by Don Hall

On a recent podcast, cartoonist/author Tim Urban finally broke down the difference between liberals and progressives for me. His take was that woke had become a meaningless agitprop term and as he saw things spinning slightly out of control a few years back, he tried to categorize how his liberalism was different from those whose tactics seemed mired in middle school mentality.

There are those who live in the American house and see flaws—income inequality, the racism, sexism, autocrats attempting a takeover of our basic rights—and decide that those are parts of the house that need fixing. These are classic liberals, spawned in the belief in freedom of speech, the press, the marketplace of ideas. Then there are those who see the flaws in the American house and decide it is the very foundation of the house that is fatally pernicious and go about destroying the house. He calls these folks Social Justice Fundamentalists.

I like the simplicity of it. As a classic liberal, the world is easy to collaborate with, is less dire. Things can be fixed rather than destroyed and the principles of the founding documents are sound.

The SJFs, however, have some issues, contradictions that I can't quite wrap my head around and they haven't resolved even for themselves.

Mother's Day. My family celebrated both my mother and my sister (mother of three) by grilling delicious food and occupying the SkyLounge of my apartment building. It was a blast. The next morning I catch the whiff of the SJF attitude in the complaints about the affect of Mother's Day on people who either can't be mother's or have lost children the suggestion being that because there are some who might feel left out, we should just eliminate the holiday altogether.

No one likes being left out of the party. That, however, is a silly reason to then decide to either have no parties or make the parties you do throw without purpose aside from just making everyone feel included.

I find myself confused by the myriad contradictions in this sort of approach. Under the umbrella of thought behind social justice fundamentalism we must enforce more inclusion and diversity yet carve out safe spaces that exclude white people and Asians because, well, you know. We must believe women except when they object to a self-identified yet untransformed transgender woman being included in their sorority. We need to more aggressively police crimes against immigrants yet defund the police. On one side we must accept and celebrate the individual choice to claim expertise based upon individual 'lived truth' yet cling to monolithic group identity. We should grant agency to children who protest against climate change but take it away if they decide to date an older man.

There are plenty of contradictions on the Right side of the fence as well. The government should stay away from the constitutional right to bear arms but intervene when exercising the constitutional right to reproductive health. We should ban books that indoctrinate but definitely re-institute school prayer. Gays are degenerates but a rapist SCOTUS judge and former president are just misunderstood.

It's maddening because the din of digital noise demands our attention, requires fealty, denies interrogation, and gets in the way of actually living like a human being among other human beings.

≈≈≈

Her name was Ana Flores.

She was 37 years old. On October 8, 1999, she was walking down Wabash Avenue holding the hand of her three-year old daughter, Viridiana. She was a full-time mother; her husband, Tony, was a baggage handler for United Airlines. It was a Friday afternoon, just after lunch. It was a slightly cloudy day with occasional light showers throughout.

29 stories above her, on the west side of CNA Plaza's South Tower, a piece of plate glass casually slipped from its mooring and fell to the ground. The CNA building had had incidents of glass both cracking and falling from the building but, to date, no one had been hurt so the $3.5 million rehab on the windows had consistently been put off. Like a heavy feather, the plate glass gracefully sliced through air for 7.6 seconds before gently decapitating Flores where she stood.

She was killed instantly.

I saw it that afternoon on CLTV. Like everyone else who saw it on television, I was horrified. I was also deeply curious. What truly made an impact on me that day was not the unfairness of life or the teetering lack of safety we all tightrope walk upon daily, but Ana Flores's last second of life.

“What was she thinking?” was the question that plagued me that afternoon. Most people see their death coming even if only for a moment. It is that moment that the myth of “seeing your life flash before your eyes” gets its resonance. Whether it is at the wheel of a car crashing or old age softly pushing out the final breath, we mostly get to see the final instance of life extinguished. But not Ana Flores. Her death was silent and unseen and snuffed her flame out in a microsecond.

What was she thinking about during that 7.6 seconds? If she was anything like most of us—and odds are that she was—she was likely thinking about the flotsam and jetsam of every day living. Bills to pay. A petty squabble with her husband about something stupid. Self doubt in the form body insecurity or an inability to motivate herself to achieve something on her list of things to do. If she was anything like most of us she was likely thinking about bullshit. Inconsequential crap.

I think about that to this day. I know, at 57 years old, I’m more apt to simply snuff it eating a bagel or over-exerting myself picking up a box than I used to be. My sense of mortality has always been keenly honed but it is more apparent today than twenty years ago. Plenty of people die before fifty but I didn’t so I’m stuck with my feet inching just a tad bit further over the precipice than I had anticipated.

These most recent days it’s become difficult to keep my head in the game. The chance than if a plate glass window sliced my head off most days, I’d be thinking about Trump maybe being re-elected or Identity Politics or #MeToo or the coming disaster of our crumbling climate. I might be dwelling heavily upon the truth or not of rape culture, of the lack of medical coverage most people endure, or the perilous edge those living freelance tightrope walk across every day. Maybe how social media has unleashed our worst behavior writ large. Perhaps, when the glass severed my brainstem, my mind would be processing what shit the Electoral College system is and how no one is doing anything about it just like the dead stick that is campaign finance reform or banking regulation. The many contradictions of the culture wars and the decision of so many to simply destroy the house rather than fix it.

You know. Bullshit.

I’d rather be thinking about Life. Love. Ideas to improve rather than destroy. Things to build rather than things to destroy. My mom. My dad. My sister. Her kids. All the reasons why I’d be unhappy to be cut short rather than a litany of things that would make it feel like a blessing to be done away with.

I understand the dilemma. How can one avoid thinking about all this cacophony when so much hangs in the balance?

Unless you’re actively doing something about the floating debris of the body politic, dwelling on it and the anxiety that accompanies that helps no one, least of all you. Virtue signal all you want, the fact remains that your standing on Faceborg (or TikTak or Twittier) is a phantasm that amounts to jackshit in the Grand Scheme. Go register to vote and then show up, for chrissakes. Volunteer for some ocean cleanup. Then go hug your spouse. Play with your kids. Pet your goddamned dog.

I hope—I really do—that the synapses in Ana Flores’s medulla were firing in the direction of something meaningful rather than worrisome. I hope that when the plate glass comes for you—and it will, my friends—you will be looking at a sunset and marveling at how damned amazing it is to be alive at a time when we are safer and more humane than at any other time in history.