This Is Me Pulling the Trigger
I’ve never successfully written about my bagel issue. The shortest version goes like this: I don’t like when people toast fresh bagels. For a long time, it was an aesthetic thing, a question of preference and taste.
I want to be clear I don’t dislike people who toast their fresh bagels, I just dislike the practice. Toasting is for stale or old bagels, so toasted bagels always taste stale to me. This is how I started losing my mind.
Most people get their bagels toasted, so for a long time no matter how explicit I was, when I ordered a bagel it would come back toasted. Eventually, I learned to say, “Please don’t toast it,” instead of “not toasted” when I ordered. After that, I got in the habit of staying at the counter and reminding the person who took my order not to throw my fresh bagel in the toaster out of habit.
About a decade ago I noticed that places started selling stale bagels. See, they know that since everyone prefers them toasted anyway, no one can tell the difference. If I bought a dozen bagels and brought them home, several would be stale and it would ruin my day. I’d have a massive tantrum and my family would get mad at me for ranting.
What I couldn’t really communicate was that my rage was tied to powerlessness. There is literally nothing I can do to stop everyone from toasting fresh bagels, which means that I just have to accept the likelihood that I’ll get stuck with a stale one.
The problem is that I hold most of the rest of the planet responsible. I am furious that I have to live with your awful choices. Like, I can’t have a “good” bagel because you prefer a shitty one.
I try really hard to be OK with that now because I know what it looks like when there’s more at stake than a high-carb breakfast. It looks like the Tea Party.
For better or worse I understood their anger immediately, powerlessness in the face of cultural change. Most Americans appeared to want equity but Tea-Party types just wanted their way all the time under any and every circumstance.
I have to believe in my heart that the louder they’ve become the closer they are to dying out. In the meanwhile though, they’re having a hell of a tantrum and they don’t care whose day they ruin.
I’ve been working on a podcast idea called “A Bagel Manifesto” since I made that connection. The tag line was supposed to be, “Learning to Lose the Culture War,” because I’m a middle-aged white guy and I understand that we’re going to have to redistribute inequity before we get equity.
Hell, I’m all for it even when it’s inconvenient.
Since then, though, the Tea Party got (improbably?) worse and devolved into off-shoots. They’ve recruited religious extremists and the conspiracy theory crowd insofar as those are different movements. That’s not a culture war I want to learn to lose, so I’ve refined my premise.
I still want to examine that anger and its underpinnings, but I don’t want to just throw rocks. It’s boring and counterproductive, no matter how much pleasure we get from it.
The fact is that everyone thinks they’re the moderate voice. Everyone believes they’re doing the right thing, so that justifies the spite that motivates them.
I want to take people’s beliefs seriously and unpack them right next to my own and see what that looks like. Hopefully, I can find a way to help us figure out ways we participate in and thereby prolong the life of a culture that long since should have died.
The good news is that I’ll keep it short. These will be 15 minute(ish) episodes so by the time you think it’s too much it will be over. You can follow me wherever you listen to podcasts (which would be cool) but I’ll also include it in this newsletter.
Keep the Faith,
Tony
Personal update
The odds are better than average that I’ll finish the audiobook for Dragged Into the Light before the next newsletter comes out. It should be available in the new year.
I’m also nearly a third of the way through my next book, a collaboration with an Army Ranger medic that (we hope) will reimagine the war memoir. It’ll have to get read by the government first or whatever, so I’m hoping that sees the light of day by 2023.
I have what I think is a super-cool project planned for next year and I’d be happy to hear your feedback. I’m going to provide chapter by chapter audio commentary for Dragged Into the Light, including clips from interviews and audio and photos from the trial.
I’ll do that with the next culty book I’m working on for release late next year.
Finally, there is a better than average chance that I start Tik-Toking soon, so that platform is likely on the wane.