makes a habit of winning where ever he goes.
But last night, there was something I had forgotten. In the middle of the season, City’s star midfielder, their Little Magician, David Silva returns home to Spain to be with his girlfriend and newly born son, Mateo. Mateo was born extremely prematurely at 25 weeks and had to spend the first five months of his life in the hospital.
Since then, he’s grown up to be a healthy, energetic little boy, but it’s nothing short of a miracle that modern medicine has given us the tools to frequently nurture a premature baby like Mateo to health. The ensuing displays from fans across the globe, and from Silva’s teammates were especially moving.
But since Roe v. Wade continues to be a topic of much contention in the States, I wanted to offer a little context to that debate.
In 2020, according to estimates by the Guttmacher Institute, there were 930,160 legal abortions in all of the United States. 9,300 of those consist of babies that were likely to be considered viable - meaning, they stood a good chance of surviving outside of the womb. 15 states in the country have laws on the books permitting abortion all the way to the end of the second trimester -beyond the general viability threshold, or no limit at all.
The data on abortion reasons is a little hard to parse and is largely self-reported. According to a 2013 study, roughly 13% percent of women cited health concerns as their principal reason for aborting the baby, but those concerns vary widely - it’s not clear what subset of that percentage indicates medical intervention that is necessary to protect the life of the mother. Around 1% of women cited incest or rape as the reason for the procedure.
As I’m analyzing the data I found myself being unimpressed by the 9,300 number; it’s such a small percentage of the 930,160 abortions that occurred in 2020. But then I remember it’s not just numbers I’m looking at, it’s people. 9,300 of them. Actually, 930,160 of them; or potential people if I’m being favorable to the other side of the argument, but that feels like semantic hopscotch.
My point, the point that little Mateo demonstrates, is that we tend to draw lines in an arbitrary way that makes us feel better about the conversation. I’m guilty of it, I’m sure you are, too. I was doing it accidentally even while knowing I was trying to write this piece.
We play these silly little word games like ‘women’s health’ or ‘pro-choice’ when there’s another life involved. Almost invariably that life ends up being a Mateo, or the multiplying number of new humans - who will remain unnamed in my publication - my family and friends have been blessed with in recent years.
So, while the debate will continue at pace, at a minimum, let’s not deluded ourselves into thinking that’s not the case.
To a better next week.
Cheers
~FDA
I find it super interesting that only 1% report rape or incest, when that is always the pushback or argument I hear when a pro-life argument is presented? That’s a statistic I doubt many know, wonder if it would change any minds? Sadly I doubt it.