Where We Are This Week 4/20/23
Anniversaries, beer boycotts, police robodogs, and the state of democracy.
It was my wedding anniversary this week. We never make very large plans for the day. Mostly, we make dinner and spend the evening with each other - a series of events that mirrors almost every other day in the calendar year.
This year marks our eighth since we tied the knot, and our thirteenth year since I managed to get her to date me - begrudgingly, I might add. It’s hard to recount in detail what each year was like; what we did, what were our highs and lows, and how we changed.
Fortunately, the songs I’ve written about my life through the years provide little snapshots into who I was - we were - at the time they were written. Singing them now is a little like channeling an intimate stranger. I wish I had written more like this then so that I could have more to remember those times - plus, I might be better at it by now.
I’ve been a number of people since that beautiful spring day in 2015. Every evening is a little death, and every morning is a miracle; a chance to make yourself anew. I’m an entirely different person than I was when we married, even more dramatically so than when we started dating in our teens. How many ideas have I let die so that the ones of which I’m currently comprised could live?
You know, it’s not just a question of metaphysics either. It takes about seven years for your body to replace every single cell of yourself. I’m a new person two times over since I left high school; yet somehow, there are parts of me that I’ve carried through my whole life. Like a wave gently passing through the ocean before it crashes on the shore.
This year, our anniversary had the added celebrant of our daughter which made all the moments that got us here that much more precious. For dinner, I made one of our favorite meals; shakshouka courtesy of
alongside my wife’s homemade sourdough.As the tomatoes simmered in the pan and the sounds of Cheap Trick’s Heaven Tonight drifted in from the living room, I watched my wife and eleven-month-old play in our garden outside. A younger me would tell you that this was it, this was the high water mark of my life.
But I’ve been around the block a handful of times at this point, and if I’ve learned anything from the people that I’ve been, it’s that the best is yet to come.
Democracy Ain’t What It Used to Be: France
It’s difficult writing this piece directly after that introduction. It’s a little inconceivable how conflicting my views of the world are; at once, I’m infinitely hopeful in my personal life but just overcome with despair regarding the trajectory of the human race.
Every few days it’s like the North-Going Zax and his South-Going counterpart converge in my mind, and I’m left trying to build around them. But as that reconciliation will take some time, we’ll leave it at that for now.
Last Friday, the Constitutional Council - the French equivalent to the Supreme Court - ruled in favor of Emmanuel Macron’s retirement age increase. The ruling comes after weeks of prolonged, nationwide, bipartisan protests against the provision. If the decision to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 wasn’t enough to stir up unrest in the French population, it’s the way Macron chose to do it that has resulted in such vehement backlash.
The French president intentionally bypassed Parliament in order to pass his pension reform effectively stripping 66 million of their representation. Luckily for us Americans, we don’t have any sort of executive function that can do that sort of thing. Oh, wait.
Macron claims that in order for their pension program to remain solvent, reform is imperative. While that may be true, if France hadn’t over-leveraged itself on ESG initiatives and NATO directives, 62-year-olds could be basking in leisure over croissants and cigarettes as we speak. Once again, lucky us…
Civil unrest has already reached a fever pitch in the European country, even by French standards. A general strike was called for by eight of the biggest trade unions in France, and protests continue at pace. Thursday, protesters crowded the French Stock Exchange with banners and flares to sing songs of defiance. May 1st is International Workers’ Day, and massive demonstrations are likely to take place from border to border.
The fight continues. Some protestors have vowed that the strikes and civil disobedience will not stop until the amendment is reversed. The brazenness with which Macron continues to act is uncanny, his approval ratings before the pension reform were already dismally low, and now they’ve sunk further.
This past week, while his fellow Frenchmen are protesting in the streets, and prospective retirees were having to make new plans, Macron made an appearance at Notre-Dame where he told reporters he was committed to staying the course.
Unrepentant, unaffected, and unfettered by the national sentiment.
Make France France Again. Someone make that hat.
Democracy Ain’t What It Used to Be: America
It’s not just across the Atlantic either, it’s here in the United States. Incredibly often, presidents use the Supreme Court to craft legislation by adjudication instead of by democratic means. We saw it most recently when President Biden signed his executive order for student loan relief, an order which has subsequently been held up in lower courts.
Whether or not that legislation passes is irrelevant, Biden, like the presidents before him, knew that what he was proposing was unconstitutional but rolled the dice anyway. The federal government consistently operates with impunity in regard to the laws that are supposed to govern it.
They have a whole secret court, FISC, devoted to granting surveillance warrants against whomever the dissident du jour happens to be at the time. The operations of this wing of the judicial system are completely opaque to the general public and have been repeatedly utilized in order to pry into the lives of citizens.
The forthcoming RESTRICT Act is furthering the aims of totalitarianism. The new legislation is being entertained under the auspices that it is just meant to ban TikTok. But, in reality, the Restrict Act - it’s like the Patriot Act 2.0 - is intentionally over-broad and vague. Under the potential law, as it is currently written, someone could potentially go to prison for 20 years for using a VPN. Let’s hope our favorite podcasters adjust their ad reads accordingly.
Americans won’t actually get a say on the future of the Restrict Act. I understand we live in a representative democracy and that our elected officials are supposed to be representing our best interests and opinions in Washington, DC. Raise your hand if you feel represented. Anyone? Bueller?
As far as I’m aware, no candidate ran on the campaign of ushering in the eradication of online privacy and the installment of a techno-police state through the guise of unscrupulous legislation. It’s a wolf in wolf’s clothing.
If the RESTRICT Act gets passed, there will be no wresting those tools back from the hands of the feds. The machinations of truth and justice are far too lethargic for the American people to ever have meaningful recourse against our political betters.
For instance: Colin Powell held a literal vial of a substance he claimed was a chemical weapon as proof that Iraq had the stuff in spades. When it finally became irrefutable that there were no weapons of mass destruction in the country we invaded, it was too late for anyone to really care. Powell faced no reprimand and was treated as a noble, beloved statesman by both sides of the aisle upon his death two years ago.
I know you’re not supposed to talk ill of the dead, but what about the warmonger dead?
Now, thanks to the recently leaked Pentagon documents, we know that American special agents are on the ground in Ukraine. Did we vote on that?
I mean, even if we had taken a referendum, we probably would have approved the action because we just love sending our fellow man to his death. See Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, etc. But at least, we would have had our say! If my fellow Americans are going to risk their lives fighting a proxy war for the empire, I’d feel much better knowing that they’re doing so at my behest.
Creeping authoritarianism is edging closer on both sides of the political spectrum. New York City will begin instituting robots known as ‘digidogs’ to police crime despite the majority of the public being against the measure. Oakland, CA law enforcement is pushing for legislation that would allow them to arm the robotic mutts with shotguns. Terminator, fetch!
Oh, and as a side note, these robots cost about $75,000. The starting salary of an NYPD officer is $59,000. It’s a tough call, but I bet for an extra $16,000, one of the boys in blue would let you rub their belly, too.
In Florida, Ron DeSantis signed a new law last week that would ban abortion after the six-week mark. According to a study by the University of North Florida, a majority of Floridians oppose the ban - including a plurality of self-identified Republicans. DeSantis obviously knew the bill was unpopular as he signed it behind closed doors at the tail end of the week but did so anyways.
Autocratic governing must be opposed no matter how closely aligned it is to your beliefs. I’m not an advocate of abortion by any stretch of the imagination but the notion of implementing a law in direct contradiction to the public’s consent is not a good sign for the health of democracy.
Make America France Again. What’s the return policy on the Louisiana Purchase? It’s not damaged, I promise! It just didn’t fit.
Here’s Lookin’ At Ya, Bud
First of all, why aren’t we all calling Dylan Mulvaney ‘Mulva'; the incorrect guess Jerry Seinfeld had of his girlfriend’s name that rhymed with a part of the female anatomy? It’s a perfect nickname.
If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past couple of weeks, or you’ve had one hundred too many Bud Lights, you may have noticed that the beer company went out and treated themselves to some of that controversy everybody seems to be talking about these days.
Bud Light paid Dylan Mulvaney, Mulva, what I’m sure was a handsome sum of money to promote their product. That’s it.
Well, if you had ‘conservative boycott’ on your bingo cards, come collect your prize. The aftermath of the ads saw country singers removing the beverage from their tour riders, Kid Rock used his 2nd amendment to convey his discontent - in the South, we call that a twofer - and finally, a light beer became public enemy number one for the right.
It wasn’t the only sponsorship deal Mulvaney got recently, however. Kate Spade, Nike, and KitchenAid all ran ads with the former Broadway actor. It seems like anyone of those would have been a better object of the conservative movement’s ire; seeing as how Kate Spade is a women’s fashion company, Nike was selling women’s sports bras, and KitchenAid is traditionally marketed towards the fairer sex.
But no, plundering Anheuser-Busch’s crown jewel is the feather in the cap that conservatives desired the most. Right-wing media were quick to celebrate the market effects of their light beer abstinence over the past couple of weeks. But, let’s not count our six-pack just yet, fellas!
Not only does it appear that Anheuser-Busch is already on the mend, but the boycott’s effects haven’t equaled the beverage company’s previous low point so far this year. Bud Light will continue to decline, as it has for the last several years, and its demise will be to the credit of craft beer and hard seltzers - not a boycott.
Did you have ‘misdirected outrage’ on your bingo cards? The Mulvaney partnership is a blip and a gaff from which the corporation will do its best to distance itself. Consumers, as consumers do, will forget, and return to their usual shopping patterns.
I’d like to make a proposal to all my politically motivated shoppers. Next time, when we’re all frothing at the mouthes to vote with our dollars, can we please pick the company that employs - and has lobbied against the use of - slave labor? I won’t mention the company by name, a quick internet search will do the trick. Just do it.
To a better next week.
Cheers,
~FDA