Category: Commentary

We are all products–perhaps even captives–of our experiences. Here’s how people from different generations see the same thing.

A quiet moment in the library is interrupted by the loud ring of a cell phone.

• The twenty-year old ponders “Who makes phone calls anymore?”
• The forty-year old thinks “Who has the original telephone ringer as their personal ringtone?”
• The sixty-year old wonders “Why are my pants vibrating?”

Hunger strikes in the late evening, and there’s nothing in the fridge.

• The twenty-year old thinks “Got a cell and GrubHub, problem solved!”
• The forty-year old wonders “Can you make a snack from saltines and mandarin oranges?”
• The sixty-year old begs “I found my keys, but where’s my car?”

Your boss makes a decidedly political comment which conflicts with your views.

• The twenty-year old wonders if “Six new jobs in five years is too many?”
• The forty-year old considers “How long until I can retire?”
• The sixty-year old muses “I was here when you arrived, and I’ll be here when you leave.”

Local elementary school kids stage a walkout at school to protest.

• The twenty-year old beams “Kids today are so active and involved!”
• The forty-year old practices saying “NO, you cannot skip all Friday classes to protest.”
• The sixty-year old nods “Nice job; we had to fake death to get out of school.”

Politicians are promising free university tuition.

• The twenty-year old exclaims “Woo-hoo, restart the four-year clock on my bachelors in self-directed study!”
• The forty-year old thinks “Wait, I just finished my last UNDERGRAD payment!”
• The sixty-year old knows “If it’s free, it ain’t good. If it’s good, it ain’t free. If it’s free AND good, it’s a politician’s rotten promise.”

There’s an explosive-but-unverified story making the rounds on social media.

• The twenty-year old “<follows>👿👿💩💩💩🙏🙏🙏”
• The forty-year old “<likes> and <shares> with 500 ‘friends.'”
• The sixty-year old grumbles “There’s something wrong on the internet and I’M GOING TO FIX IT.”

Overheard on a train ride: “Oh-oh, the rabbit died!”

• The twenty-year old fumes “I bet the cosmetics industry was testing something on the rabbit!”
• The forty-year old feels a wave of sadness at the thought “Someone lost a beloved pet.”
• The sixty-year old hoots “A baby changes everything!”

There’s a young lady in a short dress, earrings, make-up, and a tattoo standing on the corner in front of the liquor store at 11:00 am on a Monday.

• The twenty-year old thinks, “She’s hot! I wonder where the party is?”
• The forty-year old tutts, “You shouldn’t have to wait for an Uber.”
• The sixty-year old mutters “Even the hookers are working mornings now.”

The news anchor chronicles a rally for President Trump where he said former Vice President Biden was only qualified to “kiss Barack Obama’s ass.”

• The twenty-year old exclaims, “How can our democracy survive such unprecedented conduct?”
• The forty-year old thinks, “No more television news for the kids.”
• The sixty-year old asks “Didn’t anybody read the LBJ biographies? Listen to the Nixon tapes?”

There’s only one parking space available: a tight parallel space.

• The twenty-year old grins “It’s Lyft, not my problem!”
• The forty-year old engages his smart auto park feature: “Watch this.”
• The sixty-year old says “Hold my beer . . .no, wait, I got this” (backing in, using knees to steer).

At a party, someone asks you about your carbon footprint.

• The twenty-year old proudly replies “I’m carbon neutral; have you tried my new recycled vegetable dip?”
• The forty-year old mumbles “The kids are all over me to get an electric car.”
• The sixty-year old replies “Turn around, and I’ll plant my carbon footprint somewhere you can’t recycle!”

There’s an ad for men’s grooming products featuring whole-body shaving.

• The twenty-year old: “Why would anyone NEED to be reminded to shave all over?”
• The forty-year old considers “How did I ever live with all that hair?”
• The sixty-year old is bumfuzzled: “If I wanted to look like a twelve-year old, I never would have gone through puberty.”

You’re on a road trip, and you have the sneaking suspicion you’re lost.

• The twenty-year old chants “Trust the Waze.”
• The forty-year old thinks “Did I update my GPS?”
• The sixty-year old yells “There’s a page missing from my AAA trip-tik!”

Finally, you see a man standing on the corner with a sign that says “will work for food.

• The twenty-year old looks up from his iphone and seethes “The government has failed us again.”
• The forty-year old looks away and thinks “There but for the grace of . . . um . . . god, go I.”
• The sixty-year old hands him a bill and says “Me too, me too.”

Statistics are funny things. Done correctly, they have an unarguable standing, yet a clever person can use them to prove damn near anything. As Disraeli said, there are “lies, damn lies, and statistics.”

If I asked you to complete the sentence “the greatest threat to human life today is ________”, what would you say?

Based on the headlines, some might say gun violence. After all, there seems to be another mass shooting every thirteen days (a true statistic, depending on definitions) in the US. Despite the news coverage and the pathos of each of these attacks, the number of victims is still small (102 fatalities so far this year, another true statistic). Gun enthusiasts will remind all that the vast majority of guns are never used for a violent act (true), yet gun control proponents will counter that the most common use of a gun in your home (in the United States) is to kill yourself, a close friend, or family member, not a robber (also true).

Parents are buying bulletproof backpacks for fear of school shootings. These same parents blithely give their teenagers cars and smart phones, despite the fact that these two objects combine to kill ten teenagers every day (due to distracted driving).

Concerned for gun violence: quite valid. Worry? Maybe about the underlying causes.

People with a longer timeline might say climate change is the biggest threat. The violent weather and social disruption envisioned under most climate change scenarios is certainly a vivid threat, but sudden climate change remains a thing only in (bad) Hollywood movies. The imminent threat claim mouthed by politicians–you know, that we have only ten or twelve years left on the planet–has been rejected by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

What their report states is we have no time, since climate change is already here. If you live in New York or LA, you’re already experiencing the +2 degree centigrade average temperature increase that is the benchmark for climate disaster. But the IPCC states that dramatic efforts to reduce carbon emissions could (by 2030, hence the ten-to-twelve years stat) save us from even worse effects, when the rest of the world catches up to +2. No one knows exactly how bad things will get, or when or where the worst effects will hit. Threatening indeed, but the imminence is a call to action, not despair.

What I have in mind is a threat already lurking, with the possibility of sudden emergence. So let me give you something new to worry about (right, because that’s what we need, another existential threat!). I say new, but that is only true if you’re younger than ninety-one years old (That’s a hint).

Prior to 1928, the most common cause of death worldwide was . . . infectious disease. The most common cause of death among children, the most common cause of death among soldiers, the most common cause of death among any group of human beings. The average life expectancy in the industrialized world in the 1920’s was approaching forty-nine years. It had inched up due to cleaner water and public sanitation, but was still low by modern standards.

1928 was the year Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, the first antibiotic medical treatment. The antibiotic qualities of some substances had been known for hundreds of years, but Fleming’s discovery was a mass-producible treatment which went widespread among the Allied armies in Wold War II and then everywhere else after the war. Prior to modern antibiotics, a cut or abrasion gave you a distinct possibility of dying. Gathering in large groups with poor sanitation risked the same. Your grandparents or great grandparents thought of hospitals as places where injured people went to get fixed up, but often got sick and died there. This wasn’t superstition: it was lived experience.

If you’re ninety-one or younger, you have lived entirely in the antibiotic era, which was different in type from previous human history. Life expectancy in the developed world shot up after 1928, gaining upwards of 30+ years in the next six decades! Antibiotics (and a better understanding of the bacteria they fight) was a major cause of this improvement. Proof lies in the fact that infectious disease remains the scourge of developing countries where antibiotics are unavailable.

The bad news is that evolution still holds, and bacteria, having countless numbers with which to experiment, are winning. Antibiotic resistant bacteria are popping up with increasing frequency, all around the world. Most of our antibiotics were developed in or before the 1970’s, the so-called “golden age of antibiotics.” But we misused them, using them to treat viral diseases (they don’t work against viruses), to fatten up farm animals, to mass spray and protect crops, in inadequate dosages or after they were expired, washing them down the drain where (other species and) bacteria were exposed. And survived. And evolved. And grew stronger.

There are new antibiotics in development, but of only a few new types. We have learned that bacteria are most vulnerable when hit with several different classes of antibiotic approaches at the same time: this complicates their natural selection, and buys us more time. So the new antibiotics are just a delaying action, and we don’t know how long before some truly deadly, easily transmitted disease beats the current set of “last-ditch” antibiotics.

What is a post-antibiotic world like? For a recent example, read about life during the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918. Granted, that was a virus, not a bacteria, but still it shows how an unchecked disease completely shuts down a modern society, and how social norms dissolve in the process. And that was just a 10-20% mortality rate. For a slightly more troubling scenario, read about the Black Death in Europe in the 14th century, where mortality exceeded 50% and the surviving remnant society was totally changed.

Unfortunately, there is not much an average person can do about the bacterial threat. Don’t ask for antibiotics when you probably have a virus, don’t use them when expired (or flush them down the drain), oppose policies of mass use for livestock or agriculture. Pretty small potatoes, what? That is what makes it such a threat, and why I choose to highlight it: individuals can’t do much about, it is massively deadly, and we have come to rely on antibiotics almost unconsciously.

Now that I have unburdened myself of this worry, I think I’ll take a good siesta. Sweet dreams!

Is there any more contentious issue in America today than immigration? One side talks of “murderers, drug-dealers, and rapists” while the other talks of “concentrations camps” and “kids in cages.” Even in an age of gross overstatement, it’s a bit much. Regardless of where you fall on the spectrum, could we agree that we need less heat and more light on the issue? Good journalism could really play a role here. Here’s a story in three different points of view. See if you spot the better journalism.

---

Version 1: Francisco’s story

Francisco was out for a drive with his buddies. He was a rising high school senior in south Texas, and he and some friends were trying out for a local soccer team, so they were going on a little road trip. When they rolled up to the immigration checkpoint, they weren’t concerned. After all, they had driven through without any problem many times before, and such checkpoints are a fact-of-life in south Texas. Francisco thought nothing of it, as he was an American citizen, born and raised in there. But some of his family was undocumented, and one of them–his brother–was in the car, too.

The Border Patrol officer seemed a little too concerned about this carload of Hispanic teenagers, but Francisco knew he didn’t have to answer his questions, and they had nothing to hide, so probably the officers would inspect from outside the vehicle and soon they would be on their way.

Unfortunately, the right to remain silent doesn’t always include the ability to do so. The officer kept questioning his brother, and instead of ignoring him, his brother admitted to not being a citizen, and soon the entire group was on the way to a CBP processing station.

Now Francisco was a little concerned. He always carried his Texas state ID, a US Social Security card, and his Texas birth certificate, so he felt certain things would work out. But the CBP officers were suspicious, as he was travelling with an admitted undocumented person (his brother), so they were questioning the validity of his credentials!

After being processed and fingerprinted, all-hell broke loose. The CBP officers called him in and asked him why he was lying. When he tried to explain that he was a American, they cut him short and asked “why did you apply for an American visa as a Mexican national?” He had no idea what they were talking about, but next he found himself in a crowded cell with hundreds of recently apprehended people seeking asylum.

The CBP personnel were completely swamped by the numbers, and Francisco quickly realized he had no way to gain their attention to explain his situation, or call his parents. Two days later, his brother was voluntarily deported back to Mexico, where they had family. Francisco refused to go, insisting he was an American, and he was only going home.

The days ran into weeks as the government tried to confirm his papers, contact his family, and come to some definitive conclusion about his status. After three weeks, Francisco was transferred to an ICE facility, and was able to call his mother, when he learned the family had retained an attorney and was working to get him released. A week later, as removal proceedings against him continued, ICE finally released him to his mother and his family’s attorney. Francisco was just what he had always said: an average American kid. But now he was also an innocent victim of a cruel government bureaucracy.

---

Version 2: Duty Log, South Texas Region, 27 June-23 July 2019 (excerpts)

27 June. Border Patrol delivered four Hispanic youth for processing, after collecting them at a checkpoint. Officer stated some had Texas and/or US identification, but one admitted to not being a US citizen and had no documentation. As result, officer was suspicious of all the identification provided, and brought the individuals to station for processing. The group was assigned daily processing numbers 78-81.

29 June. Update: Marlon ________, previously admitted to being in the country illegally, and agreed to voluntary deportation back to Mexico. His brother Francisco _________ refused to participate in the removal proceeding.

06 July. Update: Suspect national Francisco _________ had previously provided a Social Security card and other Texas State ID which checked out as valid. However, his fingerprints came back as identical with a Mexican national (same name, DOB) who applied for a US visitor visa. When confronted, suspect denied any knowledge of application, without further explanation. Attempting to resolve contradiction by contacting family.

13 July. Update: Station was contacted by an attorney representing the family of Francisco _______. Attorney indicated Francisco’s mother, Sanjuanna ________ , could confirm his status as an American citizen. ICE officers asked why this woman’s name was different than the name of the mother on Francisco’s birth certificate; attorney indicated the mother had given a different name on that document, as she is undocumented (no further information). Woman further clarified that she had applied for the visa for her son because she could not get him a US passport due to the discrepancy on his birth certificate (no further information).

23 July. Update: After further clarification provided by his attorney, suspect Francisco _________ was released to his family.

---

Version 3: The story you didn’t find.

The sad tale of a American teenager named Francisco dramatically demonstrates the pitfalls of how the United States controls its southern border. Francisco, born in Dallas and raised in south Texas, was caught in an inland immigration checkpoint. These checkpoints, which have been challenged in court but remain legal, are an odd fact of life up to one hundred miles from the border.

Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, has the authority to stop vehicles and check for the presence of undocumented persons. US courts have held that drivers and passengers so stopped do not have to answer any questions, and can only be taken into custody for probable cause, but their vehicles may be visually searched from the outside. It is the closest America comes to the uncomfortable notion of “papers, please.”

People like Francisco are used to this, and he carried several forms of ID that day, including a Texas birth certificate. But his brother did not: his brother was undocumented, born in Mexico, and in the United States illegally. This caused the CBP officers to question the legitimacy of all the people in the car, leading to their apprehension.

Francisco’s brother agreed to a voluntary deportation back to his extended family in Mexico, but Francisco rightly refused: he was an America after all, and that was that. His IDs quickly checked out, which should have been the end of the story, but instead was the beginning of the ordeal.

When CBP ran his fingerprints, they matched a person of the same name, age and date of birth, who was born in Mexico and applied for a US visitor visa. Francisco denied knowing anything about it, but the match was undeniable: he was either a Mexican with fraudulent US identification, or an American with a bogus visitor visa. Either way, someone had some explaining to do.

Weeks passed as CBP pressured Francisco to come clean, while his family learned of his plight and retained an attorney. Their initial efforts came to naught: when they contacted ICE, his mother’s name did not match the name on his Texas birth certificate, which only raised more suspicion. His mother, also undocumented, admitted she had given a different name at the hospital when he was born. She later explained that because of this discrepancy, Francisco could not get a US passport, so she applied for the fraudulent US visitor visa for him, indicating he was Mexican, so he could travel back and forth to Mexico and visit family.

Another week of continuing communication between the government, his family, and their attorney led the government officials to release Francisco after almost a month in custody.

---

What separates these stories? Point of view. All three are factually true. The first takes a sympathetic view of the poor lad, who after all deserves the sympathy. Imagine being caught in such a situation! It’s a story echoing a lot of opinion writing on the border, long on emotion, but lacking the facts which are essential.

The second is strictly business. It shows what happens when resources are strained and laws flagrantly ignored: the business of law enforcement becomes problematic. Note how about a week transpires between each new disclosure. Are ICE and CBP officials supposed to ignore such a fantastic story as it dribbles out? Yet this version lacks any empathy.

The third tries to steer a middle road, letting the reader feel the pain of the innocent but also recognizing the ridiculous nature of the facts as they gradually appeared to the responsible officials. That would be journalism, at least as I learned it editing my high school newspaper.

If you want to know why I wrote all this, read how the Washington Post covered this story, here: WaPo link

Be careful, the online version has changed subtly over time, and even I only captured the third or fourth version of it. The original story serves one major purpose: to inflame readers about the immigration issue. There is no mention of how routine such checkpoints are (author’s note: I have been stopped at them every time I transit Texas). The allegation that border officials were suspicious comes out in paragraph five, but the basis for that suspicion is left to paragraph ten. The length of his detention is in the headline and lead paragraph; the explanation show up in paragraphs eleven-to-thirteen.

Next time your blood pressure spikes while reading a purportedly responsible new source, recall this exercise and ask: what are they trying to make me feel? What are the other possible explanations? Where is the other side of the story?

There is so much wrong about our immigration policies and border controls right now. It is a shame journalists are going the easy route and fanning the flames rather than shedding some light.