Category: current events

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

Rumors of plague, and the long history of Kremlin obfuscation

More bad news out of Russia. There are reports of a 28-year-old female employee of Russia’s Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute dying of pneumonic plague a few days ago.

Russian officials have not confirmed the cause of the woman’s death. But they insist that they are in control of the situation. (Some two hundred contacts of the deceased lab worker have been placed under medical observation.)

There were several close calls related to Soviet bioweapons programs during the Cold War (including the 1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax accident). In each case, Soviet authorities declined to make full disclosures of the extent of the exposures. Thankfully, none resulted in worldwide pandemics.

The Kremlin was cagey even about acknowledging the deaths of one of its leaders. Between 1982 and 1985 (just before Gorbachev was named General Secretary of the USSR), three Soviet leaders died in relatively quick succession: Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko.

In each case, the Kremlin was slow to confirm the deaths to the Western media. This led to jokes about hypothetical Pravda headlines like “Stalin not feeling well” and “Lenin under the weather”. (By the mid-1980s, both Lenin and Stalin had been dead for decades.)

Where Russia is concerned, we should always hope for the best but we should never assume that the Kremlin is giving us the full story.

-ET

Fraternities, sororities, and the ovine effect

You might have noticed that we almost never hear any positive news stories about fraternities and sororities. 

Yes, I’m alluding to the recent “Cornell 7” case. 

But the details of that case are not what I’m going to discuss here—as the relevant facts are still coming in, and everyone else is talking about that incident. 

Instead, I’m going to begin at the University of Cincinnati, in January 1982. 

Before many of you were even born.

***

On Sunday, January 17, 1982, the University of Cincinnati chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) held what it called a “Martin Luther King Jr. trash party.” The event was held the night before UC’s observance of King’s birthday. 

Guests were encouraged to bring items such as canceled welfare checks, boomboxes, and crowbars. Ku Klux Klan hoods were welcome. Invitations for the party also suggested that attendees bring photos of James Earl Ray—Martin Luther King’s assassin. 

According to contemporary accounts, one partygoer wore a Martin Luther King mask with a bullet hole in it. 

All that happened back in 1982.

***

I was not a student at the University of Cincinnati in January 1982. I was an eighth-grader in the nearby suburbs. Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s “Martin Luther King Jr. trash party” was a local source of ignominy in Cincinnati that winter. The incident was a common topic on local TV and radio channels. 

The scandal eventually received national attention, but this was limited. (Remember: there was no internet back then.) 

In February 1982, UC president Henry Winkler ordered a two-year suspension of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. That suspension has long since expired, of course. Sigma Alpha Epsilon has a chapter on the University of Cincinnati campus today. Some of the current members’ fathers, one imagines, had not even been born yet in 1982.

***

Alleged gang rapes, and incidents like the Martin Luther King Jr. trash party, are sensational events that linger in the media for months or even years. Far more common are the comparatively mundane stories of a new pledge dying from alcohol poisoning after drinking himself into oblivion as part of the fraternity’s hazing procedures. 

What about sororities, though? Where sororities are concerned, the news stories are usually a little less toxic. The big problem with sororities seems to be the incredible amounts of money that parents will invest trying to get their daughter into a very specific sorority. Often this involves spending thousands of dollars for sorority rush consultants and various designer brands. 

But back, briefly, to the Cornell 7 case. The alleged perpetrators were all members of the Chi Phi fraternity chapter at Cornell University. The alleged victim was a member of a sorority. Frat boys and sorority sisters tend to hang out together, attend the same parties, and hook up together.

***

None of the above implies that every member of a fraternity is a racist or a rapist. Nor can we conclude that every member of a sorority is a hapless ingénue, ready to fall for any proposition presented by the right fraternity brother. 

But we can make certain speculations. There are people who have a deep emotional need for group affiliation. Such individuals have a strong tendency to merge their own identities with the identity of a particular group—a group that gives them a sense of acceptance and social standing. 

Such individuals are often attracted to fraternities and sororities. People with low degrees of personal independence naturally gravitate toward these organizations. This is the selection effect in action. 

Members of fraternities and sororities are not necessarily any more malevolent or gullible at an individual level than members of the general population. They are, however, arguably more susceptible to peer pressure. The need to be liked and accepted by a particular group can override individual codes of ethics—and even self-preservation. 

Consider the Sigma Alpha Epsilon “MLK trash party of 1982.” Attendees at this event could not reasonably have expected to acquire conventional rewards such as sex, money, or career advancement. They could, however, acquire more peer group approval. 

Ayn Rand once wrote that the word “we” is the root of all evil. I wouldn’t go quite that far. Moreover, excessive contrarianism—when practiced for its own sake—can become counterproductive. 

But college fraternities and sororities do seem to bring out the worst in people who suffer from a strong need for group affiliation. Adulthood is supposed to be about personal growth and independence. Fraternities and sororities encourage exactly the opposite—even when tragedies and public scandals aren’t their result.

-ET

**View NO SURE THING on Amazon**

9/11 and the time we are given

With the 25th anniversary of 9/11 this past week, I found myself confronted again with the personal stories of some of the ordinary people who died that day. Many were pressed by circumstances into acts of heroism. Their names include: Todd Beamer, Brian Sweeney, Mark Bingham, Betty Ong, and Lauren Grandcolas, among many others.

While the 9/11 attacks did have elderly victims, it seems that many of them were young people in their prime years: their twenties through their forties. That is the nature of air travel, perhaps—especially on a workday. (September 11, 2001, fell on a Tuesday.) Most of the WTC victims were at work.

All of those people’s stories, compelling as they are, were cut short twenty-five years ago.

I was not anywhere near the events of 9/11 on the morning of September 11th, 2001. I was working at an office building in Erlanger, Kentucky, hundreds of miles from all of the horror that was taking place.

By that time, the internet was commonplace and ubiquitous (though social media did not yet exist). My colleagues and I became aware of what was going on in more or less real time, as it was being reported on the various news sites.

But I went home that day. Many people did not.

All those lives were cut short on September 11, 2001. I, meanwhile, have had 25 years since then—25 years of joy, sadness, disappointment, and triumph. There have been good days and bad days since then, and—I dare say—some good years along with some not-so-good ones.

But those 25 years were mine. That’s a lot of memories. On 9/11/01, I was 33 years old. I’m now 58.

Twenty-five years is an entire generation of time, a generation of time that was given to me, but not to everyone. Even as I mourn the deaths of inspiring, ordinary people whom I never knew, and (in all likelihood) never would have known, I’m compelled to reflect on my own mundane life.

I should be more grateful. I should be kinder and more considerate toward the people around me. I should make better use of the time I have been given, time that was taken from so many others.

-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

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”

Who should get the half-staff flag treatment when they die?

Ken Adams, the mayor of Olive Branch, Mississippi, has balked at lowering the flag in honor of the late Dolly Parton—who passed away last Tuesday.

Adams acknowledged Dolly Parton’s universal appeal and good works in a social media post, while also challenging the appropriateness of lowering the flag in her honor.

According to Adams, “It should be reserved for our military heroes, fallen first responders, presidents and other major national leaders, or events that have had a tremendous impact on our country. If we lower the flag every time a well-known or beloved person passes away, I believe we eventually lessen the meaning of the gesture.”

Most recently, President Trump ordered the flag to be flown at half-staff for Senator Lindsey Graham, who died of natural causes in July. (Well, there are some conspiracy chasers who think the Russian FSB was involved, but we’ll table that discussion for the moment.)

And then there was the lowering of the flag for the assassinated Charlie Kirk last year. Kirk was a noteworthy but controversial celebrity/activist who divided public opinion.

On the other hand, no presidential order was given to lower the flag for Jesse Jackson, a civil rights activist and politician who died in February. Continue reading “Who should get the half-staff flag treatment when they die?”

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”

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

One more American soccer fan

Soccer was regarded as a somewhat newfangled sport when I was an adolescent and teenager in the first half of the 1980s. If you were a soccer fan, people might have suspected that you were going out of your way to be different or “special”.

I once asked my uncle if he ever watched soccer. “Well,” he said wryly, “soccer might be all right if you were a European.”

I fully grasped my uncle’s sentiment, even if I didn’t entirely agree with it. In that time and place, there were only three sports that counted: football, basketball, and baseball.

I ran track and cross country in high school. While no one regarded the running sports as aberrant, no one cared much about them, either. I don’t remember many spectators at our track meets—even when our team was doing well.

My high school got its first boys’ soccer team while I was a student there. The team did quite well, as I recall, winning a state championship in 1984. This was appreciated, of course; but the soccer team still played second fiddle to the football team in the fall athletic season. No one saw this as a great injustice or irony. It was just the way things were.

Soccer has become far more popular in the four decades since then. But it has become popular primarily as a sport that Americans play—not watch. And most of the Americans who play soccer are of student age.

Consider the numbers. The Super Bowl routinely pulls in 123 million to 128 million domestic viewers in the US. Even a World Cup final match struggles to pull in half that… in the US, that is. Globally, about 1.5 to 1.8 billion people follow the World Cup. American football, by contrast, has almost no bounce beyond US borders.

I have never been much into watching other people play sports. (Another thing about the US: our passion for spectator sports has risen in proportion to our obesity rates. But that’s another essay.) My personal disinterest, coupled with my indifference to soccer as an American, prejudiced me against watching the 2026 World Cup. I wasn’t against it; I just didn’t care.

And then I started watching—just to see what all the fuss was about, at first. Somewhat against my will, I got hooked. By the final match between Spain and Argentina, I was a moderately enthusiastic World Cup fan.

I discovered that there are some things about soccer that I particularly like. For one thing, it is one of the few remaining sports that a normal-sized person can play at a professional level. Pro basketball is now a game for people who are almost seven feet tall. I’m only 5’10”. I simply can’t relate to pro basketball. But the average World Cup soccer player is very close to my height.

Soccer is a fast-moving game. This is a quality that it shares with hockey. One cannot watch a soccer game with half one’s attention. One must either focus on the game, or focus on something else. The action is simply that engrossing.

I know that some Europeans can become rabid partisans of one team or another. Riots at European soccer venues have been a well-documented phenomenon for years.

I’ll probably never attend a match in person and I’d certainly never riot over the outcome of such a contest. But by the end of the 2026 World Cup, I was enthusiastically rooting for Spain. There were too many instances of poor sportsmanship on the Argentinian side, while the Spanish team struck me as a class act.

Soccer will probably never be as popular in the USA as pro football. The NFL is simply too entrenched in the American psyche. But pro soccer now has at least one new American fan. I’ll almost certainly watch the World Cup in 2030, and probably some additional tournaments in the interim.

-ET

Daniel Ortega: history repeats itself

Which Latin American strongman was most on the mind of the American president in 1986? Daniel Ortega, the dictator of Nicaragua.

Ortega, a Marxist protégé of the USSR, ruled Nicaragua throughout the 1980s. The Reagan administration provided aid to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, often through clandestine means. This led to the infamous Iran-Contra scandal of Reagan’s second term in office.

Time Magazine, March 1986

There was talk in some quarters about direct U.S. intervention in the Latin American nation in the 1980s, though I don’t think this was ever seriously on the table.

Ortega was eventually ousted from within and found himself out of power for seventeen years, from 1990 to 2007. Then he came back into power. Ortega’s second dictatorship has lasted for almost 20 years now.

The 80-year-old Ortega has just declared that Nicaragua will no longer hold elections at all. We’re back to the 1980s.

No, I’m not about to suggest that the US should attempt to force a regime change in Nicaragua. That was a bad idea in 1986, and it’s a bad idea now. From the U.S. perspective, the situation in Nicaragua is a nuisance, not an existential threat.

But we may consider the irony. So much has changed since the mid-1980s. (To consider the matter from a personal perspective, I turned 18 in 1986, the year I graduated from high school. I will soon turn 58.)

There are, however, some constants in this ever-changing world. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

-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