I earlier that night watched a Storm game court-side with a dear homie. It’s getting late now. We’re a little buzzed at a late-night pizza joint in downtown Seattle. We’ve covered all the bases pretty much: Iran, Venezuela, Trump (of course), my homie’s failing marriage, my own kind of “stuck.” My homie repeats a familiar beat. It’s practically a reflex these days. “We all just need to talk more,” he says.
I’m a little surprised by my own answer. What in the hell else am I doing around here if I’m not talking? Seeking to be a voice people gravitate towards. To be–wait for it–influential.
Or am I writing?
And are you reading?
And is it different?
My homie reads a lot. Like the thousands-words articles in the New Yorker and Atlantic and Vanity Fair. and Time. I’ve visited him at his giant home on the Columbia River. These and others are arranged neatly in a sort-of Asian fan on his coffee table. They’re not just for show. He reads them. I never bother asking him, “These treatises move your needle one way or the other?” because I think I already know the answer.
“To be honest, Tim, I think we’re pretty well talked out,” I say over another Malbec.
I hate that I say it. It’s cynical. It’s quitting. Fuck sake, there’s a whole category on Things Men Carry that I dedicate just to conversations. What happens when I renounce my faith in the time-tested idea that two sides having a proportional (and hopefully irreverent but informed) say in a civil discourse is healthy for our democracy?
But then I think about today. I think about Abby Phillips’ show on CNN, for example. It’s a microcosm. There, esteemed and expert guests on both sides of the aisle basically wind up agreeing on absolutely nothing. They hold fast their positions. With facts and evidence to support those positions. There’s often a lot of shouting. And these are really smart people, too. Whose needles at the end of every show don’t budge. Isn’t the precise point of a conversation, though, to budge? To get budged or be the budger? Change his or her heart or mind just a little so that maybe they look at immigration or Iran in a slightly different way or even a radically different way? I guess that’s more or less what I mean by conversated out.
We are talking to each other. Geezus, we can’t stop talking to each other. On CNN. In podcast after podcast. In our homes. Our circles. There’s absolutely no shortage of conversations. The kicker I think no one saw coming? This everyone coming to the table for healthy dialogue can and has really lost its virtuous shine. If my needle has budged any, and it has, it’s not because of a conversation that I had or was privy to. Nobody has really budged my needle through conversation. Big Baby Orange has performed that honor almost singlehandedly every time he opens his mouth. The rest through, well, yeah, reading.
So now what?
Stop talking?
Divide the country in two?
Read more?
Read more.
One more minute of your time, then, Mr. Secretary of Defense. Correction: Secretary of War. Before I invite you to the octagon, there’s a whole suite of options I’d like us to consider beforehand. Your party losing both chambers next month and your ass getting shown the door is one said option. It can’t happen soon enough (fuckin’ douche).
This adult men’s forum’s another. I thought it up myself, thank you very much. A thoughtful and reflective and intellectual adult option (if I don’t say so myself) over us two duking it out. Done right, there’d be a legit studio, fresh fish flown in, cigars. And a heck of a read that could flip Arctic ice packs upside down. We only insist on one thing: accuracy. You can expound on the virtues of expunging DEI all you want, since you seem to have a real hard-on over it. Maybe you have firsthand knowledge. What you don’t don’t don’t get to do is make up shit.
Until then, until the elections, until I make weight, I’d like you to meet J. It’s a quick read. I know it’s all we have the capacity for these days.
J.’s a ferry captain at my old work. Before that milestone, she was handed a qualification packet that she had to complete. There were no competencies on said packet that said “to be completed by men only” or “women exempt from this.” Or any of that jazz. I would know. I worked extensively with J. Meaning I signed off on those competencies. I signed off on way more than half those competencies. As one of the bigger dicks in the fleet, I was also the first to recommend her for captain. Let me rephrase that: I was a premium stickler when it came to signing people off.
Or this young woman at Navy Dive School, who years back handed all of us our ass in pull-ups?
Or Lindsey Vonn? Skiing in the Olympics with an ACL rupture and meniscal damage? Let that soak, asshole.
But it’s practically Rome 2.0 around here these days. Let’s get our toxic on, then, yeah? You’re what, ten years my junior? But politics have made you soft.
But not so fast. You made it this far.
-tmc
