Posted on my Roadmap is my one-sentence mission: “I will be a contented and healthy man who, upon his 70th birthday, can look himself in the mirror free of the sting of regret.” Easier written than done, perhaps, but thinking about the question 32 years early opens the door for opportunities to avoid incurring regret in the first place.
I’m sometimes asked whether I get depressed about not having married and “settled down” with a brood of crumb-crunchers and a little suburban house with a white picket fence and a used minivan and a slightly dopey golden retriever. Usually well-intentioned, the question nevertheless is curious, insofar as it rests on two rickety assumptions: First, that marriage and family are normative, from which deviation signifies loss or defect; and second, that I am ignorant of what I’m missing so therefore I should pine for it.
As to the first assumption, I can only say that I’ve seen many people marry and remain happy together for a very long time. I’ve also seen friends younger than I who have already divorced. I am aware, through my own family’s experience, of what divorce does to family dynamics. A few years ago, when I more actively searched for a partner, I was dismayed to discover just how many women in the 25-to-35 age cohort are either single or divorced … but with at least one small child. Marriage isn’t the institution it used to be, and most families I know have so absorbed the individualist Gestalt that “family” is perhaps more meaningful as a tribal affiliation than as blood-kin identification.
I am not unaware of the benefits of marriage and child-rearing. Should the right situation arise, I’d get married. But I’m not drawn to the institution and I don’t feel incomplete because I live in an apartment with no one except my feline overlords. I’ve seen too many elderly people in the hospital who bet on a spouse and children or grandchildren to look after them in their dotage — and then see those bets fail. No one is guaranteed a loving family surrounding you on your deathbed when you’re in your late 90s. People die; they grow apart, they feud, they have different priorities. When I did pastoral care rounds in the hospital, years ago, it wasn’t all that rare for the older patients to want me to stick around. To talk. Sure, they had families — but, you know, they were busy. Seems odd to structure a life, beginning in your 20s, on the gamble of what you’ll need or want in your twilight years. Yet that’s the message, fundamentally, of family: They’re the ones who will take care of you when you’re back in diapers. Good luck with that.
Life is a series of trade-offs. There’s no such thing as a perfect existence — just a never-ending churn of decisions balanced against each individual person’s proprietary blend of needs and wants. With marriage and kids, you get better income stability, regular affection, family bonding, life milestones. Without marriage and kids, though, I retain the freedom to make major life choices without getting them approved by someone else — I can come and go as I wish, buy or save as I wish, avoid having to live with the inevitable compromises that come with marriage, and if I needed to take care of my mom when she gets old, I’m not subject to the whim of a spouse who may resist or resent it. And certainly not least, if I were to retire to a sailboat and see parts of the world, no one will try to stop me.
The other argument for marriage and family follows from a basic human need for companionship. To which, all I can say is that I do not want for friends. I have a long-term stable core, a middle-ring network that comes and goes, and a large flock of friendly acquaintances. I occasionally have weeks where I think to myself: Self, you need to start declining some social invitations so you can get some work done. So I’m not exactly a lonely recluse.
The second assumption — that I should pine or grieve for what I lack — flows from the first. When you accept the normativity of marriage and procreation, then not having it becomes an emotional struggle, a challenge of self-worth, a grave problem requiring resolution. I think there’s a fairly strong Christian Reformed, West-Michigan-culture thing at play, there, too: If you’re not married by a certain age, then there’s something wrong with you. I know quite a few people who unduly stress out over their lack of a spouse. Anyone who’s spoken to the aspiring MRS candidates at Cornerstone University or Kuyper College or even Calvin College knows the fairytale: You wait for your prince or princess then live happily upper-middle-class forever and ever, amen. Lots of those women end up, several years after their graduation and their weddings, with OKCupid profiles that feature them with their infants. I know; I’ve dated some of them. That toxic culture has wreaked incalculable chaos on the lives of the young and the innocent thanks to the tyranny of impossible expectations.
But I digress.
My biggest frustration with friends who do lust after marriage is that the longer they search in vain, the more out-of-whack their thinking becomes. It’s as if there’s some magical ratchet in their heads that, as the months and years slip away, creates ever-more-unreasonable demands for what they expect in a mate — until they come to obsess after an idealized spouse who could not possibly exist in the real world. In a sense, that ratchet is a defense mechanism, with a twofold task of protecting them having to engage in serious self-examination while precluding relationships that might be “good enough” but are nevertheless avoided because they won’t be perfect. The fairytale always trumps, but the drama never ends.
As for me, I guess I have nothing to pine over because there’s not much related to interpersonal intimacy that I haven’t experienced. I’ve loved people. I’ve woken up smiling with someone else’s head beside mine on the pillow. I’ve known the thrill of a first date, the pain of a break-up, the emptiness of a drunken bar hookup and the joy of bonding with someone over drinks. My closest friends have been with me for going on two decades. If I ever woke up at 2 a.m. with a crisis, I can think of at least five numbers to call off the top of my head where the person on the other end of the line wouldn’t hesitate to leap to my assistance.
I am content. So, having weighed the merits and elected my current path, all I can say is — I think I’ve avoided incurring a regret that would otherwise haunt me in late 2046.
Epochs, Ideology and the Things That Matter
A liberal looks at the country and, in his eagerness to immanentize the eschaton, rejects well-functioning tradition for want of some high-theoretic World State. A conservative looks at the country and, in his eagerness to restore long-abandoned traditions, rejects much scientific and cultural progress for want of Duck Dynasty. Yet a healthy body politic needs both visions; liberals and conservatives are merely opposite lobes of Uncle Sam’s lungs, diseased though each may be in its own special way. Lose one to cancer, you lose a lot.
Lose both, though, and you lose everything. The Zombie Apocalypse test is apropos: What really matters after catastrophe strikes? Think of an event like Hurricane Katrina, when public order in southern Louisiana was shaky for several weeks and ordinary survival became a genuine ordeal. In such a climate, does anyone really care about “trigger warnings” or carbon footprints or into which cathole the transgendered person gets to pee? Almost all of the current causes célèbres of the Left are what kids these days call #FirstWorldProblems. The issues that progressives adore are so irrelevant to life on the lower rungs of Maslow’s Hierarchy that it’s a wonder so many people invest so much time into advocating for so little substance.
Yet in that Katrina situation, the Right isn’t appreciably better. The preppers hide in their bunkers while the guys with guns take stuff from the guys with yoga mats. If public order is a long way off, you’re much more likely to end up with a descent into strongman-led tribalism, with a pecking order directly related to what you can contribute to the group in terms of rare skills or biceps size.
And therein lies the rub. Neither conservatives nor liberals currently articulate a comprehensive worldview that successfully encapsulates the value of ancient knowledge and antique skills, with a respect for the sundry joys of High Culture and a sophistication for harmonizing new insights with old wisdom. Today, we can afford to obsess about Facebook offering dozens of gender options. Tomorrow, when the Zombie Apocalypse comes, those same people who eagerly set their Facebook genders to “Cis Woman” or “Transmasculine” are unlikely to survive a week without dying of dehydration, injury or human-caused trauma. Today, we can afford to let conservatives be the voice of anti-elite sentiment. Tomorrow, when the Zombie Apocalypse comes, those same people who disdain higher education will be the first to chuck the last copy of War and Peace on the fire when the menfolk return with a fresh kill of some endangered species.
We might get lucky; we might get a world that looks like Falling Skies, with a healthy balance between warrior and academic leading the group. But we might end up with Lord of the Flies, instead. It scares me that I can’t tell which scenario is more probable.
We could, perhaps, console ourselves with the belief that the Zombie Apocalypse — a term of art, of course, for any great civilizational catastrophe — won’t occur. But such consolation is empty given the sprawling narrative of human history. The May edition of the estimable First Things included, as a feature article, “The Great War Revisited” by George Weigel. It is a masterclass narrative in a magazine that, itself, sets the high bar of literary merit.
Weigel recounts the willful blindness of world leaders in 1914. No one could quite believe that the stability of the Westphalian system could collapse so quickly and so completely in so little time, so they acted as if it couldn’t.
Consider. On January 1, 1910, Tsar Nicholas II ruled an ancient, vast, autocratic Russian empire. Kaiser Wilhelm ruled a powerful, prosperous Germany freshly ambitious after Bismarck’s consolidations a generation before. Emperor Franz Joseph ruled the elegant if creaky Austria-Hungary — since 1848, no less. The Ottomans were in control, albeit tenuously, in Istanbul and had been for more than half a millennium. The Qing Dynasty ruled a decrepit China through a monarchy with roots two millennia old. America was quiet and disinterested in foreign affairs, with William Howard Taft presiding over a prosperous, growing but inward-looking country.
On January 1, 1925 — a mere 15 years later — the Romanovs were decomposing in a shallow grave while the Soviet Union crushed internal dissidents on Stalin’s orders. Germany was a shambles, the harsh Peace of Versailles spreading misery among Germans of every stripe and depriving governments before Hitler of any real, legitimate power … thus sowing the seeds of the next major war. Austria and Hungary were cleaved apart and the last Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed VI, had been deposed while Ataturk began his secularizing work (potentially sparking the tinder of later Islamofascism, to boot). The KMT was consolidating control in a democratic China while Japanese forces still stung by the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 had correctly gauged the exhaustion of the West and plotted accordingly. The United States, after Woodrow Wilson’s collectivist war policies and internationalist exhortations, was enjoying the Roaring Twenties under Calvin Coolidge. And families across the world were still coping with the devastation wrought by the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918.
All the things that looked so permanent in 1910 had been laid waste over five years of war and a decade of ill-managed peace. An entire generation had bled to death for naught on the fields of Europe, and others — India, Japan, China — took notice. The suicide of the West took some time, but each slice of the wrist was unmistakable —
- The sinking of the Titanic (1912) — we began to doubt scientific progress
- The Guns of August (1914) — we went to war because we couldn’t find a reason not to
- The battles of Somme and Verdun and Passchendaele (1916-1917) — we killed millions knowing it was futile
- European acquiescence to Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia (1938) — we looked away from evil
- The Yalta Conference (1945) — we let Stalin get his spoils without a fight, condemning millions
- The Counterculture (ca. 1968) — we stopped being serious about shared culture
- The War on Terror (ca. 2001) — we over-reacted to a minor threat, then under-reacted to major threats
Imagine being a normal person born on January 1, 1890. You saw the entire world change before you greeted your first grandchild. You were born into a world without widespread automobiles, powered flight or amenities like indoor plumbing or electricity; as a child, you likely heard stories from your parents of the Civil War, the taming of the American Frontier and the era of tall ships. You lived through the Great War and World War II and the Cold War. If you lived to the ripe old age of 80, you died after seeing a man walk on the surface of the moon.
Think about that.
History is replete with moments in time where everything changed within a generation and old truths and new ideas fought bitterly for supremacy. The Great War was such an inflection point. So was the political upheaval of 1848. So were the Napoleonic Wars a generation earlier and the French Revolution that lit their fuse. So was the Reformation, starting with the 95 Theses posted in 1517 and persisting through centuries of wars of religion in Europe. So was the discovery of the New World in 1492. So were the Crusades. So were the crowning of Charlemagne, the Mongol invasions, the collapse of Rome and Constantine’s conversion to Christianity.
So why do we persist in thinking that such an earth-shattering event can never again occur? Why must we be so un-serious about the future that we can relish small-potatoes political idiocy as the world smolders while waiting for the tinder for the next world-historical dislocation?
Today’s domestic politics isn’t up to the task. Neither the Right nor the Left can articulate a coherent vision for what the world ought to look like next week, let alone a century hence.
Some of today’s more enlightened pundits — I’m thinking especially of George F. Will and Peggy Noonan — correctly note that the race for 2016 is hamstrung by both the Republicans and the Democrats lacking a consistent and comprehensive message about what they want for America. Debates currently focus on irrelevant personalities (Bill Clinton, the Koch Brothers) or on issues that aren’t really significant in the grand scale of things (marijuana legalization, the minimum wage). We’re back to small-ball politics.
But while politics is about legislative agendas, ideology is about the big picture. And on that front, all the main ideological voices in America lack a conceptual coherence that applies with equal validity and rigor to life on a college campus as well as life in a post-apocalyptic village. Ideology requires a conception of the human condition that applies regardless of any individual human’s specific condition. It requires a nuanced teleology. Ideology shapes politics, so with ideologies in disarray, it’s no surprise the our politics follows suit.
Progressive ideology spends so much time on harmonizing complex identity relationships that the framework it’s built upon cannot endure in adverse material conditions — what works in faculty lounges at Berkeley won’t work in a rural farming community in Nebraska, and certainly won’t work in a long-term survival situation. It fails the test of universal relevance. Conservative ideology lacks coherence on the big questions of life and human relationships; half of engaged conservatives appear quite willing to live within Leave It to Beaver and eschew politics entirely while the other half can’t figure out if it’s for or against the NSA, for or against starting council meetings with an invocation to Jesus, for or against vaccines. The libertarians fail to concede that humans are social animals, and that eusociality imperfectly squares with contractarian principles, so they seem like the rump at a linguistics conference that really, really wants you to believe that Esperanto is a logically superior alternative if only people would abandon their native tongues and give it a chance.
(Sneaky thought: You know who actually nails the big picture effectively? Catholics and Jews, and non-radicalized Muslims.)
I want conservatives, in particular, to advance a coherent framework that tells me what kind of America we aspire to in the year 2114. Don’t recite policy — recite the principles that policy will be shaped by. That framework will give a compelling, universal why as well as a specific answer to the tough questions we prefer to elide:
- If human life is precious, will we abolish the death penalty when we abolish abortion?
- Which is better: A well-reared child attached to two same-sex parents, or a poorly reared child of two opposite-sex parents?
- Under what circumstances will we invade a sovereign state? To acquire resources? To avert genocide? Never?
- Can we force children to get mandatory vaccination against parental consent, for diseases that could devastate large populations?
- Does human destiny reside in the United States, across the globe or among the stars?
- What should be in the public square, versus entirely private, versus private but subject to government monitoring?
- To what degree should individual risk be socialized?
- What is the purpose of a well-lived life?
- Is society stronger with a Judeo-Christian worldview, with a secular worldview or with a Greco-Roman ambivalence about religion?
- To what degree should a person be required know how to change a tire, raise a garden or build a fire in the backcountry?
- What is the point at which we agree that gulf between “have” and “have not” is too wide to tolerate?
- How do we balance libertarian autonomy with the stabilizing power of society’s little platoons, without rendering either useless?
- At what point does market inequality amount to de facto duress for the economically disadvantaged?
- What is the proper response to a person who is biologically female but professes to be male in gender?
- To what degree are people free to make choices that may not redound to their long-term advantage (smoking pot, eating too many cheeseburgers, avoiding dental exams, driving without a seatbelt, etc.)?
We can hope that the Zombie Apocalypse never comes, despite history’s ample lessons. But while we maintain this foolish hope, will we think prudently about what kind of life ought to persist between our cyclical catastrophes, or will we duck our heads in the sand and continue pretend that today’s hot-button social issues really do have meaning?
Donald Sterling and the Consequences of Disallowed Opinions
Oh, Donald Sterling. You are a first-class case study in what’s amiss in today’s public square.
Let’s recap. Sterling, part owner of a professional basketball team, recently came under fire for some not-exactly-subtle racist comments he made. And apparently he has a long and unhappy history of such comments.
The Universe of Right-Thinking Individuals, in characteristic fashion, decided Sterling is not one of us and therefore should be forced to sell his ownership in the L.A. Clippers, and presumably to slink under a rock until he dies in disgrace.
Here’s the catch, though. Although I personally believe Sterling’s comments are idiotic, I have yet to see evidence* that he engaged in illegal activity that warrants such strong financial sanctions.
Did he engage in behavior, motivated by racial animus, that adversely affected the players, staff or fans of the Clippers? Did he engage in unlawful discrimination? Did he do anything that would be a valid cause of civil or criminal action before a state or federal judge?
Yes? Cool. Let’s collect the evidence and take it to a jury.
No? Then what’s the problem, really?
Many people would argue that the problem is the racist sentiments themselves — that the very possibility that someone, somewhere, could hold such a disallowed opinion is justification for radical public intervention. Although I firmly believe that racism is the last refuge of ignorant buffoons, I’m wary of inflicting economic harm against anyone who holds an unpopular opinion. If it’s OK to publicly browbeat racists — obviously an easy target that garners little sympathy — who else is it OK to browbeat and financially penalize in the court of public opinion? How about people who are iffy on gay marriage? (Hello, Brendan Eich.) How about people business owners who oppose abortion? (Hello, Hobby Lobby.) What about people who use words correctly that others misunderstand? (Hello, David Howard.) Should people who are skeptical of some policy positions of climate-change activists be tossed in jail because they’re “deniers?” I’m sure most of us have an opinion about something that doesn’t represent correct thinking. Would you want to be sanctioned or face financial harm not because of what you did, but because of what you thought?
As I said: Sterling makes a great case study, because no one but a Klansman can excuse his language. I certainly can’t. I think the man is a bloody fool and that his comments are indefensibly reprehensible. If ever there were a scenario where a near-majority of the public would agree on something, it’s that Sterling is an unrepentant racist. This case is black-and-white, open-and-shut, book ’em Danno.
But — isn’t it better to engage bad opinions than to dehumanize the people who hold them? Isn’t it better to let a jury, following due-process rules, decide whether a person ought to suffer financial penalty for committing an actual harm, rather than to let the justice of the mob inflict whatever sanctions it sees fit?
There’s an increasingly virulent strain of moral absolutism afoot in contemporary political discourse. It’s not isolated to the Left or the Right. Rather, it infests the entire debate. This absolutism casts people with whom we disagree not just as errant, but as inferior — as not deserving of basic human dignity and to whom no quarter shall be offered. The Left’s treatment of folks like Sterling and Eich and Howard is lamentable, but it’s no different in its way from the Right’s treatment of Bart Stupak or Alec Baldwin or Al Sharpton. ‘Tis easier to demean than to debate.
I abhor racism. I’m quite happy to condemn Sterling, or to debate him in order to persuade him to a more enlightened view of race relations. I am not happy, though, to acquiesce to mob justice. If Sterling is to lose his assets involuntarily, it should be the result of a court order, not a full-court press in the media. I felt the same thing about Eich.
Because eventually, the justice of the mob will move away from the black-and-white cases, like Sterling’s, and move to the grey cases for which most of us, in some way, serve as unindicted co-conspirators.
*I have been tracking the story, but not obsessing over it, so if such evidence exists, I’d welcome a hat tip.
Blessings, Old and New
Today is Christmas. Ho3.
Once upon a yesteryear, the last six weeks of the calendar marked a magical period of fun, family and festivity. The season kicked off with the trek up the hill to my grandparents’ house on Thanksgiving Day. We’d enjoy a feast that would put any Edwardian glutton to shame –assembling in the White Dining Room, a twice-a-year event, with non-casual attire and rare delicacies stretching as far as the eye could see — then cap it off with the thrill of defeat known as the “Lions’ game.” Heaven help us when it was Detroit v. Green Bay; battle lines formed ’round the TV, with the Michigan Delegation duly singing Nearer My God to Thee as the defense sunk beneath the waves while the Indiana Delegation surged with a wild-eyed ferocity that would make Mel Gibson look as sedate as Ben Stein.
Then, we’d embark upon that Great Interregnum known as Advent, when the spiritual side of Christmas received its due accord. The ancient Christian fathers knew what they were doing when they introduced seasonality into the liturgical calendar; moreso, when they pushed the cycle of readings to three years on Sundays and two years on weekdays. Advent became a period both familiar and yet ever new; in my youth, at a Franciscan parish, by the time a new three-year Gospel cycle began we’d have new friars and thus new perspectives on that year’s narrative.
Times change. My parents divorced, my grandfather died, everyone’s moved to different domiciles, schedules swapped as in-laws proliferated, food lines slimmed down from “extravagant fare on china with silver” to “grab a paper plate for appetizers,” sweaters and ties gave way to pajama pants … and I’m in my mid-30s living with a pair of cats. Over the last few years, the holiday season has crumbled a bit. It became a duty to buy gifts. It became rote to do the same things at church. It felt odd that “family” occurred twice per year, in the Snowy Season.
The last few years haven’t been especially merry. Acedia set in, I suppose. Christmas became just one more thing to plan around, like a doctor’s appointment or annual performance review. One more thing to spend money on. One more reason to sit down with family you see almost never and pretend like things are a happy, healthy whole. Indeed, my favorite part of the last six weeks of the year is the anticipation over my annual two-week vacation, a time spent not on others but rather myself.
Yet. Yet. Yet. It’s tempting to catch yourself judging today by the impossible standard of yesterday. It’s the fate of mankind — graced, as we are, by mortality; cursed, however, by relentless novelty — to never step in the same stream twice. The things that used to excite us eventually lose their wonder. The things we used to tire of, now bring delight. The challenge of Christmas, then, is to resist treating the holiday like a repeat, but instead to find new meaning every single time, even when there’s no lodestar to compare against.
This year, I kicked off the holiday season with Thanksgiving with my mom and brother. Then I had a second feast with friends at Brittany and Steve’s. We’ve had snow consistently in December, and little things — a gift here, a card there, a party with friends somewhere else — made a huge difference. We had a fun party at my grandmother’s condo last Saturday, and last night at my mom’s was great — especially chucking indoor snowballs at my young nephew. Today I’m drinking coffee with Bailey’s, writing, while the cats sit peacefully on their pillows. I think tonight I’ll make a fire and watch the Doctor Who special.
Christmas isn’t about gifts, or decorations, or cookies or anything else. More than anything, it’s a state of mind that says two things simultaneously. First, in that ancient Christian tradition, we are invited to reflect on the miracle of life and the saving power of innocence in the face of worldly adversity. Second, we are called to impose our own meaning on the world around us, to choose to find reasons for joy … or not. Our call.
Choose wisely. For myself, this year, I choose to enjoy the blessings of Christmas, and I pray that you do, too.
On Security, Liberty and Government Action
The drip-drip-drip of information related to the leak of classified surveillance information by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden has re-focused the debate about balancing liberty and security in an increasingly interconnected, digital world.
We now know, for example, that the NSA has basically cracked almost all routine Internet encryption, including SSL — the same technology that you rely upon when you submit your online banking information or log in to your insurance company. The NSA has some sort of agreement with all the major domestic tech companies and can effectively subvert pretty much all smartphone security. It’s even been alleged that the NSA has deliberately tampered with standards and coerced large commercial security venders to plant secret backdoors.
Are you OK with this? Are you OK with a government that feels justified in breaking or bending the law to sweep up protected information about U.S. citizens? Are you willing to nod respectfully to President Obama when he smiles and says, “Let me be clear: Trust me!” Do you believe a government that screwed up the Affordable Care Act and laughed about shovel-ready jobs while the IRS targeted ideological opponents will somehow be pure as the wind-driven snow when it comes to citizen metadata in the hands of the FBI, CIA and NSA?
(Hint: Apparently, intelligence operatives illegally peering at ex-lover files occurred often enough that it was given a humorous inside-the-NSA code name of “LOVEINT.” Think about that.)
Take, for context, the security theater that occurs at every airport in the United States. American citizens, possessed of an inherent right to travel, are nevertheless subjected to sundry humiliations like shoe removal, nude body scans and invasive luggage searches. Unless, of course, you feel like paying the Transportation Security administration $85 and agree to being fingerprinted. The rationale? To protect Americans from terrorism. The reality? You have better statistical odds of being struck by lightning while being infected by the Ebola virus than you do of perishing in an act of terrorism. The TSA’s response is wildly disproportionate to the risk, but we nevertheless take off our shoes and belts at the airport — and sometimes witness children, the elderly and disabled veterans be subjected to humiliating personal searches — just to look like Uncle Sam is being effective.
You know how you saddle-break a horse? Start by throwing a blanket over its back. Let it adjust. Then add a saddle. Adjust. Then a bridle. Adjust. Then sit on top. Adjust. Before you know it, the horse thinks the rider is a natural extension of itself, even though horseback riding is — from the horse’s perspective — a raw deal. TSA is saddle-breaking Americans to accept an intrusive security regime. We should all be wary of that.
There’s an old saying: To a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. To a man with a security clearance and a defense contract, every problem looks like an opportunity for paramilitary-style surveillance operations with cool code names and the feelings of importance that come from being on Big Brother’s inside. The most significant philosophical problem with America’s current surveillance fixation isn’t whether it’s effective: It’s whether the folks manning the security state understand that there’s more than one way to skin a cat.
American-style security remains averse to human risk, so it relies on a dragnet. Instead of putting boots on the ground — in neighborhoods, or in hostile zones — America’s guardians prefer to suck up data and then pretend that they can divine meaning out of it. We’re masters of collecting everything but understanding little. Yet time and again, the default response to a public threat is to build yet another agency, pilfer ever more data, inconvenience Americans ever more directly … and without any real, obvious payoff. So, we hoover up the data, fire up the drones and pretend like it’s effective. We do that, in lieu of sending cops on the street, spies in the field and Tomahawks into the terrorist caves.
Al-Qaeda’s still here. And thanks to them, we have the TSA. Want to bet whether al-Qaeda would be around today if 9/11 had happened to the Israelis? Or the Chinese? Or the Russians?
Think of the current Intelligence Community like a project manager at your place of employment. The goal is a good outcome, but the process can unfold in myriad ways. Some PMs balance research with experimentation. Others obsess about information and are reluctant to act outside of authority. Others still rely on relationships to muddle through. There’s no one right way to run a project — just like there’s no one right way to protect a country — but some methods admit to better relative balance than others. Right now, Uncle Sam’s instinct seems to be to avoid direct confrontation and instead play with numbers. There are plenty of advantages to this strategy, but there are some real downsides, too.
So what would a well-balanced security regime look like?
- Airline travel would restore a bit of sanity. Cockpit reinforcement pretty much solved the pre-9/11 hijacking problem. Add armed sky marshals to the mix, to maybe two-thirds of flights — or better yet, provide some degree of combat or weapons training to flight crews — and the problem is solved without citizens having to surrender their nail clippers and bottles of water. Sure, I’ll be X-rayed to make sure I’m not bringing loaded firearms in the passenger cabin, but beyond that, extra security is more illusion than salvation.
- Citizens should enjoy a right to anonymity — not just from the government, but also from commercial data aggregators. I own my data. I own my data profile. Neither the government nor private companies should be allowed to collect information about me beyond what I explicitly authorize, or beyond the minimum requirements of reasonable laws. Companies like Axciom and Radaris and Facebook and Google and the like, which spy on online transactions and pattern-match consumer behavior to create elaborate dossiers about individual citizens — ought to be very, very strictly opt-in.
- Encryption should be impervious to sweeps by government agencies. If I want to encrypt my hard drive or send secret email, so what? Who’s business is it, anyway? Slyly suggesting that only criminals or terrorists use encryption is a clever bit of misdirection, but it’s patently false, too. As a matter of law, I as a citizen am entitled to security in my communications. That’s baked into the Fourth Amendment. If you think I’m breaking the law, investigate. Note, however, that investigation isn’t just electronic surveillance. It’s also sending a cop on the beat.
- The “officer safety” rationale for SWAT-style policing must be put out to pasture. Reason magazine has done some yeoman reporting about the increasing reliance of domestic police agencies to go full-SWAT on even routine warrant service. Barge in the wrong house, shoot the family dog, and say, “Well, it was all for officer safety.” That’s bullshit. Police officers aren’t overlords; they’re citizens, too. And they need to play by the same rules as everyone else. Including regarding videotaping.
- Intelligence-gathering operations should favor HUMINT over SIGINT. America seems to think it can enjoy supremacy without blood loss. That error will someday come back to bite us in the butt — the first terrorist organization or foreign government that learns how to hack the NSA basically cuts us off at the knees. Americans are masters of signals intelligence — Internet monitors, spy satellites, drones — but we suck at connecting the dots (remember the “Saddam has WMD” line?) through experienced human intelligence. Our personnel, who aren’t all that deeply embedded in hot spots around the world, lack subtle clues borne of cultural familiarity to help sift the wheat from the chaff. We need to get out from behind the computer monitor and spend more time infiltrating agents into terrorist cells and hostile governments.
- Routine monitoring must meet minimal safety requirements and be routinely scrubbed. Stuff like RFID-tagged license plates ought to be off-limits. DNA databases, too. Traffic cameras — useful for real-time monitoring — should be erased after a brief period (12 or 24 hours). There’s no good reason to maintain vast archives of data about citizens. Any suspected wrongdoing may generate a warrant to segregate some archival data, but beyond that — delete it. Permanently.
Security isn’t something that can be erected, like a moat. It must be nurtured with good sense, expert judgment and tactical flexibility. America’s systems today are a case study in why the Maginot Line failed to protect the French in 1940: Just when you think you’ve built strong enough safeguards to keep the bad guys at bay, they find a way around … and when they do, you’re utterly unprepared for the consequences.
America can do better. We can have better security policies that don’t impinge upon citizen liberty. The question is, Will we do the right thing, even though it’s harder, or do the convenient thing that’s less effective but easier to demagogue?
Bradley Manning and the Politics of Gender Identification
The day after Pfc. Bradley Manning was sentenced to three decades’ incarceration for leaking classified material to Wikileaks, his attorney stepped forward to announce that the Leavenworth-bound, dishonorably discharged Manning decided he identifies as a female and heretofore wants to be known as “Chelsea Manning.” The lawyer further noted that Manning requests hormone treatments but not — as yet — surgery.
Predictably, the left-leaning blogosphere acted as if Manning’s statement were a done deal, to be celebrated as a act of liberation not unlike the end of Apartheid or the inauguration of the female vote. With the flip of a switch, the progressive commentariat now refers to Manning as “she” or “Chelsea.” The rapidity and totality of the terminology shift boggles the mind.
So let’s propose a thought experiment. Let’s say I get caught sneaking into a women’s washroom. The police say: “Bad, Jason.” I say, “No, I actually identify as a woman, and please call me Jennifer. Now get out while I powder my nose.”
What will happen? You betcha: A CSC or disorderly conduct charge, or something similar.
Manning is different because he’s a cause célèbre of the Left. In the real world, people don’t have lawyers assert denials of reality, and then expect the world to follow suit.
Let’s put this point in a different frame. Every person in the United States has a legal name. This name — indicated on birth records, associated on tax records — provides a permanent identifier of a specific person to our benevolent overlords in government. Sometimes, we can change this name: Doing so requires the consent of a judge, and typically follows marriage, divorce or adoption. Sometimes, too, we can use aliases; in private transactions, there’s no law that says we have to supply our legal name, provided that there’s no intent to defraud. Which is why many actors work under stage names. Manning isn’t trying to defraud, but he’s a public person whose notoriety is associated with his legal name.
A legal name is a legal name. Manning — or anyone else, for that matter — is free to use any alias he likes. But the world isn’t bound to honor his request. Nor is the world required to start calling him a “she” merely because he prefers it. Indeed, from the perspective of journalism ethics, it’s an intriguing question whether the public good that reporters are duty-bound to uphold is best served by denying the normative use of the “Chelsea” alias. The record is clear: There’s a guy named Bradley Manning who was convicted of sharing secret information. Is bifurcating the record between a pre-sentencing “Bradley” and a post-sentencing “Chelsea” in the public interest? Is honoring one person’s non-binding preference more important than preserving the narrative flow on a story of significant public import?
I’m weakly acquainted with two people who began the male-t0-female sex-change process, one of whom has had surgery and now successfully lives as a woman. I have no doubt that some people are genuinely conflicted about their sexual identity — feeling like you’re a man trapped in a woman’s body, or vice versa, isn’t just a fantasy or a delusion; it’s a real problem that requires remediation.
Reasonable people can disagree, given the relative paucity of meaningful medical research, whether various gender-identity disorders should be treated as a psychological problem that requires therapy/counseling — i.e., a first-world mental condition — or a genuine biomedical problem that can be successfully treated with hormones or surgery. I, personally, take no position on the matter, other than to recognize that people caught in positions like Manning’s deserve the benefit of civility.
That said, there’s something distressingly opportunistic about the way the left-leaning press seizes every opportunity to deny that sex matters. People are born male or female. They have specific chromosomal patterns, certain hormonal patterns, certain biophysical markers. These markers affect psychology in deep and real ways. Denying this, is to deny that the sun rises in the East. Sexual identity isn’t a matter of assertion — people aren’t free to just utter declarative statements that trump biology. Moving from “he” to “she” surely requires more than a press release.
The press, by hopping without question aboard the “she is now Chelsea” bandwagon, puts its own ideological interests ahead of the public good. The situation serves as a bit of a tell in the culture wars: You can infer quite a bit about a publication based on how it handles the Bradley/Chelsea question — whether the point’s ignored, accepted without comment or handled as an alias.
If Pfc. Manning gets a military judge to issue a name-change order, fine. “Chelsea” is normative for everyone. If Pfc. Manning obtains gender-reassignment surgery, fine. “Chelsea” is now sufficiently mixed (female hormones, male chromosomes, ambiguous genitals) that a “she” pronoun ought to be unremarkable.
But changing names and pronouns, overnight, based on a press release? Honoring that, says more about the press than it does about Leavenworth’s newest long-term resident.
G.R.'s Third Ward Race: Thoughts about @TuffelmireforGR and @ElectSenita
Next Tuesday, residents of the Third Ward of Grand Rapids — a large chunk of the central city, covering everything south of Wealthy and east of Jefferson (east of Eastern, after you hit Fuller) — vote in a city commission primary.
Of the three declared contenders, only two are viable; Annette Ries has no visibility and her campaign site is merely a skeleton. The real contest is between Michael Tuffelmire and Senita Lenear.
As one lonely member of the slim remnant of Republicans in the Third Ward, the primary race intrigues me because I have no real skin in the game. Neither Lenear nor Tuffelmire sit in my ideological cohort, so neither one will represent me on policy. At all. The question, then, is whether either might do a decent job of nevertheless being a non-ideological, service-driven leader who puts constituents first. Herewith some thoughts about each.
Senita Lenear
- Served ably on the G.R. School Board (pro).
- Endorsed by former Mayor John Logie and former school-board member Jane Gietzen (pro).
- Vague, aspirational platform with no details (con).
- Former UAW steward/negotiator (con).
Michael Tuffelmire
- Left personal message on campaign material left in my mailbox (pro).
- Endorsed by Wealthy Street business leaders (pro).
- Endorsed by MI National Organization for Women (con).
- Leader of DecriminalizeGR (con).
Reflection
I’d love to say that either Lenear or Tuffelmire would represent me despite our ideological differences, but I’m skeptical. I get a sense that Lenear is probably more low-key and savvy, but I have no clue what sort of platform she supports apart from a drumbeat about education. Tuffelmire seems more personable, more gung-ho, but he doesn’t disguise his left-wing activism.
Were I to guess, Lenear would probably be less accessible but also do less violence to my belief system. Tuffelmire would probably be easy to engage but he’d be an activist in government for policies that I oppose.
For me, it’s a coin toss.
The real sadness is that the Kent County Republicans couldn’t muster a viable candidate to compete in the Third Ward. Given the demographics, a solid message of empowerment and renewal could resonate here. The local GOP seems content to write us off — but they do so at their own long-term peril.
UPDATE: Within four hours of this post’s original publication, Michael Tuffelmire contacted me by email to respond to my points in a positive, substantive way. I appreciate his engagement; the scale is tilting in his direction.
Smash-N-Grab, And No One Cares
So I was the victim of a property crime last night:
It appears that some local ne’er-do-well decided that smashing my driver’s-side window and stealing my CD player sounded like a great way to spend the early morning hours of a cool, rainy Sunday.
Nothing else appears missing — just the radio.
On the bright side, though, no one cares, so it’s not like the serenity of any else’s Sunday has been ruffled. The Grand Rapids Police just want me to fill out an online form that may or may not be acted on by an officer (because, of course the perpetrator (a) didn’t leave prints, and (b) even if he did, he’s not in the system, so (c) performing a basic crime-scene investigation is a waste of time). My insurance company, Progressive Direct — the same people I’ve paid more than $3,000 in premiums to over the last few years — decided that my policy doesn’t cover vandalism of a stationary vehicle.
Detroit is just the canary in the coal mine: Institutions aren’t what they used to be, regardless of their ZIP code.
Grand Rapids Isn’t Portand
It’s increasingly obvious that the George Heartwell regime has embraced the New Urbanism and has slowly but surely set into motion a secret, grand plot to turn Grand Rapids into the Portland, Ore., of the Midwest.
OK, so maybe I exaggerate. But recent trends in my fair city do offer grounds for concern. Consider:
- Revision Division. One of the most singularly idiotic changes I’ve witnessed downtown is the “Revision Division” project. Picture it: Division Avenue — the primary north/south surface-street corridor on the east side of the river, and the only one that extends uninterrupted from the southern to the northern suburbs — has been a four- or five-lane road for many years. Much of the street runs parallel to US-131 (in fact, Division is the 131 business loop). Over the last two years, Division has been consolidated from two lanes in each direction, to one lane in each direction, between Wealthy Street and Oakes Street. In other words, the major north-south surface artery is reduced to one lane precisely in the downtown area where two lanes prove most useful. The rationale for this change? To add bike lanes. You know how many cyclists I see on Division? For locals, the question answers itself — in that stretch of road, you’re more likely to see homeless panhandlers than cyclists — but unasked is this: Why, if dedicated bike lanes are so damned important, didn’t the city redevelop less-trafficked nearby streets, thus decreasing the relative risk to cyclists while minimizing the effect on drivers? The first time US-131 completely shuts down at the S-curve because of a major accident, I think we’ll see just how short-sighted it is to give the only realistic alternate route a “road diet.” But hey, bikes y’all.
- Roundabouts. I live downtown, just south of Wealthy Street. To get to my home from Division Avenue, you cross through two roundabouts. The first one, at Jefferson, consolidates two eastbound lanes into one, on the mistaken assumption that drivers on the inside lane intend to head north on Jefferson. Instead, the eighth-mile stretch between Division and Jefferson becomes a game of speed-up-and-cut-off between vehicles on the two eastbound lanes. Inasmuch as the traffic professionals profess that roundabouts make roads safer, the truth for this particular roundabout is that you see riskier driving from people who want to leapfrog slower-moving traffic in the outside lane. I’ve seen more near-collisions at the Wealthy/Jefferson roundabout than any other intersection in Grand Rapids, and last summer I personally forced one aggressive driver into the flower-covered “median” because I refused to let him cut me off. Just yesterday, in fact, I had to wave through a driver who stopped in the roundabout to yield because she didn’t realize that a traffic circle isn’t an intersection. On the bright side, though … the city’s adding even more roundabouts on our downtown thoroughfares, on the apparent theory that if you put in enough of them, drivers will eventually learn how to use them.
- The Silver Line. I’m happy to admit that over the years I’ve made heavy use of The Rapid. Personally, I like the local bus system — it’s clean and reasonably efficient and cost-effective on a per-rider level. That said, I am utterly perplexed as to the value proposition of the Silver Line. This “bus rapid transit” system starts in Wyoming, runs along Division Avenue toward downtown, then meanders to the Michigan Street medical mile. Proponents argue that it’ll cut bus commute times — you buy fares at the stop instead of on the bus, and the buses will have signal preference at traffic lights — and that’s cool. But there are two problems with this scenario: First, there’s no obvious benefit to overlapping the Silver Line with Route 1, at least south of Wealthy. Second, the real problem with the buses downtown is that The Rapid has doubled down on a hub-and-spoke model (instead of a grid system) so pretty much everything has to connect through Central Station. Yes, the Silver Line will make it faster for people who live along Division Avenue to get to Michigan Street. But it’d have been much less expensive to simply expand and reroute the DASH bus system downtown. For that matter, you’d think The Rapid would first plug the holes in its current route map before moving to BRT (can you say, “why the hell isn’t there at least a connector shuttle along Wilson Avenue between Standale Meijer and the Grandville library, so Walker residents and GVSU students don’t have to spend two hours connecting through downtown just to go three miles to the south?”). I suspect a not-insubstantial part of the reason we have the Silver Line — despite having been defeated at the ballot box on its first go-around — is for regional or national cachet. It’s a “look at how sophisticated G.R. is — we’ve got a BRT system!” shtick for city leaders to crow about at national conferences.
- Parking as a Weapon. Rates are going up. Spots are going away, being converted to bike racks that almost never get used. The city and the 61st District Court are doing a shakedown this summer; I recently was notified, for the first time ever, that I have a ticket from 2007 and the city wants its cash, but if I pay now and don’t contest the ticket the city/court will waive late fees. Convenient, that. Moral of the story: The city doesn’t want you to drive downtown. If you do drive downtown, be prepared to pay through the nose to fund the conversion of parking spaces into empty bike racks. [Side note: I’m not being sarcastic about empty bike racks. Bike racks are like bike helmets: A great idea in principle, but rarely used in practice. I frequent a coffee shop that has a generous bike rack just two storefronts down. Patrons elect, instead, to chain their bikes to the tree in front of the coffee shop. So the tree usually has at least one bike chained to it while the rack typically sits empty. Rinse and repeat across the city.]
- Hipster Developments. An interesting byproduct of living in the downtown area is a more intimate familiarity with local businesses. Two years ago, there was some minor scandal as local “anarchists” — presumably, bored teenagers with delusions of grandeur — damaged businesses along the Wealthy Street corridor and decried the gentrification of the inner city. To be sure, I appreciate the many different options at my disposal for locally roasted coffee, tasty microbrews, local-sourced vegan dining and such. It’s interesting, too, to see a giant veggie market sprout up amidst the warehouses and homeless shelters near the river. But you know what I don’t see? Supermarkets that don’t require bars on the windows. Even the downtown housing market is off-balance. Lots of buildings are getting rehabbed into varying kinds of residential properties. Some subsidized, others at market. The theme is “early 20s creative professional with a bankroll” mixed with “people with Section 8 benefits.” Allegedly this blend will create a harmonious, diverse community — a veritable United Colors of Benetton. Yet for all the development that’s already taken place, and for all the time I spend downtown, I see no evidence of this hoped-for explosion of multi-culti happiness outside of the places (like Rosa Parks Circle or The BOB) you’d expect to see it. Whether I sit in the window seat at a coffee shop along West Fulton or the front table at the cigar lounge in the Heartside neighborhood or take a walk along Wealthy Street, I see typical urbanism: Pockets of gentrification amidst a sea of neighborhoods that white people avoid after sundown. I also see lots of homeless people and increasingly aggressive panhandlers, with no apparent intervention by city officials to address this very real barrier to inner-city revitalization.
- Bridge Shutdowns. Although I live on the southern periphery of downtown, I grew up on the Upper West Side. I frequently return there for shopping, family visits and related errands. Such a journey requires crossing the Grand River. The local crossings are, from south to north: Wilson Avenue (Grandville), Wealthy Street, Fulton Street, Pearl Street, Bridge Street, Sixth Street, Leonard Street, Ann Street and North Park Street. To get to the Upper West Side from the central city, Ann and North Park won’t work; they take you too far northeast. Wilson is the long-way-around; you’d have to take Market Avenue to Indian Mound Drive and go roughly six miles SW to get to the bridge. Realistically, Wealthy/Fulton/Pearl are the best bets, with Bridge/Sixth/Leonard workable but taking you a few miles north. Imagine my dismay, then, when every couple of months we have unexpected, unannounced and un-signed shut-downs of the Wealthy/Fulton/Pearl bridges because of … wait for it … bike rides and marathons. And, of course, downtown is rerouted for the events, too, so good luck making it to Bridge or Leonard without swinging way east to thwart the hordes. Look, I’m as much a fan of bike rides, marathons and whatnot as the next fellow — but the city shouldn’t cut off access to the West Side from downtown without leaving some reasonably accessible means of crossing the river. At the least, every bridge crossing that’s shut down should be accompanied by a sign announcing the first open bridge to the north and to the south, so drivers don’t have to snake through closed streets, gaggles of spectator and other distractions just to make it to the other side of town. And some advance warning would be nice.
- Development Meetings. Should anyone have concerns about the city’s new direction, feel free to attend meetings. The last meeting notice I saw was for 2 p.m. on a Thursday. Which means that people who work the day shift, or people with school-aged children, are effectively excluded from participation. You know who’s not excluded by this schedule? Hipsters and community organizers. The mind boggles.
So. Seven gripes. My chief take-away is that after years of fairly conservative leadership under Mayor John Logie and former city manager Kurt Kimball, Grand Rapids is changing. Drip by drip, increasingly progressive policies, subsumed under the New Urbanism and transit-oriented development banners in spirit if not in name, begin to take hold under the leadership of Mayor George Heartwell and city manager Greg Sundstrom. We see drivers getting the shaft with increasing frequency. We see more emphasis on mass-transit infrastructure and alternative energy. We see a relaxation of marijuana laws and a surge in gentrification. We see a county land bank deciding who wins and who loses.
More than anything, we see the real-world effects of municipal leaders using Richard Thaler’s nudge theory to quietly narrow the scope of options available to ordinary people, to encourage an “approved” choice. Bit by bit, project by project, we’re being nudged into living less like Grand Rapidians and more like Portlanders.
But here’s the kicker: Grand Rapids isn’t Portland or Boston or Ann Arbor or any other city on the map. It’s Grand Rapids. It’s a great town, filled with great people. We have our own culture and traditions. What a shame that instead of embracing our history and our culture, we’re left with leaders who’d prefer to transform us to something that we’re not, to slowly penalize free-market choice and automobile traffic while promoting the latest community-development fads.
The real problem with New Urbanist thinking is that by trying to nudge the market through regulatory and infrastructure tweaks, we’re left with a generic cosmopolitanism that might be attractive in the abstract but proves utterly unworkable in the real world. Just look at the current Heartside neighborhood: Yea verily, we’ve rehabbed many buildings and added a mix of commercial properties and loft-style housing. We don’t have reputable supermarkets, though, which is a huge problem. And who wants to walk in Heartside when every 10 feet, you’re accosted by a panhandler? I’m down there often enough to see what life’s like on those streets. It’s not the great deal it’s cracked up to be, propaganda from the DDA notwithstanding. They can build a New Urbanist utopia, but I’m skeptical a critical mass will embrace it strongly enough to make it sustainable over the long haul. Hell, just look what M6 did to Kentwood and Wyoming: Their southern tiers decamped to Gaines Township and Caledonia, leaving economic devastation and cultural impoverishment between 36th and 52nd streets. As soon as The Next Hip Thing arrives, the young creatives so desperately courted for downtown living will flee, and the cycle of urban decay will begin anew.
The cultural norms that made Grand Rapids great are being sidelined in service to a faux-cosmopolitan ideology prevalent among our current batch of technocrats at City Hall. What a shame. I’d go for a drive to clear my thoughts, but who knows if I’ll find an open bridge — assuming I make it through the roundabouts.
Grand Rapids Isn't Portand
It’s increasingly obvious that the George Heartwell regime has embraced the New Urbanism and has slowly but surely set into motion a secret, grand plot to turn Grand Rapids into the Portland, Ore., of the Midwest.
OK, so maybe I exaggerate. But recent trends in my fair city do offer grounds for concern. Consider:
- Revision Division. One of the most singularly idiotic changes I’ve witnessed downtown is the “Revision Division” project. Picture it: Division Avenue — the primary north/south surface-street corridor on the east side of the river, and the only one that extends uninterrupted from the southern to the northern suburbs — has been a four- or five-lane road for many years. Much of the street runs parallel to US-131 (in fact, Division is the 131 business loop). Over the last two years, Division has been consolidated from two lanes in each direction, to one lane in each direction, between Wealthy Street and Oakes Street. In other words, the major north-south surface artery is reduced to one lane precisely in the downtown area where two lanes prove most useful. The rationale for this change? To add bike lanes. You know how many cyclists I see on Division? For locals, the question answers itself — in that stretch of road, you’re more likely to see homeless panhandlers than cyclists — but unasked is this: Why, if dedicated bike lanes are so damned important, didn’t the city redevelop less-trafficked nearby streets, thus decreasing the relative risk to cyclists while minimizing the effect on drivers? The first time US-131 completely shuts down at the S-curve because of a major accident, I think we’ll see just how short-sighted it is to give the only realistic alternate route a “road diet.” But hey, bikes y’all.
- Roundabouts. I live downtown, just south of Wealthy Street. To get to my home from Division Avenue, you cross through two roundabouts. The first one, at Jefferson, consolidates two eastbound lanes into one, on the mistaken assumption that drivers on the inside lane intend to head north on Jefferson. Instead, the eighth-mile stretch between Division and Jefferson becomes a game of speed-up-and-cut-off between vehicles on the two eastbound lanes. Inasmuch as the traffic professionals profess that roundabouts make roads safer, the truth for this particular roundabout is that you see riskier driving from people who want to leapfrog slower-moving traffic in the outside lane. I’ve seen more near-collisions at the Wealthy/Jefferson roundabout than any other intersection in Grand Rapids, and last summer I personally forced one aggressive driver into the flower-covered “median” because I refused to let him cut me off. Just yesterday, in fact, I had to wave through a driver who stopped in the roundabout to yield because she didn’t realize that a traffic circle isn’t an intersection. On the bright side, though … the city’s adding even more roundabouts on our downtown thoroughfares, on the apparent theory that if you put in enough of them, drivers will eventually learn how to use them.
- The Silver Line. I’m happy to admit that over the years I’ve made heavy use of The Rapid. Personally, I like the local bus system — it’s clean and reasonably efficient and cost-effective on a per-rider level. That said, I am utterly perplexed as to the value proposition of the Silver Line. This “bus rapid transit” system starts in Wyoming, runs along Division Avenue toward downtown, then meanders to the Michigan Street medical mile. Proponents argue that it’ll cut bus commute times — you buy fares at the stop instead of on the bus, and the buses will have signal preference at traffic lights — and that’s cool. But there are two problems with this scenario: First, there’s no obvious benefit to overlapping the Silver Line with Route 1, at least south of Wealthy. Second, the real problem with the buses downtown is that The Rapid has doubled down on a hub-and-spoke model (instead of a grid system) so pretty much everything has to connect through Central Station. Yes, the Silver Line will make it faster for people who live along Division Avenue to get to Michigan Street. But it’d have been much less expensive to simply expand and reroute the DASH bus system downtown. For that matter, you’d think The Rapid would first plug the holes in its current route map before moving to BRT (can you say, “why the hell isn’t there at least a connector shuttle along Wilson Avenue between Standale Meijer and the Grandville library, so Walker residents and GVSU students don’t have to spend two hours connecting through downtown just to go three miles to the south?”). I suspect a not-insubstantial part of the reason we have the Silver Line — despite having been defeated at the ballot box on its first go-around — is for regional or national cachet. It’s a “look at how sophisticated G.R. is — we’ve got a BRT system!” shtick for city leaders to crow about at national conferences.
- Parking as a Weapon. Rates are going up. Spots are going away, being converted to bike racks that almost never get used. The city and the 61st District Court are doing a shakedown this summer; I recently was notified, for the first time ever, that I have a ticket from 2007 and the city wants its cash, but if I pay now and don’t contest the ticket the city/court will waive late fees. Convenient, that. Moral of the story: The city doesn’t want you to drive downtown. If you do drive downtown, be prepared to pay through the nose to fund the conversion of parking spaces into empty bike racks. [Side note: I’m not being sarcastic about empty bike racks. Bike racks are like bike helmets: A great idea in principle, but rarely used in practice. I frequent a coffee shop that has a generous bike rack just two storefronts down. Patrons elect, instead, to chain their bikes to the tree in front of the coffee shop. So the tree usually has at least one bike chained to it while the rack typically sits empty. Rinse and repeat across the city.]
- Hipster Developments. An interesting byproduct of living in the downtown area is a more intimate familiarity with local businesses. Two years ago, there was some minor scandal as local “anarchists” — presumably, bored teenagers with delusions of grandeur — damaged businesses along the Wealthy Street corridor and decried the gentrification of the inner city. To be sure, I appreciate the many different options at my disposal for locally roasted coffee, tasty microbrews, local-sourced vegan dining and such. It’s interesting, too, to see a giant veggie market sprout up amidst the warehouses and homeless shelters near the river. But you know what I don’t see? Supermarkets that don’t require bars on the windows. Even the downtown housing market is off-balance. Lots of buildings are getting rehabbed into varying kinds of residential properties. Some subsidized, others at market. The theme is “early 20s creative professional with a bankroll” mixed with “people with Section 8 benefits.” Allegedly this blend will create a harmonious, diverse community — a veritable United Colors of Benetton. Yet for all the development that’s already taken place, and for all the time I spend downtown, I see no evidence of this hoped-for explosion of multi-culti happiness outside of the places (like Rosa Parks Circle or The BOB) you’d expect to see it. Whether I sit in the window seat at a coffee shop along West Fulton or the front table at the cigar lounge in the Heartside neighborhood or take a walk along Wealthy Street, I see typical urbanism: Pockets of gentrification amidst a sea of neighborhoods that white people avoid after sundown. I also see lots of homeless people and increasingly aggressive panhandlers, with no apparent intervention by city officials to address this very real barrier to inner-city revitalization.
- Bridge Shutdowns. Although I live on the southern periphery of downtown, I grew up on the Upper West Side. I frequently return there for shopping, family visits and related errands. Such a journey requires crossing the Grand River. The local crossings are, from south to north: Wilson Avenue (Grandville), Wealthy Street, Fulton Street, Pearl Street, Bridge Street, Sixth Street, Leonard Street, Ann Street and North Park Street. To get to the Upper West Side from the central city, Ann and North Park won’t work; they take you too far northeast. Wilson is the long-way-around; you’d have to take Market Avenue to Indian Mound Drive and go roughly six miles SW to get to the bridge. Realistically, Wealthy/Fulton/Pearl are the best bets, with Bridge/Sixth/Leonard workable but taking you a few miles north. Imagine my dismay, then, when every couple of months we have unexpected, unannounced and un-signed shut-downs of the Wealthy/Fulton/Pearl bridges because of … wait for it … bike rides and marathons. And, of course, downtown is rerouted for the events, too, so good luck making it to Bridge or Leonard without swinging way east to thwart the hordes. Look, I’m as much a fan of bike rides, marathons and whatnot as the next fellow — but the city shouldn’t cut off access to the West Side from downtown without leaving some reasonably accessible means of crossing the river. At the least, every bridge crossing that’s shut down should be accompanied by a sign announcing the first open bridge to the north and to the south, so drivers don’t have to snake through closed streets, gaggles of spectator and other distractions just to make it to the other side of town. And some advance warning would be nice.
- Development Meetings. Should anyone have concerns about the city’s new direction, feel free to attend meetings. The last meeting notice I saw was for 2 p.m. on a Thursday. Which means that people who work the day shift, or people with school-aged children, are effectively excluded from participation. You know who’s not excluded by this schedule? Hipsters and community organizers. The mind boggles.
So. Seven gripes. My chief take-away is that after years of fairly conservative leadership under Mayor John Logie and former city manager Kurt Kimball, Grand Rapids is changing. Drip by drip, increasingly progressive policies, subsumed under the New Urbanism and transit-oriented development banners in spirit if not in name, begin to take hold under the leadership of Mayor George Heartwell and city manager Greg Sundstrom. We see drivers getting the shaft with increasing frequency. We see more emphasis on mass-transit infrastructure and alternative energy. We see a relaxation of marijuana laws and a surge in gentrification. We see a county land bank deciding who wins and who loses.
More than anything, we see the real-world effects of municipal leaders using Richard Thaler’s nudge theory to quietly narrow the scope of options available to ordinary people, to encourage an “approved” choice. Bit by bit, project by project, we’re being nudged into living less like Grand Rapidians and more like Portlanders.
But here’s the kicker: Grand Rapids isn’t Portland or Boston or Ann Arbor or any other city on the map. It’s Grand Rapids. It’s a great town, filled with great people. We have our own culture and traditions. What a shame that instead of embracing our history and our culture, we’re left with leaders who’d prefer to transform us to something that we’re not, to slowly penalize free-market choice and automobile traffic while promoting the latest community-development fads.
The real problem with New Urbanist thinking is that by trying to nudge the market through regulatory and infrastructure tweaks, we’re left with a generic cosmopolitanism that might be attractive in the abstract but proves utterly unworkable in the real world. Just look at the current Heartside neighborhood: Yea verily, we’ve rehabbed many buildings and added a mix of commercial properties and loft-style housing. We don’t have reputable supermarkets, though, which is a huge problem. And who wants to walk in Heartside when every 10 feet, you’re accosted by a panhandler? I’m down there often enough to see what life’s like on those streets. It’s not the great deal it’s cracked up to be, propaganda from the DDA notwithstanding. They can build a New Urbanist utopia, but I’m skeptical a critical mass will embrace it strongly enough to make it sustainable over the long haul. Hell, just look what M6 did to Kentwood and Wyoming: Their southern tiers decamped to Gaines Township and Caledonia, leaving economic devastation and cultural impoverishment between 36th and 52nd streets. As soon as The Next Hip Thing arrives, the young creatives so desperately courted for downtown living will flee, and the cycle of urban decay will begin anew.
The cultural norms that made Grand Rapids great are being sidelined in service to a faux-cosmopolitan ideology prevalent among our current batch of technocrats at City Hall. What a shame. I’d go for a drive to clear my thoughts, but who knows if I’ll find an open bridge — assuming I make it through the roundabouts.