Coronavirus diary: Life goes on, brisket edition

My dad and his father both loved to make homemade BBQ sauce for Sunday roasts and briskets. I've never really done that. 

Today, my son made my dad's sauce recipe for Mother's Day brisket. 

I am proud and humbled.

Coronavirus diary: A letter to my son about values

Dear son:

The COVID-19 pandemic, and accompanying economic disaster, have made me think a lot about your future.

I believe that you will grow up in a tougher, meaner world than I have. It’s possible that survival, and not just self-actualization, will be the challenge that you face. Do not let this scare you: We are privileged that survival has not been a problem in my memory, nor my parents'. But people all around the world and across history have spent lifetimes much closer to the edge than we have. They have accepted the challenge and persisted — because that is what life is all about. What alternative, really, is there?

But I worry. I am a man who has made a living by talking and writing. It’s not made me rich, but for the most part I have been able to provide food and shelter on the income those skills provide. I am not sure such opportunities will be as widely available in the future. And I don’t have the experience, skills or tools to do much else. What can I teach you that will help you, practically, as you grow up and move out into this meaner world?

Your mother reminds me that we are giving you the tools to acquire those skills yourself. You’re smart, inquisitive, an obsessive reader and collector of facts. I could not be prouder of who you have already become. And I think we’ve modeled other values that we hope you’ll take on and carry through life.

Even so, I want to be explicit about the values I hope you embrace.

HONESTY: Telling the truth - even when it has a cost - is good in its own right. But there are practical reasons for embracing honesty as one. To use one, currently pertinent example: Our leaders were not honest - with us, certainly, and perhaps with themselves - about the dangers presented by the coronavirus. That failure to embrace reality, to embrace the truth, and to give that truth to the public, probably made the pandemic wider and more disastrous than it had to be.

Embrace honesty, son. Embrace the truth. 

COMPASSION: There is a temptation, during hard times, just to look out for yourself and those closest to you. It’s understandable. Nonetheless, I ask that you look for opportunities to be kindhearted to — and helpful — others. They will need your help at times. And you will need theirs. 

This is even true even when you find something detestable or off-putting. We didn’t raise you in the church. I know you’re skeptical of religion. But these verses from Matthew 5 in the Christian Bible have have stuck with me, informed my sense of what I should aspire to, even as my own faith wavered and diminished:

43You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor’ and ‘Hate your enemy.’ 44But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Do not even tax collectors do the same? 47And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even Gentiles do the same?

Other religious traditions — and traditions outside religion — have similar teachings. Like I say: I believe the world you encounter will be a mean place. The temptation will be to let it make you mean in response. I hope with all my heart that you can resist that temptation.

JUSTICE: I think this is a corollary to compassion. Both values recognize the humanity of people other than yourself and those closest to you — and demand, as a result, that you treat them the way you would want to be treated, that you advocate for people who are treated unfairly for any reason. When people are treated unfairly, work to help them be treated fairly.

This is an unjust world, and I suspect that it will only become more so. (Or maybe it’s just that people like us will be more exposed to and subject to its injustices.) Have the courage not to shrug at those injustices, or to take advantage of them, but to be a voice against them.

There is so much more to say about each of these ideas. I don’t think I have defined them well in this writing. I must hope that your mother is right, that you already have the skills to equip yourself with better knowledge and wisdom about what these values mean and entail.

A warning: You may find that these values are in tension with each other — that to ensure justice for one person makes it difficult to be compassionate to another, or that compassion to one person makes honesty difficult. I can’t give you a hard-and-fast rule to solve those conundrums — only: Let your conscience be your guide.

I am confident of that conscience, and of your heart. I am sorry that I cannot simply protect you from what is to come, only to prepare you as best I can. I love you, now and always,

Dad

Minorities, sports and getting started again

I'm aware of a study showing the shutdown of sports is taking some $12 billion out of the economy. And I love to listen to a baseball game as much as anyone.

But I guess I can't help but notice that the push to reopen professional sports -- at risk to the participants, even if fans are kept away -- is going to have a disproportionate impact.

Here's a 2018 report. First the MLB:

With people of color making up 42.5 percent of MLB players, the league has one of the best diversity scores among the four major sports. Last year saw the highest percentage of Latinos, 31.9 percent, in the last two decades.

The NBA:

With 80.7 percent of players being people of color, the NBA takes the lead among men’s sports for player diversity.

And the NFL:

The league is primarily composed of African-American and white players. The percentage of players of color has slowly risen to over 70 percent since 1997; the percentage of white players reached a new low, 27.7 percent.

The health burdens of the pandemic are falling disproportionately on minorities. Restarting sports over the next few months might be part of the same phenomenon.

Grasping at truth: Three examples of good writing about difficult topics

One thing about quarantine: It has given me time to think about how I practice the craft of writing.

I'm lucky: I've been able to make a living at writing -- both reporting and opinion writing. For most of the last decade or more, I've had a regular outlet (newspaper syndication, PhillyMag, and The Week) to express my opinions before large audiences. I don't take it for granted.

But I always know I could do better. And I sometimes suspect I'm doing a two-dimensional version of something that might better contribute to the public conversation if I could somehow express it in three dimensions.

I want to point to three pieces of writing done in recent years that I take as a model -- not just for writing, but for thinking, and maybe even doing this job in a way I consider to be moral.

And here are the lessons I've learned from them:

Is Joe Biden 'no better' than Trump?

At The Week, Damon Linker discusses how the Trump campaign can use the sex assault charges against Joe Biden.

The Biden campaign's effort to portray itself as a moral reset from the debasement of the Trump years will run into this counter-message like a power sander. The Trump campaign will strip it away with a barrage of paid ads, prime-time cable news diatribes, and a hailstorm of tweets — all of it repeating the message (illustrated with clips from and about the Kavanaugh hearings) that Biden and his fellow Democrats are every bit the BS artists that Trump is, only they won't admit it. They'll lie about it, right to your face.
 To Democrats this prediction may sound implausible. 

There's no way that Trump, a man whose mendaciousness is well established and total, can possibly succeed in portraying Biden as more dishonest than he is. But he won't have to show that Biden is worse, just that he's no better.

Emphasis added.

One of our last dinners hosted before the quarantine was with a very old friend of mine -- smart, in a position of considerable community responsibility -- who didn't say how he voted. But he wasn't all that concerned by Trump. All the politicians were corrupt, dishonest and evil, he said. At least with Trump, there are no illusions.

It's troubling that Trump's appeal is rooted in cynicism. What's scarier is: That cynicism might not be entirely misplaced. 

Three ways Mike Pence's refusal to wear a mask sums up Trump-Republican ideology

More about this:

To me, this sums up Trump-Republican ideology pretty neatly, in three ways:

* Trumpist Republicans don't have to play by the rules. The president ran his 2016 on a law and order campaign, but has notoriously been the most lawless president in living memory -- and that includes Nixon. Rules are for other people, not for the powerful elites and their friends.

* Trumpist Republicans disdain those they see as "weak." The GOP’s general attitude toward the vulnerable members of society is: "I got mine, you can go to hell." Mike Pence believes he doesn't have the coronavirus, so why should he act in a way that protects others from from the disease? And he can buy health insurance, so why should Republicans worry about ensuring that poor people can afford medical care? Or food? Or anything else?

* Trumpist Republicans are willing to let those weak people shoulder the consequences of their actions. Of course, people can be asymptomatic and still spread coronavirus, which means there is a chance that Pence's refusal to wear a mask increased the chances that patients and staff at Mayo were exposed to the virus. Not a significant chance, but still. Similarly, the GOP project largely is about protecting corporations from dealing with the consequences of their actions -- which is why environmental and worker safety protections have been gutted under Trump.

Pence's refusal to wear a mask is in some ways a small act. But it speaks volumes.

About the Blue Angel flyover

I've seen a couple of Blue Angels shows in my life and found them utterly thrilling.

But.

I'm concerned that we as a country can't seem to honor hospital workers without resorting to displays of militarism. It's supposed to look strong. But it seems like it is probably a weakness.