Two-Thirds Excited, One-Third Terrified

I've alluded to it a couple of times before, but I don't think I've come out expressly and said: we're having a baby!

(It's a boy, due in January)

When people ask me how I'm doing, I have a stock answer: "Two-thirds excited, one-third terrified." It's always good for a laugh. But it's more or less accurate.

There's so much I'm excited about. I'm excited to share my favorite books. I'm excited to get him into Calvin & Hobbes. I'm excited to take him to hockey games. I'm excited to tell him stories. I'm excited to see him sit up, crawl, and walk for the first time. I'm excited to learn his passions. I'm excited to find out who he's going to be. I'm excited to be a dad, and I'm excited to watch my wife become a mom. This is, of course, only a very partial list.

But I'm also, admittedly, a bit terrified. And I know that's normal -- everyone says the moment the hospital discharges you and just ... sends you home with a baby generates a feeling of incredulous disbelief ("Who, me? I'm in charge now? You're just letting this happen"). But I want to talk about the fear side in a bit more in depth.

One overall salutary development we've seen in society recently is that we've moved towards allowing women -- including women who very much want to have children -- to have a more complicated relationship with pregnancy and childrearing beyond "it's the greatest thing ever and if you have any misgivings you're a failure as a woman." There is at least some more space to acknowledge that pregnancy is uncomfortable, and labor painful, and parenting is exhausting. It doesn't mean you're a bad mother. It's an acknowledgment of reality, and it makes for stronger, not weaker, parents.

Meanwhile, for men, there's been a cultural push in the other direction, because the gendered social dynamics began in a different place. For men acculturated into thinking of children as either "seen not heard", or a sort of doomsday event ("baby trap"), the emphasis has been on accentuating both the positives of fatherhood but also the responsibilities of being a good partner. Parenting is equal parts our job. It's not okay to just leave it all to the missus. In fact, the missus almost certainly has it a lot harder than you (you're not the one gestating and then expelling a whole human being inside your body).

This, too, is a salutary development. But it has I think left a bit of a gap in men being able to talk earnestly about their legitimate fears -- in part precisely because those fears in some ways need to be subordinated to the more pressing needs of one's partner.

For example: one thing I'm really scared about is the process of labor. Leaving aside catastrophizing about medical complications, it's a terrible thing to see my person, whom I love more than anyone in the world, in pain. Under normal circumstances, that fear and fright solicits resources of care and concern -- probably from my wife, who is my main source of care and concern when I'm feeling fear or fright. But of course, in the context of labor, that resource is unavailable, and more broadly my need for care resources is obviously of lower priority than my wife's -- what kind of self-absorbed jerk would I be if I made the pain of childbirth about supporting me? My job in the delivery room is to support my wife however I can, not to horde care resources for myself. I don't want to reenact this scene from Brooklyn Nine Nine.

I've spoken about this before as an "empathy drought": circumstances where our care resources are overtaxed and so need to be triaged. And so again, I want to emphasize that the prioritization here is absolutely, 100% proper. There is no injustice here. And the lack of injustice is, in its way, the injustice -- or at least the loneliness: what is one supposed to do when one's genuine needs (because I don't think, in the abstract, that the pain of seeing a loved one in pain is not the sort of thing where one might need emotional support) are rightfully subordinated? It's hard, and it generates a lacuna.

Childbirth represents an especially clear case. But there is some carry over to fatherhood as well -- it's hard to talk about one's genuine fears and concerns without sounding like one wants to reach back into the not-so-misty past of overgrown man-babying where mom-wife just took care of everything. And again, it's a good thing that we're rearticulating manhood and fatherhood. But that doesn't change the fact that, just as a more complex relationship to childrearing for women that speaks to both the joys and the fears doesn't make one out as a bad mother, so too for fathers as well.

Because while I'm two-thirds excited, there is plenty that sits in that third of terror. I'm scared of not getting enough sleep. I'm scared of freezing up when my kid throws a tantrum. I'm scared of not knowing how to balance between transmitting my values and letting him be his own person. I'm scared of my two-person life suddenly adding a third. I'm scared of not having time for my own hobbies. I'm scared of raising a Jewish child in today's world. Hell, I'm scared of bringing any child in today's world. Again, only a partial list, and not one I claim is unique to men. But it's a real list, and I don't think it's one that is unreasonable in soliciting support. 

I'm not a parent yet, so I don't have some deep words of wisdom to offer on this. But I do believe, and I've always believed, that letting oneself be vulnerable and honest encourages others to be as well. Talking about these things openly lets others do so too. We don't have to work through these fears alone. We should not and need not present these fears as the number one priority of parenthood. But the more people who come out and speak, the more this burden can be shared, and the more room we all have to also turn our attention to the essential task of being great fathers and great partners. So this is me doing my part: being open, and being vulnerable, and trying to make everyone a little less alone -- because there's so much to be excited about.

Which Nuts Crack?

I like to keep a half eye on Senate, House, and gubernatorial polling trends at The Downballot (formerly Daily Kos Elections). There are quite a few swing state races that are certainly close, but seem to have mild Democratic advantages -- these include the Michigan and Pennsylvania Senate races, for instance. But there are also some swing state races where Democrats are running away with it -- Ruben Gallego looks set to smoke Kari Lake in Arizona, for instance; same with Josh Stein over Mark Robinson in the race for North Carolina Governor.

All of these races are occurring in tightly contested swing states. If anything, Arizona and North Carolina are more red leaning than are Michigan and Pennsylvania. So why are Lake and Robinson doing so poorly?

Obviously, the most straightforward answer is "they're both certified nutjobs." But the same statewide polls that have Lake and Robinson down by double-digits have Trump either tied or ahead. And I truly, honestly, cannot figure out what sort of person recognizes the nuttiness of a Kari Lake or a Mark Robinson but doesn't see it in Trump. What's the difference? What makes Trump's lunacy different from Lake's or Robinson's? What characterizes the voter who sees Lake or Robinson as different-in-kind from Trump?

It's (Not) All Greek To Her

I have an ambivalent relationship to "kids these days!" thinking.

On the one hand, I'm a professor, so I'm constantly exposed to the "kids". And overwhelmingly, they're alright! Great, even! I have very little patience for the notion that the young people of today are some sort of uniform blob of incuriosity, intolerance, and preachiness. It just isn't my experience.

That said, I've always been a bit of a crotchety old man at heart. And it being age-appropriate to shout "get off my lawn!" is one of the few things that excite me about growing older.

So for someone with my proclivities, this story is outright dangerous in how much it pushes some of my confirmatory bias pleasure buttons regarding youthful idiot "activists" being idiots.

A 23-year-old woman has been arrested after she posted on social media about having gotten away with ripping down Greek flags at a New Jersey restaurant that she believed were Israeli.

The incident at Efi’s Gyro in Montclair, New Jersey, occurred March 11, but it wasn’t until Amber Matthews posted the video to TikTok on Oct. 15 that police were able to identify her. She was arrested on Tuesday and charged with bias intimidation and harassment.

In the video, Matthews, who went by the name “Ambamelia” on her now-removed TikTok account, can be heard berating employees about the “genocide” in Gaza. She posted the video with the text “The time I mistakenly thought the flag for Greek was for Israel and took the restaurants flag down OMG.”

Both Greece and Israel have blue and white flags.

Just to sum the above up, this lady:

1. Tore down flags at a random restaurant as a means of protesting "genocide" (which is bad enough on its own);
2. Didn't realize the flag she tore down was that of Greece (excuse me, "Greek") rather than Israel; and
3. Was only caught because she posted a TikTok video where she bragged about her idiotic crime burst.

It's too much.

Is it fair of me to tie this sort of stupidity to a particular generation? Of course not. After all, how many Boomer insurrectionists on January 6 got caught because they flaunted their treasonous jaunt on Facebook?

But when someone is this stupid, in this public of a fashion -- I'm sorry, I just can't help myself.

Going Darker

Jeff Bezos has published a defense of his last-minute decision to override the Washington Post's editorial board and decline to issue a presidential endorsement.

It is not persuasive.

Bezos' core theme is that the media has a trust problem. This problem is not about actual impropriety or bias -- Bezos firmly rejects the notion that the Post is and has been anything but professional in its coverage. Rather, the problem is the appearance of bias. Editorial endorsements, even if they do not actually evince bias on behalf of the paper's news coverage, make people believe that there is. And that's why presidential endorsements need to be axed.

There's much that can be said here, including the fact that this in no way explains why presidential endorsements, alone, have this problematic effect. But I want to focus on a different problem about the concentration on an "appearance" of bias, because this is an area where in many cases the cure will be worse than disease. Where the "appearance" is based on falsehoods or absurdities, as it is here, attempts to "correct" the appearance (a) will never work and (b) will simply make other stakeholders (rightly!) second-guess whether bias is present.

The "voter fraud" panic is a great example of this, because it is also an arena where courts have justified severe limits on voting rights to combat the "appearance" of fraud even in circumstances where there is concededly no evidence of actual fraud. The logic is that the state still has a valid interest in its elections being perceived as legitimate. The problem is that if people are inclined to believe "fraud" is a problem notwithstanding evidence that it essentially doesn't exist, there's no reason to believe that any interventions will disabuse them of their delusions. Why would it -- the whole premise is that the people in question believe things in contradiction to the objective evidence! Meanwhile, the "appearance" justification conveniently overlooks other stakeholders whose faith in free and fair elections starts to decay precisely because they're witnessing a slew of voter suppression measures justified on (admitted!) fantasies. Why doesn't their assessment of "appearances" matter? At least it's based on something that's really happening.

The same is true in the Post's situation. The notion that an opinion page publishing an opinion is reflective of impermissible bias is beyond parody. Nobody actually believes this (including Bezos, as evidenced by the fact that the paper will continue to endorse in every other election). So there's no reason to think that abandoning endorsements will have any effect on those who make irrational and frivolous accusations of bias. Even if you buy Bezos' "logic", the entire problem is by stipulation illogical. And even as this move tries-and-fails to appease the unappeasable, it generates a far more serious "appearance of bias" in its own right. It will appear to many that Bezos is trying to coddle up to Donald Trump. It will appear that the Post's editorial independence is being compromised by the arbitrary whims of its billionaire owner. It will appear that the Post no longer is capable of fearlessly speaking truth even where powerful interests find it awkward or inconvenient.

These appearances are why I and 200,000(!) other subscribers have hit the cancellation button. But of course, what Bezos' choices "appear" to represent to us doesn't matter, just as what spurious "anti-fraud" measures "appear" to represent to minority and marginalized voters doesn't matter. When it comes to avoid the "appearance" of impropriety, invented concoctions by the dominant caste will always trump objective failings endured by the less powerful.

Don't Doom Before You Have To

After a good few months of heady optimism, the mood amongst Democrats has gotten considerably more dour. It's not because Harris is behind -- while there might have been some tightening of the race, if anything, polls still have her (narrowly) ahead. But I'm hearing more than a few liberals who are already preemptively resigning themselves to a Trump victory, glumly relaying an anecdote or a sentiment that it just "feels" like it's going to happen. And this is being paired with preemptive capitulations by major institutions, which is a very bad sign that some of the powers-that-be are already trying to get in good with a future dictator.

I'm inclined to agree with Paul Campos that the main instigator here is that we were dashed in our hopes of putting the election away by now. As he says, "it’s not much comfort to someone who thinks there’s a 50% chance that something absolutely catastrophic is about to happen to tell that person that hey be realistic, it’s probably only 45% or even 40% if you squint just right. For my part, the prospect of bringing a child into the sort of world that Trump would wreak in 2024 is outright terrifying. If in 2016 I suddenly grasped feeling safer in a blue state, looking out to a second Trump administration in 2025 I wouldn't feel safe anywhere. They'll be coming for us no matter where we hide. And if this is the end (as is alarmingly plausible) of America's global preeminence, well, historically speaking those sorts of falls rarely occur without destroying a lot of lives and livelihoods in the process.

I can't say that doom might not be coming. But there's no sense in dooming before one absolutely has to. Right now, there are still things we can do -- not just desperate rear-guard actions, but real, genuine moves that can push America in the right direction. If Trump wins, our best options will be somewhere in the field of "battlefield trauma surgeon trying to stop the patient from completely bleeding out." We're not there yet.

It's a little over a week until election day. Play to the whistle, and play to win. We can decide what comes after, after. For now, let's do this.