Category: culture wars

Massachusetts, marijuana, and the mushy middle 

I was a teenager during the 1980s. Where drugs were concerned, this was the era of “Just Say No.” This was little more than a decade into the so-called “war on drugs”

Adults were concerned that we were going to  become potheads—like one of the characters in a Cheech & Chong movie—or, perhaps, like Jeff Spicoli in Fast times at Ridgemont High.

Even the well-heeled suburban kids in The Breakfast Club indulged in weed on the sly in those days. But if you were caught, the penalties could be severe—in theory, at least. In the 1980s, simple possession for personal use could result in jail time.

Once again—in theory. The legally stipulated penalties were often applied unevenly, based on racial and economic factors. The law was not color-blind. Nor was it money-blind.

The legalization boom

All of that changed in the early 21st century, when the mood regarding marijuana decisively shifted. This was the era of legalization. Washington and Colorado were the first U.S. states to legalize recreational cannabis in November 2012. Other states followed suit to greater or lesser degrees.

Before long recreational marijuana use became not just something that was tolerated, but a full-fledged industry. People weren’t just growing and purchasing pot for their own personal use. Now they were growing and purchasing it to sell to others at a profit. Marijuana had gone from a forbidden activity to one that was more or less encouraged by the new legal framework.

Massachusetts has never been a state to miss out on nitwittery. So of course, Massachusetts voters approved recreational marijuana in 2016. The marijuana industry has grown in Massachusetts since then. In September of this year, the state’s Cannabis Control Commission reported that recreational marijuana sales had surpassed $10 billion in the Bay State. It takes quite a few potheads to reach sales figures like that.

The wrath of unintended consequences

But not everyone in Massachusetts has been happy about this outcome.

This brings us to the concept of unintended consequences—something that those pesky conservatives like to bring up. It is ironic that Massachusetts, one of the most left-leaning states in the USA, has come to the realization that legalizing pot—and turning it into a full-fledged industry—has brought some unintended and undesirable consequences.

There have been concerns about an increase in marijuana use among young people. If weed is legal—and the government practically encourages it—why shouldn’t young people use it, after all? 

There have also been concerns about impaired driving. One of the things you might remember from those 1980s movies is that people don’t drive particularly well when they’re high on weed. This is a lesson we learned long, long ago with alcohol.

And speaking of old lessons… Massachusetts was one of the first states to ban smoking in public places, because cigarette smoking isn’t good for you. It turns out that marijuana is also bad for your health—especially when you smoke it. It’s not particularly good for your focus or your mental health, either.

All of these things are true—and have been true forever—even if you happen to think that marijuana is some cool new hipster drug.

Question 8

This has led to Question 8, an effort to repeal most aspects of Massachusetts’ weed legalization framework. Question 8 is on the ballot in the Bay State this election season.

Question 8 would eliminate recreational marijuana sales, along with the accompanying tax and regulatory framework. In other words, all the things that make recreational marijuana an ordinary business activity.

This wouldn’t be a return to the harsh anti-weed laws of the 1980s, though. Adults twenty-one years old and above could still possess up to one ounce without getting into trouble. Medical marijuana would also remain legal.

If approved, all of these measures would take place on January 1, 2028. Massachusetts would thereby become the first state to repeal a voter-approved recreational marijuana market.

There would be winners and losers, of course. There always are when laws change. If you’ve recently invested in a recreational marijuana-related business in Massachusetts, you might or might not be willing to make the personal financial sacrifice for the sake of public health.

The challenge of victimless crimes

We tend to veer from one extreme to the other where victimless crimes are concerned. Victimless crimes include weed use, gambling, and prostitution.

No one thinks that these activities are socially beneficial. But should they be made illegal? Should consenting adults be prohibited from participating in these activities when they directly harm no one, at least in theory?

Victimless crimes are not always victimless when practiced at scale, though. Widespread marijuana use can endanger all of us when we’re forced to drive alongside intoxicated drivers.

Commercialized sex is another tough one. Although there is an effort to portray all instances of commercial sex as victimization, there is much evidence to the contrary here. High-end sex workers like Alice Little and Meida Marek are clearly women with options, who have chosen sex work for reasons of profit—not coercion or desperation.

That said, no one wants to see a brothel in the local shopping mall. No one would welcome sex workers speaking at the local high school on the next career day.

We have many choices on a continuum between open encouragement of a socially deleterious activity—and ruthless, uncompromising prohibition. One option is to allow these activities to take place on a small scale in private, but without the legal and societal stamp of approval that a formal regulatory framework brings. This means that the government can’t tax these activities. But the point is to keep the total revenue generated by these activities low to begin with.

Another option is selective enforcement. In Ohio, where I live, it’s legal to gamble so long as the government gets a piece of the action. Ohio has a state lottery, and we also have legal casinos. It is, however, illegal in Ohio to organize an unregulated poker game for money in your home. Employee betting pools are also technically illegal.

But authorities in Ohio aren’t going out of their way to search out such instances of unregulated gambling, not even with Republicans in charge. Restrain your home poker games to a small scale, and you probably won’t get in trouble.

I would argue for a similar approach to commercial sex. In 2013, authorities in Kennebunk, Maine, jailed Zumba instructor Alexis Wright for selling sexual favors to men from the privacy of her exercise studio. Wright was not coerced, nor was she coercing anyone else. Alexis Wright was a 30-year-old woman selling a voluntary service to adult men in their 40s and 50s. Yet they arrested her and put her in jail. The libertarian in me bristles at such authoritarian nonsense.

At the same time, I don’t want brothels in the local shopping mall, or sex workers speaking at the next career day at my local high school. In other words, I come down in the mushy middle where commercial sex is concerned, just like I come down in the mushy middle where recreational marijuana is concerned.

A more nuanced, more ambiguous approach to victimless crimes won’t please purists at either extreme. But from a societal perspective, ambiguity makes sense. There are certain activities that we don’t want to encourage at scale among the general population—especially where children and minors are concerned. At the same time, however, consenting adults should be allowed to do what they want with their own resources and their own bodies, so long as they aren’t directly harming others, and they’re mostly keeping their activities to themselves. The mushy middle is not a perfect approach to victimless crimes, but it’s better than either of the alternative extremes.

-ET

Columbus Day controversies, 2026 version

Columbus Day has rolled around once again, with the usual controversies.

Are you a bad person if you recognize Columbus Day? Are you hopelessly woke if you recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day?

As the above video shows, Italian Americans in New York City already feel slighted by the city’s divisive new mayor on this day. Mamdani no doubt loathes Columbus Day and everything it stands for, though he also chooses to live in the United States.

There is nothing wrong with having an Indigenous Peoples’ Day. On the contrary, it might actually be a good idea.

We have all kinds of holidays, after all. We even have an Albanian Heritage Day (May 19) and a National Dog Day (August 26). If we can make room for those two days of commemoration, then surely we can have an Indigenous Peoples Day.

The controversy arose not because of the holiday itself, but because of the deliberate attempt to replace Columbus Day with a competing holiday.

Indigenous Peoples Day could have been another national commemoration. Instead, it became an attempt to erase Columbus Day, and that brought about some bad feelings and controversy.

But then again, that was the intention all along. October 12 was not chosen at random.

-ET

We all get negged from time to time

Esme Gordon-Craig is a twenty-something contributor for the Times (in the UK). She recently wrote a piece about falling for “negging”.

Negging is a manipulation tactic. Negging is frequently employed by pickup artists, pushy salespersons, and even itinerant preachers. Your nosy neighbor may employ it too.

Negging consists of using subtle insults and backhanded compliments to shame a person into a desired outcome.

Non-drinkers like myself are frequently on the receiving end of negging. When I decline an alcoholic beverage, I am occasionally asked if I am a Baptist. I reply deadpan that, no, I am an idolatrous Roman Catholic. That usually puts an end to the interaction.

Ms. Gordon-Craig relates how a group of older men approached her and her Gen Z girlfriends at a bar in the UK. (Since she was in the UK, it was probably a “pub”.) The older men (I’m guessing they were in their late 30s or early 40s) offered a round of drinks.

One of them became specifically interested in her:

“One bought my friend a drink and another offered to buy one for me. I politely refused but he persisted. In all honesty, even if I wasn’t done for the night, I doubt I’d have accepted the drink — he wasn’t really my type or anywhere near my age.”

Then the man uttered the words that flustered her and broke down her defenses:

“You need to stop being so uptight… You need to let loose… Learn to express yourself, be more open.”

“Soon I was flirting,” she writes. “Half an hour later we were exchanging Instagrams and then making light of the fact that he’d insulted me earlier.” Continue reading “We all get negged from time to time”

Why Novig ran that Sydney Sweeney sports ad 

The latest Sydney Sweeney ad is causing outrage of epic proportions. Heads are exploding and fingers are wagging everywhere.

But what are the supply-and-demand roots of all this? Or: who paid Sydney Sweeney to get tastefully naked again?

Novig is a sports betting platform. The company’s recent ad features Sydney Sweeney holding various sports equipment, clad in little but a come-hither smile.

Critics have blasted both Sydney Sweeney and Novig for “sexualizing” women’s sports.

A part of me gets it. The generation of women who were my classmates during my school years were the first generation of women to benefit from Title IX legislation. I’m a big fan of women’s sports—as a principle and a concept. (This is one reason why I feel strongly about the need to preserve women’s sports only for women—but that’s another conversation.) 

I don’t watch spectator sports very much, regardless of who is playing. But I know plenty of men who do.

And here’s the sad truth of it: most of them are aficionados of a handful of men’s sports: football, basketball, baseball, or hockey. (There are, however, some bright spots. One of these is the WNBA, which has recently experienced a surge in viewership, now nearing that of the NBA. Good for them!)

Why aren’t more men watching women’s lacrosse and women’s track and field? I can sympathize with those who are frustrated here. When I was in high school, I ran cross-country. There was a men’s team and a women’s team. Neither of our teams received much spectatorship in comparison to the school’s football team. I was never particularly bitter about this. That was just the way it was.

There is a stark gender disparity where the sports betting market is concerned. Seventy-seven percent of the people stupid enough to regularly bet on sports are men. Women comprise only about twenty-three percent of the idiots betting on the big game this weekend.

This means that online betting platforms like Novig have to appeal to the male audience. And what’s one way to appeal to the male audience?

A scantily clad Sydney Sweeney!

Keep in mind that men have actually purchased soap infused with Sydney Sweeney’s bathwater. This woman could sell ice to Eskimos—so long as the Eskimos are heterosexual males.

What about charges that Sydney Sweeney’s appearance in the Novig ad sexualizes female athletes? The ad really has very little to do with female athletes—even though Sydney Sweeney gets naked with all that sports gear.

Notice that the sports gear consists mostly of accoutrements for men’s sports. The bitter truth is that the men flocking to Novig to bet on sports probably aren’t betting on women’s lacrosse. They’re betting on men’s football, basketball, hockey, and baseball.

Sydney Sweeney has become a predictable trope in our culture wars. Conservatives are supposed to love her. The very sight of her makes progressives boil with anger.

We live in an age where everything, seemingly, is political. We have become accustomed to combing everything in our culture for some underlying political motive… some coded message to support one larger agenda and undermine another.

But sometimes an ad really is about the cold, hard capitalistic pursuit of lucre—and not much else. The Novig Sydney Sweeney ad, I submit, is one such instance.

-ET

Lindsay Clancy, the 19th Amendment, and our culture wars

The trial of child murderer Lindsay Clancy has produced yet more political fallout. Over this past weekend, some Republican women in media circles expressed concern over online calls to “repeal the 19th Amendment.”

Let me save you some googling here. The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed by Congress in 1919 and ratified in 1920. It was the amendment that gave American women the right to vote.

So why would anyone want to repeal it? There is scarcely anyone left alive who was even born before the 19th Amendment’s passage. No living American woman has ever been lawfully denied the vote because of her sex.

The answer is… because of vocal (though fringe) feminist calls to pardon, exonerate, or otherwise excuse child murderer Lindsay Clancy. Throughout Lindsay Clancy’s recent trial in Plymouth, Massachusetts, pink-clad, overwhelmingly female protesters showed up to demonstrate on Lindsay Clancy’s behalf.

The pro-Clancy demonstrations provoked widespread backlash. At the most extreme end of this backlash are some calls to repeal the 19th Amendment. Such declarations are mostly limited to social media.

According to the logic here, if women will support child murderer Lindsay Clancy, they should not have a voice in our democracy.

Before we go any further, allow me to make a necessary disclaimer. Taking away women’s right to vote is neither justified nor a plausible political outcome.  “That dog,” as the old-timers say, “ain’t gonna hunt.” Women’s suffrage is not some newfangled idea of the social media age. My grandmothers both voted, as did all four of my great-grandmothers. This is not 1919. Women are now CEOs, governors, senators, military personnel and police officers.

And then there are the retail political realities—even if the 19th Amendment is never repealed (which it won’t ever be).  Want to elect liberal Democrats for the next four or five election cycles? Keep talking about the repeal of the 19th Amendment.

Calls for the repeal of the 19th Amendment are so politically toxic that one almost suspects a false flag operation. But that probably isn’t what’s happening here. This is yet another instance of social media rewarding the most extreme and combustible positions available.

***

But two things can be true—or false—at the same time. The wrongheaded, politically suicidal proposal to repeal the 19th amendment must be evaluated on its own terms. So must the affection for the filicidal Lindsay Clancy in certain feminist circles. Continue reading “Lindsay Clancy, the 19th Amendment, and our culture wars”

Zohran Mamdani, 9/11, and the peculiarity of New York

Zohran Mamdani’s appearance at the 25th commemoration of 9/11 caused division in New York City and beyond.

Mamdani takes a different view on Islamism and Western civilization than do the majority of us. Mamdani does not “hate America”—but he believes that American policies have contributed to Islamic radicalism, both at home and abroad. Similarly, there is no evidence that he shares the views of violent extremists or is in league with them. But he is far more willing than most of us to give them a hearing.

Let me turn this around for you. There are many people on the right who would not describe themselves as white supremacists—and could not fairly be described as such. But many of these same people are willing to excuse the rhetorical excesses of white supremacists in certain instances.

Had I been eligible to vote in last year’s mayoral election in New York City, I would not have cast my vote for Zohran Mamdani. Most of his ideas on economics are wrong, at least from the perspective of anyone who has ever taken an introductory college economics course.

And while the conflict between radical Islam and Americanism is a complicated topic filled with some degree of fault on both sides, there is no doubt that the conflict exists. Should the mayor of New York City be an individual who is often willing to contextualize or give credence to arguments surrounding Islamist extremism? During World War II, would we have wanted a New York mayor who was willing to see the merits in the arguments of Hitler and Goebbels?

That said, Mamdani’s speech for the 9/11 commemoration was eloquent in style and perfectly reasonable in content. Since he is the duly elected mayor of New York City, it is difficult to build a legitimate case for why he should not be present at the 9/11 ceremonies.

The greater—and more troubling—question is what Mamdani’s election says about New York City, about what New York City has become. New York City’s foreign-born population now stands at 38%. Pick fifty New Yorkers at random, and nineteen of them hail from somewhere else. This is not a condemnation of the foreign-born. But it is fair to ask if the typical voter of New York City shares the values of the typical American. Zohran Mamdani’s election last year gives us at least one clue.

But that has long since been the case. New York City did not become—in Teddy Roosevelt’s words—“a polyglot boarding house” overnight. It has been thus for decades, and it was certainly thus on September 11, 2001.

New York City is an American city—technically at least—but its American status comes with a very large asterisk.

-ET

Ryan Reynolds and the trashing of the 1980s

Actor Ryan Reynolds is drawing some criticism for his negative characterizations of the 1980s.

The remarks came Tuesday night, September 1, at the New York premiere of Mayday, his new Cold War comedy set in 1987. Reynolds was criticizing the tendency to romanticize the 1980s. Speaking to journalists, the Canadian-American actor said:

“When you get far enough away from a time period that’s quite distinct, there’s always a lovely feeling associated with it, almost like you pave over all the trauma with puppy dogs and ice cream.”

“The 80s was a brutal, brutal time for people. It was a fucking mess and people forget that.”

“It was a tremendous strife. Sociopolitical tensions everywhere. We were still pretty fresh off the Cuban missile crisis, which was only 15–20 years before. It’s a tumultuous period, but you look back at it now and you’re like, ‘Oh, yeah. Top Gun. Cocaine!’ Like, ‘No!’ It was really scary.”

Regular readers will know that I’m an unabashed fan of the 1980s. I’d take that decade back in a heartbeat. So Reynolds and I definitely disagree here. Continue reading “Ryan Reynolds and the trashing of the 1980s”

Moral panic over Pattaya, and an innovative madam of World War II Honolulu

Betty Jean O’Hara (1913-1973) was a famed lady of the night and madam in Honolulu, Hawaii’s Hotel Street red-light district during World War II. O’Hara came up with a novel solution to cope with the demand of randy US sailors during the conflict.

O’Hara set up a Hotel Street brothel that combined sexual services with the assembly-line efficiency of a Ford plant. Each of O’Hara’s employees rotated between a series of three rooms. In one room a man would be undressing, in another a fellow would be engaging in an act of carnal knowledge. In a third room, a satiated sailor would be getting dressed. The Hotel Street red-light district of Honolulu lasted throughout most of World War II.

I never served in the military, but I have met many men who have. In the 1980s I met a man a few years older than me who was stationed in South Korea with the US Army in the late 1970s. He told me stories of “Miss Oh”, a local courtesan in Daegu, South Korea. Based on the gleam in his eye when he reminisced, Miss Oh must have been a proverbial firecracker.

One of my high school acquaintances was in the US Marine Corps during the 1980s. (I’ll call him Mitch.) Mitch also served in the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91.

Many years later, I ran into Mitch at a reunion and he told me some war stories.

While relating his experiences abroad, Mitch also mentioned a handful of experiences with professional women—mostly in the Philippines, where large numbers of US service personnel were stationed through about 1992.

I was somewhat surprised. Mitch had been the archetypical ladies’ man in high school: a handsome, charming, multi-sport athlete. Not the kind of guy one associates with sex workers.

Perhaps sensing my surprise at his revelation, Mitch explained: “You’re a young guy in a foreign country, working in a mostly male organization (the Marine Corps). There aren’t many opportunities for conventional dating and relationships.”

Things are different, though, in this enlightened 21st century. The USS Abraham Lincoln has just docked in Thailand. The aircraft carrier and its crew participated in US military operations against Iran, and stayed at sea for more than 260 days—almost nine months.

And what are people worried about? Some of the male members of the crew may visit prostitutes in Pattaya, Thailand, a city famed for its red-light district. Continue reading “Moral panic over Pattaya, and an innovative madam of World War II Honolulu”

The Texas Roadhoax?

As far back as the 1970s, there have been rumors and urban legends about restaurant employees tampering with customers’ food.

I recall one such story from the 1980s, about a steakhouse employee who supposedly urinated on random customers’ steaks. That might just be enough to make even a sane, well-adjusted person go vegan.

One thing I noticed, though—these stories never stood up to scrutiny. How, exactly, did a single employee manage this urinary sabotage in a crowded kitchen environment, with other cooks, managers, and servers coming and going? Did the cook have a name? Well, no, not exactly… he was some dude who worked at X steakhouse. Continue reading “The Texas Roadhoax?”

Online book reviews and ratings: take them with a large grain of salt

About a decade ago, I read a review of Mary Miller’s 2014 novel, The Last Days of California, in a print magazine. The reviewer, a book critic whom I knew by name and trusted, highly recommended Miller’s novel.

I was skeptical. The Last Days of California is a teenage girl’s coming-of-age story. I was a middle-aged man. Not long before that, a young woman in my social circle had recommended John Green’s emotional teen novel The Fault in Our Stars. Against my better judgment, I had purchased The Fault in Our Stars and tried to read it. I was unable to finish—not because The Fault in Our Stars was a bad book, but simply because I was the wrong reader for it.

Nevertheless, I ordered The Last Days of California from Amazon. The book promised to be not only a coming-of-age story, but also a story about the dynamics of 21st-century family life with a little bit of the culture wars mixed in. I was intrigued.

I’m glad I took a chance on The Last Days of California. It turned out to be a wonderful story, even though this is the kind of book I rarely read. (My personal reading tastes veer more toward Michael Connelly and Lee Child.)

But the collective readership of Amazon and Goodreads does not agree with me—at least not the ones who are leaving ratings and reviews. At the time of this writing, The Last Days of California has a 3.5 cumulative average on Amazon and a 3.4 cumulative average on Goodreads.

If I had consulted the online peanut gallery, I would have skipped Mary Miller’s book entirely. Fortunately, by 2014 I already knew the truth about mass online review venues like Amazon and Goodreads.

The Last Days of California, by Mary Miller (Amazon product page, 8/25/2026)

In 2012, it was discovered that John Locke, a bestselling indie author famous for his Donovan Creed series, purchased reviews from review farms. He personally compensated some other reviewers.

Black hat practices like that are harder to carry out in 2026. (There was a widespread backlash over the John Locke scandal, and Amazon took some steps to penalize outright review scammers.)

But gray hat practices persist in the publishing industry. Major publishers and imprints retain lists of friendly reader-reviewers, who can always be counted on to give a particular author a 5-star review. Indie authors are not far behind. Most know better than to specifically compensate for reviews, but there are still indie authors who will raffle iPads for their reader-reviewers. That sends a message—and broadcasts certain incentives. Continue reading “Online book reviews and ratings: take them with a large grain of salt”

Lindsay Clancy’s mental health and the question of guilt

Lindsay Clancy is the Massachusetts woman who killed her three children. In any normal society, this would make her an instant pariah.

But this is Massachusetts we’re talking about. Child killing is all the rage in Massachusetts, where abortion was recently made legal until birth. Even as Lindsay Clancy is on trial, her exoneration has become a “cause” among progressive feminist factions of the Bay State. Hundreds of supporters, overwhelmingly women, recently rallied outside the courthouse in support of Clancy—who strangled her young children to death with exercise bands.

Lindsay Clancy’s mental health at the time of the murders is the crux of the debate—and the trial. Here are the basic arguments for the two sides: Continue reading “Lindsay Clancy’s mental health and the question of guilt”

21st-century obesity rates vs the buckle-down culture of the 1980s

@kwbogen

Also whyte supremacy. All bodies are good bodies but let’s not pretend we aren’t all being sold something. Exclusivity creates a marketplace.

♬ original sound – kwbogen

K.W. Bogen, an author/influencer, declares in a public video that the commonly cited male preference for thin/fit women is a conspiracy of corporations and white supremacy.

Because isn’t everything a conspiracy of corporations and white supremacy nowadays? No doubt the patriarchy had a hand in it all, as well.

Ms. Bogen then goes on to show us her figure (about which I will refrain from comment). She asserts that thinness is “really, really difficult to achieve” without “starving oneself” or taking drugs. (I assume she is referring to Ozempic, though I can’t be certain.)

First things first. Many men do prefer thin, fit women. A smaller percentage prefer women who are “pleasingly plump”. A very small percentage actively seek out heavyset women. (This last group of men is rare; but they do exist.)

But what men like is not the central issue here. On that point, at least, I think Ms. Bogen and I may be in agreement—though for entirely different reasons. Continue reading “21st-century obesity rates vs the buckle-down culture of the 1980s”

Nightclub height requirements for men, and the Law of Unintended Consequences

The other day my Facebook feed informed me that a nightclub in Brixton, London held a party earlier this year to which men under the height of 6 feet were barred from entry. The event was called “Land of the Giants.”

And they were serious about the height requirement. Men—and only men—were measured at the door.

The event sold out, but social media opinions were divided. Supporters argued that this was really no different from height filters on popular dating apps. Opponents assailed the height requirement as exclusionary.

I am 5’10” tall. I therefore would have been turned away at the door. Perhaps I should be upset about this. (That’s obviously what Facebook’s algorithm was hoping for.) But I don’t do much clubbing in Brixton, London. (I live in Ohio, after all.) And at my current age of 58, well… I guess I don’t regard this as a personally pressing matter.

The height requirement is tacky. But if a woman really must have a man capable of playing guard on a professional basketball team… “Who am I to judge?” as the late Pope Francis once said.

As sexual beings, we are entitled to like what we like, so long as we confine our liking to consenting adults. Women are entitled to fetishize height. Men are equally entitled to fetishize youth, thinness, and thigh gaps.

The question is not what we are entitled to do, but—perhaps—what we should do. Continue reading “Nightclub height requirements for men, and the Law of Unintended Consequences”

Germany banning films… again

We all know the history surrounding Nazi Germany and its authoritarian controls on popular culture. The Third Reich aggressively banned art that the Nazi Party deemed substandard, degenerate, or subversive.

But that was 90 years ago, right? Today Germany is a modern, democratic nation that isn’t afraid of free expression. Right?

Not exactly. The old authoritarian impulses still hold sway in Berlin. Last month German movie regulators refused to assign a rating to director Uwe Boll’s Citizen Vigilante. Since it is illegal to distribute films in Germany that have not been rated, this effectively banned Citizen Vigilante from the Bundesrepublik Deutschland.

Citizen Vigilante stars Armie Hammer as Michael Sanders, a vigilante who hunts down rapists and violent criminals, many of whom are migrants from Islamic countries.

The movie is an unsubtle statement on government policies that have tolerated—and perhaps even encouraged—mass migration from the Middle East to destinations in the European Union and (to a lesser extent) North America. (Uwe Boll is a German filmmaker.)

By all accounts, Citizen Vigilante is not a pleasant film, and perhaps you could argue that it is not even a particularly good one. But if present headlines are any indication, this is a debate that is not going away anytime soon. The backlash against mass migration is not limited to the Trump-voting sectors of America. The same backlash has been building in Europe for quite some time now. The immigration issue is the primary reason for the recent successes of Germany’s right-leaning Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

In the internet age, you simply cannot stamp out ideas. After the movie was suppressed in Germany, Elon Musk made it available for 48 hours, free of charge, on his X platform.

I didn’t hear about the movie because of Elon Musk, however. I learned of Citizen Vigilante when I read a finger-wagging article decrying the film’s very existence. It probably would have escaped my notice otherwise. That’s the irony of cancel culture: the very act of denouncing something has the unintended consequence of amplifying it.

I haven’t seen Citizen Vigilante, though I’ve seen clips of some of its most controversial scenes. By all indications, the movie is boilerplate vigilante spectacle. That’s an old genre in entertainment. It goes all the way back to the Race Williams detective stories published in Black Mask in the 1920s, when large numbers of Americans were anxious about rising crime rates. In the 1970s, it was manifest in the Death Wish vigilante films starring the already fifty-something Charles Bronson.

The notion of citizens taking the law into their own hands is an uncomfortable topic for a film. But when such movies become popular, it is usually because of some genuine grassroots frustration with the status quo. Perhaps this is the issue that the German government should really be paying attention to, rather than trying to ban what is, by all accounts, a rather mediocre movie.

Although the Third Reich ended more than eighty years ago, German authorities are still uncomfortable with the concept of unregulated speech. They are also, apparently, unfamiliar with the concept of reverse psychology.

Never before have so many movies, videos, and whatnot competed for our attention. The best way to convince people to seek out an otherwise obscure movie is for a government to declare its director a pariah and his movie verboten. Citizen Vigilante received over 10.5 million views, from all over the world, during its 48-hour free run on X.

-ET

The last acceptable prejudice? Age discrimination goes both ways.

I will never be accused of age discrimination. I find that people of various ages get on my nerves more or less equally, albeit in different ways.

The twenty-somethings with their neurotic cell phone obsessions… the aging Baby Boomers who dawdle and shuffle about… the now-forty-something Millennials who are still trying to be hipsters, as if the calendar had been pushed back to 2005.

And we haven’t even gotten to children and teenagers yet.

The point here is that people of all ages can be annoying, so there is no reason to discriminate against any of them, in a knee-jerk, automated manner.

Bethany Michel, who is now 28, moved to a retirement community in Florida in 2020 to take care of her terminally ill father. This was obviously during the COVID pandemic. Her father subsequently passed away and she inherited the house from him in 2023.

The HOA in Michel’s neighborhood is now trying to force her out, apparently, because she is under the age of 55. The campaign to oust her began three months after her father’s death, when she received a letter informing her that she did not meet the requirements for residency. (Although she was an adult, she was too young for the 55+ community.) The HOA is now trying to evict her with formal legal measures.

Age discrimination is one of the last socially acceptable forms of discrimination. Often it is directed at those of us who are older.

I will soon turn 58. Every now and then I’ll see the term “creepy old man” tossed about on the internet, on social media or elsewhere. What’s the deal with that? Does anyone seriously believe that a 30-year-old man can’t be creepy? I can show you a lot of evidence to the contrary.

A more systematic, though carefully hidden, form of age discrimination is used in job interview situations. There are some hiring managers in corporate America who don’t believe that people over 50 are capable of learning newfangled things. (Once again, I could provide plenty of evidence to the contrary.)

But there is also an ilk of people over 55 who seek to discriminate against younger adults—especially those younger adults with children.

Many of them live in age-restricted 55+ communities. Such communities are legal under the Housing for Older Persons Act (HOPA) of 1995.

Many of these communities provide exemptions for live-in caregivers. For example, The Villages, a huge retirement community in Central Florida, will allow the under-55 to reside within their hoary confines so long as:

“at least one member of your household is 55 and you are not younger than 19 years old.”

And they’re serious about those under-19-year-olds. The Villages “absolutely” does “welcome children and grandchildren”… to a point. “Please note,” the community’s website informs us, “visitors under the age of 18 are limited to 30 days in the calendar year.”

Unless, that is, the under-18-year-old is a pit bull or a Rottweiler. The Villages is aggressively pet-friendly. The community has many dog-walking paths and parks.

Certain forms of “age discrimination” are both commonsense and unavoidable. We have all been exasperated by the twenty-something who purports to have all the answers to all the world’s problems. Romantic relationships with vast age gaps—even among consenting adults—will always raise eyebrows.

But where ordinary social interaction is concerned, we are becoming a bit too precious as a society if we now demand the right to only associate with those who were born in the same decade as us. On the contrary, this is an area where we could all benefit from a little more diversity.

One of my friends at my local gym is a guy named Bob. Bob, who is exactly 30 years my senior, will turn 88 this year. Bob was a well-known college basketball player in the early 1960s. I love listening to his sports stories. I also enjoy talking with him about the way America was during the Eisenhower and Kennedy years.

This doesn’t mean that I now want to restrict my company to people on the verge of 90. I also enjoy interactions with twenty-somethings, much as they sometimes frustrate me. I occasionally get ideas from my twenty-something acquaintances that I simply wouldn’t have gotten anywhere else.

At the same time, I enjoy interacting with my fellow Gen Xers, now mostly fifty-something adults who fondly remember what it was like to come of age in the 1980s and early 1990s.

If you spend too much time talking to only Gen Xers, though, you’ll develop a worldview that is a little too cynical and sarcastic. I find that I benefit from deliberately pulling myself out of the Gen X bubble at regular intervals.

This was true even when I was a teen and twenty-something myself. At that time, everyone who was significantly younger than me was literally a child. Most of my age-disparate interactions, therefore, took place with older adults. I enjoyed listening to the Baby Boomers’ stories about Vietnam and the 1960s. I enjoyed listening to my World War II generation grandparents tell me about the 1930s and 1940s. I never wanted to live in an age-restricted bubble.

Back to Bethany Michel and her housing fight. There are photos of the 28-year-old online. She’s blonde and very easy on the eyes. And while I’m perfectly happy with my current next-door neighbors, I would not shriek in horror if Ms. Michel were to purchase their home.

So who, exactly, is so offended by her presence? And why? And why would The Villages want to severely restrict the presence of younger people, as if anyone under the age of 19 will turn into a flesh-eating zombie after 30 days?

As for me, I’d be a lot more annoyed by all the dogs.

-ET

NO SURE THING: A GEN X COMING-OF-AGE NOVEL SET IN 1988

Not autobiographical–but inspired by my own experiences during the late 1980s in Cincinnati, Ohio.

View it on Amazon