Fucked

When I can withstand the way too-frequent five-minute commercial breaks, I enjoy listening to Thom Hartmann. He's knowledgeable and his moral compass unerringly hews to due north. You know, like those guys on the other side of the aisle.

A few days ago, he was reporting on the social media posts consumed by anti-vaxxers yet frequently posted by entities hostile to the United States. For the anti-vaxxers, the source of the post doesn't matter. As long as it reinforces their beliefs it is all to the good. 

Even as the Republicans all around them are hospitalized and die.

And I'm fine with that. To paraphrase a quote attributed to nineteenth-century Army general Philip Sheridan, the only good Republican is a dead Republican.

Hartmann read one post in particular that stopped me in my tracks, at least metaphorically speaking. (I was actually behind the wheel of my beloved 2015 Honda Accord Sport at the time.)

It alleged that the COVID vaccine alters human DNA to the point where those injected are no longer considered human and as a consequence, forfeit their human rights. This was given as reason number-one for the epidemic of government-led gun seizures we see happening in every nook and cranny of the United States.

Funny how often things lead to (supply name of sitting Democratic president here) gonna take away your guns. 

I'm not sure when we became so stupid, but I'm pretty sure it aligns with the popular acceptance of social media posts as an unswerving source of truth. Because with all the empirical evidence one needs to supply before positioning a post to go viral, it's no wonder, is it?

I again suggest a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Translated, this means we're fucked. Hopefully it'll happen quickly.

Happy?

I call them Justinites. Have since spring. They're the folk who have alternately clamored, begged, whined and demanded that Justin Fields start as quarterback for the Chicago Bears since the day he was drafted.

They are the folk who ran roughshod over the considered acquisition of respected veteran quarterback Andy Dalton, treating him like sewage in the process.

What they lack in things like perspective and understanding they make up for in volume and persistence. Without a shred of evidence to back their perspective, they relentlessly push their witless agenda.

They remind me of the folk who back a certain ex-president: noisy and stupid.

This shouldn't be construed as a rip in any way, shape or form of Justin Fields. Hell, I feel sorry for the guy. He's a young man forced to shoulder the unconsidered expectations of a delusional and desperate fanbase thirsting for a messiah.

And Fields is their mirage. A mirage of NFL contention and Super Bowl trophies.

Amidst their delusions, the Justinites ignore the realities of the unproven coach. The pathetic offensive line. And this weird sense of voodoo that hovers over the team and prevents them from ever enjoying a functional offense.

Building a football team is tough. I get it. Whereas other major sports field teams ranging from five to nine players, football has eleven—just on offense. There's another eleven on defense. Plus kickers. And holders. And punt returners and kick-off returners and special teams and....

That's a lot of personnel to assemble. And manage. Contracts to juggle. And beyond that, one has to make sure they're fairly compatible, healthy and, of course, talented. What's more, ideally the offense and the defense are being constructed simultaneously.

Whew. Can I take a break now?

Via Dalton's banged-up knee, the Justinites got their wish yesterday. Their savior would start an NFL game. Can we just skip the rest of the season and anoint the Bears as Super Bowl champions please?

There were just a few problems. The offensive line still sucked. (You saw Myles Garrett and Jadeveon Clowney objectify the Bears' line and turn them into turnstiles, right?)

And Matt Nagy was still calling plays. Hired as an offensive whiz kid, he continually bungled the play-calling and failed to make any useful adjustments, piloting this creaking, wheezing car into a swamp of ineptness.

Overlooked in the carnage is that young Fields, effectively playing behind a sheet of Kleenex, wasn't injured in any of the nine sacks he endured.

(It's a minor miracle, really.)

He may one day be a fine NFL quarterback. Fine as in Ryan Tannehill or fine as in Patrick Mahomes. No one knows for sure.

What is known is that the Bears aren't getting any better. Yeah, they've had some bad luck. But gifted with a fourth season as coach, it's becoming increasingly clear Nagy is merely the Bears' latest example of the Peter Principle.

And you Justinites? A quarterback does not a team make. 

 

Gone Fishin'

Yep. I went fishin'. For two weeks. Just jumped in the car and drove.

It having been twenty-two years since I last went on an extended pleasure trip, you could say I was due.

And oh my God was I.

Getting out of the municipality and the state I call home was a gift. It was like sex. Yes, having a place to call home is not to be underestimated, but...

Seeing new places, driving unfamiliar roads and meeting new people is immensely refreshing. Invigorating.

Restored, revitalized and renewed, I can again begin to supply The Square Peg with the sort of sparkling content you, dear reader, have come to expect.

And if not that, something to at least fill the time until your favorite binge-able TV show returns from a commercial break.

Be well. And thanks for visiting.

What's My Problem, Anyway?

It is said we are a product of our times. Or depending on your perspective, a victim. I plead guilty.

I grew up in the nation's second or third-largest city, depending on how you quantify that. But we were, essentially, invisible. New York had Broadway and Manhattan, and Los Angeles had Hollywood and nice weather. 

Chicago was flat and...well, O'Hare was the world's busiest airport. Yay. 

But we who lived there felt it was a jewel. We were fiercely proud and became defensive when it was attacked. 

And even beyond that, I was influenced by a parent. Go figure. Yes, I had a father who was openly contemptuous of the superiority assumed by so many in the Northeast and the West coast towards the rest of the country—and for the Midwest in particular.

(Which makes my current disdain for the south a bit ironic, no?)

Their attitude was best espoused by their referring to Midwesterners as “the flyover people”—a glib reference to their cross-country travel. I preferred the New Yorker covers of Saul Steinberg, who created maps poking fun at New Yorkers and their self-obsession.

When I look back on it, the media's focus on New York was a natural extension of the fact they were based in New York. But as a proud citizen of the second city, one admittedly with an inferiority complex crystalized by the 1969 baseball season, I grew weary of the constant attention afforded New York.

That went for their sports franchises, too.

While grateful to have come of age after the Yankees' suffocating domination of major league baseball, a succession of teams came to dominate the national stage in my youth. The 1969 Mets were one. The early-seventies Knicks were another.

For a time, it seemed as if the moment an injured Willis Reed walked on court prior to game seven of the 1970 NBA Finals was the end all and be all of sport. This was exacerbated by the insufferable Howard Cosell, who remarked afterwards “You exemplify the very best that the human spirit can offer.”

Sigh.

No wonder I used to joke that hitting .270 in New York was like hitting .300 anywhere else.

Yes, this was all media-induced. I didn't even know any New Yorkers. But as life and my social circle expanded, I came to know many New Yorkers. To my surprise, some of them were quite affable and didn't talk about New York all the time.

Of course, others weren't. And did.

So much has changed since then. Chicago enjoys a far-higher profile than it did during my youth. They shoot movies here. TV shows are set here. Chicago even had a music scene for a time in the nineties, spearheaded by the success of the Smashing Pumpkins.

The Mekons called Chicago home. So did Wilco. Shrimp Boat, Ministry, Eleventh Dream Day, Precious Wax Drippings, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, the Ponys and Naked Raygun all flowered and bloomed here.

Good times. But I've digressed.

Fortunately, at this point I can see the media's New York obsession and its New York-centric coverage for what it is. I'm sure it's the same in England, where news coming out of London crowds out news originating from any place else. Ditto Japan and Tokyo. Or Mexico and Mexico City. Big trumps not-big. I get it.

And the New York versus Chicago pizza thing? The NY food critic who referred to thick crust pizza as a casserole was the funniest thing ever. I'm sure if it had been topped with crumbled foie gras sausage and a pear and white wine reduction sauce he'd have been falling all over himself.

And if New Yorkers continue to consider me and my ilk staid flyover people?

Meh. Whatever.

Better staid and flown-over than neurotically scrolling through our phones to make sure we didn't sleep on a breaking trend.

Isn't that like a felony or something?

Look. My empathy for NYC following 9/11 was absolute and unwavering. Ditto Sandy Hook and Sandy and most-recently, Ida. I don't wish that stuff on anyone.

But I still hate the Mets.

Ditto the Yankees. And the Knicks. And the Giants. And the recently-relocated Nets, who caved to their craven desire for assimilation. Or as I prefer to call it, guilt by association.

I just feel sorry for the Jets.

(Not being a hockey fan, I can't quite work up the requisite antipathy for the Rangers or Islanders.)

So. There it is. My appreciation of New York City. 

Such as it is.

 

It Seems the Big Apple Has Worms

 Amidst the darkness of another Cubs' season gone sour, I am grateful for the chuckle provided by a former Cub.

It's been a rough couple of years for Javier Baez. After contending for the Most Valuable Player award in 2018, he battled injuries in 2019 which put a dent in his playing time as well as the Cubs' ability to contend.

The up-is-down-and-down-is-up nature of the post-COVID outbreak world has not been kind to him. Baez struggled mightily in 2020, claiming the lack of a proper spring training and access to video hurt his preparation.

But he has continued to struggle this year as well.

Always a free-swinger, Baez somehow made it work. But his strikeout percentage has become alarming. Alarming to the point where it leads the major leagues. Which isn't a good look for a player expectinging to cash in on a ginormous free-agent contract this winter.

Traded to the New York Mets at the now-infamous 2021 trade deadline, Baez landed on a team whose season has mirrored that of the Cubs. The Mets looked like world-beaters in May and have regressed ever since. To the point where their 8 and 19 record this August rivals that of the Cubs' 6 and 20.

Ugh.

Pair a frustrated ballplayer known for speaking his mind with an equally-frustrated fan base which expected its team to contend for a division title and things become flammable, as we witnessed over the weekend in New York City.

To be fair, the Mets have been hit by injuries and hit hard. Off-season acquisition Francisco Lindor under-performed, got injured and continues to under-perform. The Mets' traditional strength—pitching—hasn't quite been that, led by Jacob deGrom's recurring arm problems.

The un-hittable pitcher remains un-hittable, but only because he's on the sixty-day IL. As are so many Mets pitchers.

So. Met fans are pissed. In a world wracked by chaos and upheaval, watching your guys contend would be a very welcome distraction. But when they don't, sport becomes just another irritant. Fans boo.

Whatever the reason, several players on the Mets (including Baez) felt entitled to rate their fans performance as well, responding during recent home games with a thumbs-down gesture after getting on base.

Baez admitted it's a way for he and his teammates to boo the fans back.

Pitcher Marcus Stroman even went so far as to blame the media for the controversy.

Hmmm.

Because they saw it, Marcus?

At any rate, I take a not-insubstantial amount of glee at this tempest in a teacup, if only because I'm an old Cubs' fan who can't quite put 1969 behind him.

It was bad-enough the Cubs tanked after such a promising start. But having a team from New York—New York!—sweep in and grab the glory only added insult to injury for this Second City native.

I've disliked the Mets ever since. And for that matter, all New York teams, basically. (Yep. It's a Chicago thing.)

Finally, one of the big disadvantages to being a professional athlete is that when you do your job poorly, you do it poorly in front of tens of thousands of people. The smart thing to do is admit that yes, you sucked today. You screwed up.

That takes the wind out of hypercritical fan's sails.

The stupid thing to do is deflect the blame and the criticism. Like blame the media for that misplayed fly ball. Or in the case of Mr. Stroman, something your teammates did entirely of their own free will.

And yet, this being New York and the Mets, I can only smile at Baez's insouciance.

Rock the boat, baby.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

As someone not old-enough to know how we came to look upon southerners as intellectually inferior compared to people from other parts of the country, I understand perfectly now why that perception might again be in play.

Rightly known for their hospitality (at least as long as you didn't look or worship differently from them), I first experienced it on a family vacation to Kentucky and Tennessee. Of course, as a ten year-old I wasn't engaging anyone in conversations about civil rights or segregation.

No, I was marveling at the natural wonders of Mammoth Cave and the Smoky Mountains, being intoxicated by the century-old vapors in the smokehouse at the Henry Clay mansion and falling in love with a caramel-colored race horse named Traffic Judge who insisted on following me and two siblings around the fence of his (or her) enclosure.

The passage of time has obscured the reasons my parents gave as to why we couldn't take our newfound friend home.

Not so many years later I began to learn about the Civil Rights movement. And the older I got the more plain-spoken my lessons became. The venom displayed by so many in that region was hideous. Ugly. Appalling.

I'll never forget the footage of people spitting on and screaming at the five Black children being escorted into Little Rock High School and the rage that contorted those faces into something not quite human. Or the unprovoked and entirely unjustified treatment accorded the marchers who crossed the Edmund Pettus bridge on March 7, 1965.

No one was going to tell southerners what to do. Or who they could or couldn't hate. If they wanted to treat Black people like the material we flush down toilets, well then by God they were going to do so.

After rejecting the Democratic party en masse when it sought to stop their overt mistreatment of Blacks, that defiance has again flared to new heights.

Acting in the interests of the common good, a mostly Democratic coterie of politicians and public health officials have urged Americans to mask and get vaccinated in the hopes of containing the Coronavirus before it mutates into the variant capable of killing all of us.

Without a single, coherent reason, a largely-Republican contingent has resisted these measures each and every step of the way.

Being asked to wear a lightweight mask amounts to 'tyranny'. The virus is a hoax. And most-pathetically, their brainless, middle-school obstinacy proves they are indomitable. Impervious. And immune.

I'm not even going to touch the hypocrisy of their “my body, my choice” rationale.

And for a time, it was debatable. But as vaccines have become widely available and the sentient portion of our population took advantage of them, the resistant continued to resist. Centered in the south, it is those very states that have suffered the highest infection rates from the Delta variant.

And it is precisely that portion of the population who knows what random and capricious bullshit science is. For the rest of us, this outcome couldn't be more predictable. They ignored the virus, pretended it wasn't a 'thing' and still clutching to their cult leader's words, insist it still isn't.

But even after their cult leader admitted vaccines were important and that they should avail themselves of them, they booed him. While Mount Everest straddles the border of Tibet and Nepal, the Mount Everest of Stupid rests squarely in Cullman, Alabama.

Even as their children are hospitalized in record numbers and the availability of ICU rooms evaporates like spit on a Las Vegas sidewalk. Even as surgeries can't be performed because hospitals are stuffed with unvaccinated patients. And even as our health care workers teeter on the edge of exhaustion

As a once-popular comedian observed “You can't fix stupid.”

This is the fallout from the political party that once called itself the 'Family Values' party. Apparently that includes preventing school districts from protecting your kids from a stubborn and persistent virus. How about it, Ron DeSantis?

I would like nothing better than to indulge Republicans and their COVID death-wish. Taken as a group, they're a largely despicable and ignorant one. America's weakest link. The phrase 'thinning the herd' springs to mind.

But unlike southerners and their misplaced hospitality, I have no interest in providing COVID-19 a forever home. Yeah, I know. You're the fearless one. I'm the snowflake. I get it. Right up until the moment you or your kids are wheezing on a ventilator and having second thoughts about vaccines. 

I'll keep that in mind as I read your obit. 

 

This Is News?

It was commonly agreed the two decades and trillions of dollars we spent in Afghanistan were mostly a failure. True, our presence drove the Taliban underground, but the fact they continued to exist confirmed how compromised this mission was.

Not that we're the first superpower to fail there. Afghanistan is credited with undermining what remained of the Soviet Union following their decade-long war in the nineteen-eighties. (Nope—it wasn't Ronald Reagan, Republicans. Sorry.)

Yes, Afghanistan is a toughie.

The announcement that we were withdrawing only brought a muted response. Amid the chaos and upheaval of 2021, it takes a lot to make page one.

More interesting is the response to the Taliban's re-emergence. Yes, bad news always trumps good. That's how we're wired. But is this re-emergence and the ineffectiveness of Afghanistan's security forces really a surprise?

Is this really news?

Remember what happened in Iraq when we, um, laid Saddam Hussein to rest in 2006? There were no contingency plans then, just as there are no contingency plans now.

Naturally, Republicans have suddenly grown a conscience and are decrying the humanitarian crisis unfolding under Taliban rule.

Not that I deny it or am in any way okay with it. The Taliban are Afghanistan's version of Republicans; a political entity happy to rule via fear. Like all psychopaths, they can rationalize any and all behavior. Were the world a good and just place, the Taliban would be in a bin suspended above an enormous meat grinder, and its adherents would be dropped in one by one. 

But the world is not a good and just place.

My regret is that we didn't prepare a plan of escape for the Afghani who assisted the American effort at great risk to themselves, and in our haste left valuable military infrastructure behind. Worse is leaving the entirety of Afghanistan's female population to the sadistic whims of the Taliban.

To those Republicans who suddenly find themselves in possession of a moral compass, I offer that the same has been going on in Nigeria for years under the Boko Haram. Where was your concern then? Oh, that's right. Nigerians are Black, and there was a Republican president in office.

(Whew. So hard to keep track of you and your shape-shifting concern!)

Beyond the poor planning, what of our military? We lavish billions and billions of dollars upon them, continually buying the newest and most cutting-edge toys and this is what we get? They couldn't oust insurgents with grade-school educations? 700 billion fucking dollars for a 0 – 0 tie? 

Whew. I'm going to need a moment to process this.

If I can presume the majority of the world is outraged by the Taliban, it will quite literally take the world to extinguish them.

If I can presume the majority of the world is outraged by Boko Harum, it will quite literally take the world to extinguish them.

Asking one nation (albeit an enormously wealthy one) to take this on single-handedly isn't going to work. It gives the sub-humans who constitute the Taliban and Boko Harum one big, giant, solitary target.

I mean, who doesn't love to hate the United States?

To too many, it gives them what I will call—for lack of a better word—street cred. But if a coalition of un-hated countries also played a part, it could assume the weight of moral legitimacy

Shame could be a thing again. Imagine.