Fearful Flip-Outs versus Vigilant Intelligent Concern

Just to balance out my posting about Pittsburgh, where I said:

This is not The Age-Old. It's different now. I believe it's a last gasp of an old problem (though last gasps can be horrendous, and represent a long tail as they gradually fade out)...

Sensitized by our relative safety and comfort, micro evil seems macro. A few pathetic dipshits with tiki torches in Charlottesville feel like a grand resurgence of the Third Reich, just because it's so startling (40 years ago, it wasn't so startling...so it didn't rattle the rest of us all that much. More dismayed eye-rolling than massive outrage)...

Yes, a dipshit can run you over with their car or shoot up a church, mosque, or synagogue, and it's awful, but this is not what a civilizational resurgence of violence and hatred looks like...

It may seem contradictory that I also wrote the following a year ago about the potential for a sudden mushrooming bonfire of anti-Semitism:

The infectious smoldering of economic populism, of xenophobia, of white supremacy, and of vitriol at "coastal elites", media, "Wall Street types", etc., is not being pushed forward, I don't believe, primarily by anti-Semitic people (though plenty of rabid anti-Semites are, of course, conveniently enjoying that tide). However, The Jewish Problem is like super-dry, crackly, hyper-flammable kindling, lurking adjacently to it all, just out of frame.

Bring the intensity levels up just 20 or 30%, and anti-semitism will flash in a chain reaction so suddenly and so brightly that your retinas will scorch. It will arc, like lightning, through people who are not particularly anti-Semitic; who never quite connected their anger and bitterness to this particular scapegoat; who have Jewish friends and are generally decent people.

Millions lack clear awareness of the Nazi-ish mindset into which they've been gradually stirred. There's one essential chunk missing. Add it, and there will be a widespread, galvanizing sensation of fullness, momentum, and inevitability.

So I do not have my head in the sand. I am fully aware of the potential. But potential is not present reality. By gifting dipshit evil with the full weight of our fear and panic - by imagining systematic Nazi barbarism in the actions of an idiotic driver emboldened by a chuckleheaded president whose authoritative impulses amount to toxic trolling rather than a diabolical march to the extinction of democracy and the completion of The Final Solution - we vastly overreact and we also elevate the idiots.

Everything arousing pain and fear is not The Worst Thing Ever. By making everything an "eleven", we offer would-be propagators of twos and threes and fours corroboration of their imagined fearsomeness. Our easy apocalyptic rage parses to the lunatic fringe as applause, and feeds their narrative. Meanwhile, we make ourselves needlessly miserable in a time of unmatched tolerance, safety, comfort, and prosperity.

A viral movement has been afoot, preceding Trump, to make us view every imperfection in those heady blessings as the leading edge of Ultimate Horror. We are frought Princesses interminably scanning for diminishing mattress peas, and that unceasing dread has driven some of us mad. Those who deem themselves The Resistance must study how deranged fear was what stoked the Right's madness to begin with. Per FDR, fear is the very thing to be resisted. What can ruin us - the only thing that can ruin us! - is madness, overreaction and the unimaginable stupidity humans display when riled into anger and terror.

It's extraordinarily hard for the opposition to recognize that the ball's actually in our court. It's up to us to decide whether to flip out in fury and terror, or to reconcile from solidity and strength. As ever, we can respond to extremism with reciprocal extremism or with enlightened moderation.

Unfortunately, the present crop of humans - with its unique wealth, health, comfort, interconnection, and security - is uniquely prone to terror. We may not fully register what we have, but we sure as hell fear its loss. We may not acknowledge our wealth, but we typify the “more to lose” anxieties of the wealthy. Hence our hair trigger.

I remember the 70s and 80s when Nazis (actual imposingly scary rednecks, in real numbers, not a small gaggle of douchey kids bearing citronella torches) marched and bona fide Klansmen attained elected office, and the rest of us for the most part were content to mock them and roll our eyes. Not blinded by fear and rage, we saw more clearly. Today's societal landscape is much cleaner and nicer, which makes the residual scum stand out dramatically and magnifies our indignation at imperfections in our heady blessings. By the time we're down to our very last Nazi (some geezer raving and saluting from his electric scooter), we'll all be so unhinged by his presence that we'll jump in the ocean and drown en masse like lemmings.

Does any of this make Pittsburgh in any way acceptable? Do I not mourn the dead? Am I not tautly vigilant going forward? In a sane society I wouldn't feel compelled to reaffirm such obviousness. But for the record I agree with every flinty word of the always-eloquent former Republican operative Steve Schmidt (who, a few short years ago, would have been maxi-scorned by the Left for his role in that most extreme of evils, the 2008 McCain campaign). Don't miss the following video; it's great.

Incompetence is the Father of Skill

Once again I'm getting back into shape on trombone after a lengthy pause. This is the sixth or seventh time since leaving Chowhound (the first, repairing a ten year gap, was a massive undertaking). Deja Deja Deja Deja Deja Deja vu.

The problem is that in the old days, I'd play ten hours per day - gigs, rehearsals, jam sessions, private study. So I was perpetually ready. Now, I'm perpetually unready, i.e. perpetually striving to restore myself to some semblance of what I once considered good form. One of the central themes of this Slog is the ultra fine line between artistic commitment and obsession. If people knew the excesses that go into producing inspiring results, they'd be less inspired and more disgusted. Beethoven composed in a diaper. That's really all you need to know.

I'm no longer awed by the diaper thing, and I've danced till I've dropped in the red shoes...and I've also not gone to such lengths. I've bounced my whole life between rediscovering the benefits of investing ungodly care....and shortcutting that part and wondering why my results aren't so great. Even at this late date, I still must constantly be reminded that mere superhuman effort is for pikers.

As a trombonist, I exist in an awkward state of ambivalence, wanting to be a musician but unable to sustain the absolute single-mindedness that made me the player I once was. I'm always aspiring to a comeback; always dragging the boulder up the hill, only to watch it inexorably slide back down.

But there are benefits to finding oneself in a constant state of overhaul: you learn how it all works, and are gifted with recipes for the secret sauces. An example:

It is not natural to press a narrow circle of metal against one's mouth for many hours per day. It can cut into the flesh and push back the front teeth. You must apply enormous strength, wind, and force while holding this large hunk of brass like a delicate lily at one's chops. It's hard.

One of the essentials is that you need to "plant" the mouthpiece on the lower lip. This frees up the upper lip to stay delicate and do lots of free vibrating. To anchor on the top lip is self-defeating. It squelches those all-important vibrations. The instrument becomes hard to play, and you lose your high range.

So for the past week the instrument has been hard to play, and I've lost my high range. Low and behold, I noticed that I'm anchoring on the top lip. If I were a computer, I'd reprogram and be done with it. Stop doing the bad thing, start doing the good thing, voila. But alas, we sloppy meatbags are logy on the uptake. So I've had to correct myself 10,000 times. Not the top lip, the bottom lip. Nope, that's top lip. You're doing it again. Bottom lip! Nope, that's top lip again. By hectoring myself day and night, eventually I'll learn.

But why do I do it the wrong way in the first place? It's not comfortable, and it doesn't work. How does the habit creep in? There is a clue: any musician (or anyone who's perfected a skill) can tell you that under stress, bad habits come flooding back. Put me on a big stage in front of 1000 people, and I'll have an especially juicy inclination to anchor on the top lip, kill the vibrations, and sound like crap.

Why? Because it feels like comfort. But why would an uncomfortable and ineffective method feel like "comfort"? Should't "comfort" stem from the choice that brings the happy result? Isn't that how human psychology - positive reinforcement, etc. - is supposed to work?

No. "Wrong" is comfort. "Wrong" is home. "Right" is what we do when we're dressed in our starchy best, with rigid good posture, while "wrong" is the spine-harming slouch we assume when allowed to stand "at ease". The choices that hurt and that don't work are the soil our intentions must fight and grow through to fulfill themselves. Just as the child is the father of the man, incompetence is the father of skill. And one maintains a soft spot for "dear old dad".


See followup here

Extremism Example

I first raised this specter shortly after Trump's election, but my alarm bells have clanged harder over the past few weeks, warning y'all that splashback from the incensed radicalized Left could prove even worse than Trumpism.

Want an example? I put up my last posting (minus the two paragraph italicized footer) on Facebook, where it was shared by a FB friend. Here's how that went. First: understand that these are not random loons with mental health issues. The main character is a mutual friend of two of my smarter Facebook friends. And, FYI, a "kapo" was the term for Jews who assisted Nazis in the concentration camps. Finally, a warning: Don't read this if you have an aversion to seriously toxic and profane language and imagery.

As I've said: to an extremist, moderation seems extreme (here are some other strange flips of perspective).

The extreme Right loves to viciously snarl. But the impulse for full-on dehumanization - not just "I loathe you", but "You can crawl up and die" - seems to come easier to the extreme Left.

It's not the savage belligerence I find most troubling. It's the cartoon-ization. I'm not only the-worst-possible-thing-in-the-world, but I must be metaphorically chucked in the head with an axe again and again and again until I'm extra dead. I'm an inhuman, not a hated human. MAGAs, for all their ignorant, toxic raging loudmouth bellicosity, don't often show quite that hair-trigger eagerness for utter dehumanization. Of course, in the end this is like comparing strains of terminal cancer.

Are you among the sane? Do you prefer no one crawling up and dying? Are you finding yourself exasperated by extremism, period, regardless of label? If so, consider acknowledging the extreme radicalization of both sides and joining me in the Center.


At a deeper level, I believe I can account for the wildly inappropriate flip-out thus:

Nothing perturbs an extremist more than sane moderation amid outrage. The real problem is that it appeals at some level, much as acrophobics fear not the height itself but the faint temptation to jump.

I have a talent for reframing  and framings can be contagious. On a good day, it can be really helpful. For example, it can rouse a person from depression. But if you deeply identify with a certain rigid framing, anything that might loosen the tight grip - thaw a frozen stance and create some pliability - feels like an existential attack.

Reframing has always been a dangerous pursuit. It's not "the truth", in and of itself, that gets folks crucified; it's the audacity of reframing (when amplified by the contagious power of truth).

For some reason, humans have always equated unwavering framing with virtue and heroism. Our rigidity - our backbone - has always been touted as our best aspect. It's a problem. I once wrote

"Since the dawn of history, our heroes have been the staunchest of the staunch. People of unwavering conviction, adhering faithfully to a rigid code. The central problem of humanity is the intrinsic and bloody connection between our noblest quality and our most barbaric one. The connection is not often discussed, because a clear-eyed view unravels the fabric of what humanity most admires about itself."

Also, it's a simple matter of pattern matching. The extreme Left maintains a constantly-updated database of labels that, when affixed to a person, make them a non-person, plus various words and phrases correlating with that label. That's how my posting on Pittsburgh made me a Nazi collaborator. Some patterns matched - so long as you're not reading carefully or sensitively, and you're primed to jump on the button because you deem yourself a frontline defender of all that's Good.

Sanctimonious hordes pour over discourse, and when they spot a verbal construction currently deemed to correlate with a trendy label, they sound the loudest, screechiest possible alarm, and don't rest until the offender's bullied, bloodied, fired from their job, unable to make a living or contribute to society, permanently silenced and shunned. It's exactly like a video game. No, it is a video game.

If you feel a coldness in your blood seeing me saying uncomfortable things that could rile up the wrong kind of people and make trouble, and you feel an instinctual reaction to take a step away and go along with The Program (which you haven't quite found time to carefully examine): that's what tyranny feels like, folks. Left and Right have both radicalized right up to their respective ultimate forms of tyranny. No bueno.

Pittsburgh

Just a quick take on Pittsburgh:

I'm focused on the three police officers who took bullets to try to protect these people. In the long history of anti-semitism, that was not often (ever?) seen.

In 1993, Oskar Schindler, having written some checks and taken some risks, seemed like a hero. In 2018, cops run straight into the violence, and we barely register them. This is not The Age-Old. It's different now. I believe it's a last gasp of an old problem (though last gasps can be horrendous, and represent a long tail as they gradually fade out). Consider the black church bombing in Charleston a few years ago. Horrendous. But clearly a last gasp of an old problem. I'm not building a shelter in my basement to hide black friends, and they're not doing so for Jewish me, either. That may sound flippant, but it's not. It's a sanity check.

Sensitized by our relative safety and comfort, micro evil seems macro. A few pathetic dipshits with tiki torches in Charlottesville feel like a grand resurgence of the Third Reich, just because it's so startling (40 years ago, it wasn't so startling...so it didn't rattle the rest of us all that much. More dismayed eye-rolling than massive outrage).

Yes, a dipshit can run you over with their car or shoot up a church, mosque, or synagogue, and it's awful, but this is not what a civilizational resurgence of violence and hatred looks like. Take comfort in the longer arch, and stay sane in your rebound (some of my best friends are hicks who don't like Jews very much - though they're obviously willing to make exceptions. There's a huge diff between such prefs and shooting up a congregation, and that's not a distinction the Left seems able to make these days).


If suggestions of restraint strike you as irritating, it's time to reevaluate your urges. It is not your best self that compels you to drop values when shocked by others dropping theirs; to ratchet up intolerance in response to intolerance; to ape the monsters and let their example inspire gleeful indulgence of your uglier impulses.

Our current perch as a nation is a perfect in-laboratory case for exploring humanity's worst defect: our incorrigible impulse to respond to extremism with reciprocal extremism. But what if we get it right this time? Pittsburgh aside, what if the true moral test here isn't on the MAGAs to reform themselves, but on the rest of us to avoid the usual trap, and retain our values and our intelligent composure even when we're upset? It's an individual choice, not a group one. Each of us has an opportunity to "be the change".

Music Collection Finally Going Digital

I was rich for three years when I was young. After finishing school in 1984, I lived in my parents house until 1987. I was earning around $18,000/year as a musician (not unimpressive, actually), and, with no rent or health insurance premiums to pay, I spent every damned cent. I wheeled around in a new Mazda RX-7 ($11K back then) and invested every other spare dollar into my burdgeoning book and record collection.

The collecting alone was a phenomenal education, even aside from the actual reading and listening. To this day, these collections leave me awed by how clued-in my 22 year old self had been. I was drafting on the innate youthful ability to rapidly synch up. But while most kids focus it on pop culture, sports, etc., I used it to get hip to Franklin Merrell-Wolff, Joe Frank and Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

My first shared apartment was literally a closet in Park Slope, but the $250/month rent put an end to my easy spending; I was pretty viciously poor up to and through the Chowhound years, despite being respected in several fields. So I never could afford to buy CD versions of the many albums I hadn't heard in years. Lacking a turntable, I've been musically frozen in transit for a long time.

All along I've been burning the relatively few CDs I had to iTunes for mobile synching, but that's not an audiophile route, so most of my really good stuff has sat on the shelf in vinyl or CD. But last year I had the liberating experience of finding out I have 50% hearing loss (and falling!), relieving all audiophile pressures. This week, I decided to finally put everything into digital; to finally get caught up.

I went through my vinyl, checking for versions available as CD or digital download. Both are super cheap right now, as these formats are nearly obsolete. All-in-one streaming services are the future, but since my tastes are at the far end of obscurity, I prefer to own my music.

I found plenty of $4.50 used CDs on Amazon and eBay, but with shipping they'd be more like $8, and Apple iTunes or Amazon Digital often offer $8-10 downloadables. Their audio quality is a notch below CDs, but yay, deafness! So I wound up buying about 20 CDs (because they were super cheap or because digital downloads were unavailable), plus about 30 digital albums. It cost $325, probably a third as much as if I'd done this in the 90's when everyone else did it. I'll also pay a high-end service to digitize six treasured vinyl recordings that never made it into the digital age at $10/record.

Meanwhile, to hedge my bets, I managed to resurrect an old turntable. So while my vinyl collection is digitized for versatility, I'll still be able to play vinyl at home (though I'll still up-pay for fancy digital transfer of those magical six recordings). And, at long last, I'll get back to serious music listening...while I still can.


When I no longer can, I'll find other cool things to do. The world overflows with treasure, so I don't freeze my attention on what's missing

Cheap Great Flamenco

This must be a pricing error. 24 tracks of primo vintage flamenco genius for just 99¢. It's digital. You download (256 kbps, i.e. good-quality) MP3s, and can easily create a playlist in iTunes and drag the files into that playlist. They'll import complete with artwork and track titles. Just do it, trust me. If you find The Gypsy Kings "atmospheric", listen to this and see what the music's really like (though purists correctly note that Manitas de Plata isn't entirely doctrinaire, himself).

You may find guitarist Plata "flashy" (though flash is an integral part of the style). But the many tracks with Jose Reyes singing are unforgettable. Get an idea here (this performance hasn't been published anywhere...and it's a deeper level than anything on the preceding set, which is nonetheless great):

More:

"¡Venga, Paco!", an appreciation of Paco de Lucia (with great music links).

"Recordings I've Worn Out", various music tips, including flamenco.

All Slog postings about music

What's Turkey Up To?

The media's been doing a particularly poor job of explaining Turkeyish leader Recep Erdoğan's strategy in the wake of the Khashoggi murder. But the Washington Examiner's Tom Rogan, who's been reporting on Erdoğan for quite some time, has been offering nice clear, terse explainers. You can steam through the backlog in under 10 minutes to get a much, much better grip on what's going on.

If you have time for only one, see Rogan's 600 word overvierw from Tuesday: How President Erdogan is using Jamal Khashoggi's murder to his own advantage. Here's a sample:

Erdogan knows that he must strike a balanced line with the Saudis. Riyadh is already furious with Erdogan for what it regards as his excessive support for Islamist movements beyond Saudi control. But with the Turkish economy struggling, Erdogan has little appetite for punitive Saudi economic measures. For the Turkish leader, then, the great balancing act is extracting maximum concessions from Saudi Arabia, bringing significant negative attention to Saudi Arabia, but also avoiding a complete diplomatic breach with Saudi Arabia. That's why Erdogan is putting the ball in bin Salman's court as to whether he wants to play hardball or not. Both sides, Erdogan ventures, will choose Erdogan's blackmail choice.

The essential previous reports are all embedded therein. They're all terse, so ADD is not a legitimate reason to avoid powering through! I'll list them out below:

The madness of Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Deep background on Erdogan's scariness, from February).

Severely punishing Saudi Arabia means punishing Mohammed bin Salman (Very recent).

Why Turkey released pastor Andrew Brunson (Erdogan is rethinking his split with America).

The Erdogan-Putin Idlib deal is a fraud (Russian President Vladimir Putin has played Erdogan for a fool in Syria).

Deprivation

In my Short Guide to Overextension, I wrote:

Nearly everyone considers themselves busy to the point of overwhelmed, but few truly are at that point, or have ever been near it. The following is a test to see how close you are.

You're in the midst of a horrendously busy day, driving to complete an errand. As you go around a curve, you see that the road far ahead has been closed and a solid mile of immobile vehicles is hopelessly backed up. There's no chance of escaping a delay of an hour or two (and: there is no cell phone service).

In this situation, your response is to:
A. Fret, curse, sweat, and squirm, or...
B. Recline back your seat, smile a beatific smile, and feel a profound sense of joyful well-being wash over you

Most people would answer A. Such people have not yet reached the breaking point. For those truly under-the-gun, traffic jams and post office queues are Cancun. If you've been there (the breaking point, not Mexico), you understand.

Here's a similar thought experiment, this time regarding deprivation:

Say you've spent decades stranded in the Sahara, eventually working out a viable means of scratching out a life for yourself. You've found a small murky water source, discovered places to forage berries and an occasional mouse, and patched together a reasonably safe shelter. You can handle a sandstorm, and scorpions no longer pose a threat. Great resilience and resourcefulness have brought you to the point where you must work hard and do some very unpleasant things, but you know you'll endure. This confidence is an immense gift after years of panic, agony, and regret. You can breathe. You're ok. You've made peace.

Say a Range Rover drives by, full of jolly, champagne-sipping rich swells on vacation. They pull over, and the driver informs you that unfortunately there's no room to fit you and bring you back to civilization, however they were about to picnic and you'd be welcome to join in and quaff caviar and foie gras.

Would you do it? Or would you decline?

To most people, it's a "hell yeah". You'd obviously feel eager - even desperate - to enjoy as much as possible if the opportunity arose. But those who've faced actual deprivation and experienced the grace of acceptance know better. Such a meal would echo for years, thoroughly upsetting hard-won equilibrium. Acceptance and equanimity would have to be rebuilt from scratch. The one meal would do no good at all. It would be 100% downside.

The clichéd crazy half-starved hermit who chases away help maybe isn't so crazy after all. Those who've never experienced sustained deprivation simply can't understand.


Deprivation is an interesting and multifaceted topic, though much know-how has been lost in this increasingly affluent world. One of the liabilities of wealth is a highly constricted and simplified view of deprivation, which, ironically, is an enormous deprivation. There's way more to the topic than the weepy prospect of losing your Stuff.

This posting mostly took the current view of deprivation - as unthinkable affliction - but hints that perhaps it's not as simple as it seems; that some greater value lies just over the horizon of the unthinkable. Going further, one of the Slog's most popular entries, "The Monks and the Coffee", offered an elevating example of how deprivation is merely a state of mind...which means other viewpoints are always available. "Lasagna and Depression" explored how to shift viewpoints - i.e. how the coffee-loving monks got that way - as well as the perils of indulging a mindset of deprivation. And "The Inside Story on Asceticism" turns things around entirely, asking whether the appearance of plenty truly appeals in the end, and observing that well-pruned trees grow more fully. Maybe we've had it backwards all along!

Finally, don't miss "The Evolution of a Perspective", which traces all my thinking on this, and starts with this:

Most human dissatisfaction is the result of asking yourself: What's missing? What don't I have? Who or what is not here? How does my current circumstance fail to measure up to expectations? What about the current moment is imperfect? We are princesses constantly scanning for mattress peas.

None of this has anything to do with what's actually happening (what's happening is what's happening!). Instead, it's about indulging a conception of yourself as living in a movie, and viewing your outcomes from the vantage point of an audience, measuring how far circumstances stray from the script as you envisioned it.

It is, quite literally, insane; a narcissistic fantasy world, none of it real. But this is how people with idle time (an unusual human condition found only among the rich) make themselves needlessly miserable.

"Jamal Khashoggi Doesn't Matter That Much"

Don't miss this important short article by Tom Rogan, "Sorry, But Jamal Khashoggi Doesn't Matter That Much."

I get that some readers will view my words here as callous, arrogant, and even delusional. But I would simply ask them two questions: How did you perceive Saudi Arabia before this happened, and how do you perceive Middle Eastern politics per se?

When it comes to the first question, the nature of the Saudi regime has long been clear. It is a regime that has no qualms about restricting human rights, treating women as second-class citizens, and paying off fanatical Sunni clerics in return for political patronage. The House of Saud uses force broadly and without adequate humanitarian caution or strategic hesitation. It beheads not just criminals, but also revered religious figures seeking religious emancipation.

In short, the Saudi regime is not nice.

Here's the money quote:

Mohammed bin Salman's reform program offers the best and, at present, only means of that nation being able to escape what it will otherwise become: a destitute kingdom full of demographically-explosive young men and Salafi-jihadist ideologues — in other words, a recipe for ISIS 2.0.

Much of MBS' "reform" program, as Rogan would surely agree, is cover for self-serving purges and extortions. So even that is not some white horse of virtue. But the alternative would be unthinkable.

We never seem to learn that shunning not-the-very-worst guys for their sins creates space for the very worst guys to fill. The problem is that nuanced realpolitik looks awful in the broad view; one appears to be cozying up to bad guys. And the perennial problem with weeding out the sinful is that in the end every last human would be weeded. So while it seems hard to argue against humanism - rewarding goodness and shunning wickedness - it's far more important to consider pragmatic actual outcomes. 

Unfortunately, that's impossible when the citizenry is consumed by one or another cursedly simple ideology. Beware of sanctimonious people pushing simple solutions! The much-discussed increasing distrust of experts stems from the viral conviction that simplicity always offers the truer path. Maybe we should call it Occam's Guillotine.


But how, you ask, does this relate to my athlete's foot? Deeply, it turns out, if you'll think about it. The redress for badness isn't glorious Good, but mere homely "Better".

Blueberry Cream Cheese Pizza Postgame Rundown

I discussed last night's disturbing pizza experience with my friend Limster, who's currently living in London.

It strikes me as interesting and important to note that there's an inflection point that must be recognized when a trend becomes deeply enshrined in culture. There's a vast difference between "I hate this stupid food trend!" (which can be spoken like an insider by an outsider) and "I hate your stupid cuisine!" (which cannot).

At another level - I love the complexity of all this! - if I were to bring non-cosmopolitan people unfamiliar with Korean culture and cuisine to a place like this, they'd probably feel compelled to be extremely polite and deferential about the pizza, assuming it's The Korean Way, and therefore impolite to take issue with. It takes considerable experience with and sympathy for the culture to recognize that this is just goofy kids gone pretentiously awry. My eye-rolling is from the perspective of my Korean stem cells, not my American ones.

But this makes it that much more necessary to recognize the elusive inflection point if (heaven forbid) this sort of thing actually enshrines in the future. If so, I'll work overtime to seek out the best available version (maybe this was just a bad blueberry cream cheese pizza!) and try to experience it with the most Korean palate I can muster. If I still hate it, oh well. My pref, my bad. In that case, it's me, not them.

For the time being, however, it's them, not me....though I'd certainly never condemn anyone for their prefs. There's never anything wrong with liking stuff (I myself like mushy leftover pasta, but readily admit it's a guilty pleasure) and I believe snobbery ("You're bad for liking that!") is downright evil, reducing people's precious happiness.


There may come a point where this entire discussion would be an illegal, perhaps even capital, offense; where every stupidity must be treasured and never publicly questioned; where tolerance is infinite, so intolerance is infinitely intolerated. Once again: beware utopias, they get dystopian real fast.