That’s the charge leveled by one reader, J., who responds to my grammar confession from earlier this week by advising me to “battle the misinformed pedantry of the peevers”—and points out a number of ways in which I’m guilty of misinformation myself. But first, two more readers offer their defenses for linguistic laxity.
Knox, a self-described “ambiguity ally,” says her attitude to English was shaped by growing up in a family of dyslexics:
In my younger years, I thought I had missed out on the family superpower. Today, we’ve come to terms with the differences: Acute writing skills are as much of a wieldable power as the extraordinary three-dimensional thinking that can make reading more difficult. But in the name of intellectual stimulation, debate around the importance of grammar and spelling still arises at the dinner table.
My youngest brother has a favorite defense; he likes to define “a word” with a sly smile and a hefty dose of side-eye. “Well. Don’t you know the definition of a word?” (He’ll pause for dramatic effect.) “According to the dictionary,” a stab at my English degree, “a word is a unit of language that functions as a principal carrier of meaning. The purpose of a word is not grammatical accuracy but a mode of conveying meaning. So, if you understood what I meant, then my mastery of language is intact.”
I’ll argue with him in the name of a good dinner debate, but truthfully I can't help but agree. The English language for me is less a network of rules and codes and more a tool for impact. However, the upshot here: It’s always the combination of the two—the codes and the meaning—that will craft the highest-impact message.
George takes a similarly laissez-faire approach:
Years of teaching both English and French as second languages has convinced me that when it comes to usage, the bottom line is getting the message across. All languages (except dead ones) are in a constant state of flux and there is nothing any of us can do about it. It may seem at times that a language is “deteriorating,” but those who are most knowledgeable about language know that no language has ever “deteriorated.” All languages evolve.
I love to quote—perhaps not totally accurately—the inimitable “Mr. Language Person” (Dave Barry of the Miami Herald—retired) who reported an overheard conversation between Eileen and her friend. Eileen was complaining about being unable to go to the church social for lack of a ride. Her friend replied: “Eileen, ’f I’d a know’d you’d a wanna went, I’d a see’d you’d a got to get to go!” This is 100 percent wrong grammatically, but the message comes across perfectly. Why correct it?
But another defense of what I’ve described as “rule-breaking” lies not in rejection of grammatical rules, but in a more precise interpretation. Here’s J., whose point-by point response to my post begins by unpacking Ruby’s critique of the Atlantic Daily verbs:
In “croissants uneaten,” uneaten is indeed a verb—specifically a passive verb—not an adjective. A “croissant uneaten” is a croissant that no one has eaten. That is, the verbal sense is clearly intact.
Although it appears in many of the same syntactic positions as adjectives, uneaten does not meet most of the criteria for adjective-hood (an asterisk indicates that something is ungrammatical):
It is not gradable: *more uneaten, *most uneaten
It cannot be modified by words like too and very: *very uneaten croissants
It doesn’t work with a verb like become: *The croissants became uneaten.
To get a better sense of all of this, compare uneaten to a past participle that has clearly become an adjective, like embarrassed. To be sure, when we’re discussing past participles, the line between verb and adjective is sometimes hazy. All we can do is look at the evidence.
***
I too have sometimes wondered if “Verbs” would be better titled “Past Participles”
The past participle is one of the six forms that every lexical verb has. The title "Verbs" encompasses those six forms. Don’t let a few misinformed peevers cause you to change the name.
You have what are clearly four verbs. Despite some readers’ desire for parallelism, there is nothing wrong or inelegant about having two past participles and two present-tense verbs.
You have four clear verbs. Does unimpressed straddle the line between verb and adjective? Probably. But isn’t there a verbal meaning there, i.e., that the press was unimpressed by someone or something, that someone or something did not impress them?
***
And I know that it’s frowned-upon to start a sentence with “and”
But it’s not. The “don’t start sentences with conjunctions” is a zombie rule. It has never been an actual rule of English grammar, and it’s easy to find examples of it in all levels of formality, from Supreme Court decisions to essays in The Atlantic to newspaper articles to fiction to social-media posts.
***
On the other hand, isn’t language shaped democratically by those who use it?
YES!
***
So tell me: Are you a grammar geek who takes occasional guilty pleasure in splitting infinitives? Do you dare to dangle prepositions?
With all due respect, this is the kind of stuff that perpetuates zombie rules. It perpetuates ignorance about the way our language works.
There is no “guilty pleasure” in “splitting” infinitives because it has never been ungrammatical in English. And anyway, “split infinitive” is a misnomer, one borne of early grammarians’ attempts to apply the grammatical rules of Latin (in which is is impossible to split an infinitive) to English. A to-infinitive clearly comprises two parts: the infinitival subordinator to and the plain form of the verb. This is clear in sentences like “I need to eat and sleep” and “We could go to the dance, but Cozznester doesn’t want to.” Nothing is being split in a “split infinitive.”
When you suggest that spitting infinitives and stranding prepositions is something that only grammar renegades do—especially when you do it in a widely read publication—you’re adding fuel to people's misconceptions (and their nervous cluelessness) about English. There’s no guilty pleasure in doing these things: They’re a natural part of English grammar. There are conventions that formal writing must adhere to. But conflating stylistic conventions with grammar leads people to believe that those conventions are actual rules.
I’m aware that this piece is trying to be light, to adopt a cheeky tone. But people who write about language need to battle the misinformed pedantry of the peevers. They need to strive to show readers how English actually works, not how those peevers want it to work.
Point taken. And gauntlet thrown.
Searching for further insight into stylistic peevery, I followed one of J.’s links to discover Britt Peterson’s 2014 Boston Globe column “Why We Love the Language Police.” Here’s Peterson’s central question:
It’s long been recognized that language is culturally contingent and constantly evolving, rather than being a strict, logical system that can be frozen in its 16th-century state, as [grammarian N.M.] Gwynne would have it.
And yet the enthusiasm with which people read Gwynne suggests that, outside academia, there’s some continuing appeal in being lectured about split infinitives and misplaced apostrophes. In fact, for hundreds of years, English-speakers have reveled in scolding each other and being scolded about language. Gwynne’s little book is just the latest to put the spotlight on an enduring conundrum: In a world where hundreds of millions of people use the language effectively every day, why do so many of us love to hear that we’re doing it wrong?
Proud pedants and peevers come forward: What’s so great about your usage rules? Can you defend against the charge of spreading misconceptions? If there’s no grammatical case against (for instance) a split infinitive, what’s the aesthetic one? Send your best case for conventions to hello@theatlantic.com.
Forgive me, dear readers: I have sinned against grammar and in thy sight, and, as I might have expected, you’ve caught me. I’m referring to the “Verbs” section of The Atlantic Daily newsletter, which includes a series of four links attached to four (hopefully) sonically pleasing predicates. For example, our February 7 edition:
The problem is that they’re not always, technically speaking, verbs. As one reader, Ruby, explains:
With respect, the phrase “croissants uneaten” contains no verb. Rather, uneaten is a verbal, a verb form that acts as another part of speech. In the phrase “croissants uneaten,” uneaten is an adjective that describes croissants.
Michelle asks for “parallel structure, please”:
While I loved seeing the Verbs section reinstated, I was a tad dismayed when “add up” appeared alongside “unimpressed,” “soured,” and “swiped.” As a former English teacher, I always impressed upon my students the importance of parallel structure to assist readers in following along, which is perhaps why I found the shift from past to present tense jarring: Why not “Press unimpressed, sugar scientists soured, identity swiped, figures added up”? I realize there is a slight difference between the phrase “add up,” which connotes “making sense,” versus “added up,” which suggests “tallying.” Perhaps you should have selected another example since the first three verb forms function as past passive participles (adjectives), while the last is definitely a verb.
And Joseph looks even closer: “Please note that ‘unimpressed’ is an adjective, not a verb.”
It’s true! It’s true! I throw myself upon your mercy. (Being also at the mercy of Merriam-Webster, I have verified that preposition.) But what’s a would-be wordplayer to do? The rules of grammar are many and rigid, the headline-pun options comparatively few. I reserve the right to rebel for rhythm’s sake. I must claim my freedom to conjugate! And, well, it’s the little things in life that keep us going, and on a grim news day something like “press unimpressed” can be too much fun to pass up.
Yea, though I walk in the shadow of stylebooks AP, MLA, and Chicago—though I am passionately pro-Oxford comma; though I get distressed by misplacement of hyphens; though indeed, I too have sometimes wondered if “Verbs” would be better titled “Past Participles”—I am only a writer and only human, and I persist in doubt.
As my colleague Joseph knows after fielding my not-so-correct attempt to correct him, I still have trouble understanding how the phrase “to jibe with” can reasonably signify agreement. My editor, Chris, can attest to my habit of putting commas in places where they are unwelcome, if not strictly prohibited (it’s for the musicality, I have oh-so-earnestly told him). And I know that it’s frowned-upon to start a sentence with “and” or follow a semicolon with “but”; but there are times when for reasons of cadence or tone it just feels right to do it. I know that “but it sounds good!” is not much of a logical argument for anything—but such is the logic to which I bow, time and time again.
I blame my education for the crisis of faith. In college, I divided my time between copy-editing jobs and creative-writing workshops, developing equal reverence for protocol and for experimentation. I also earned a degree in literature, which means I am now well acquainted with the glorious multitude of things one can do with the English language, extremely skilled at overthinking the meaning behind a particular comma, and—when it comes to my own writing—desperately confused. Forget grammar-Nazism: Communication is a kind of social contract, and there’s an egalitarian rightness to holding all writers to the same standards. On the other hand, isn’t language shaped democratically by those who use it? And art is a meritocracy anyway, and creativity means pushing limits, and where’s the danger and joy and intuitive magic in playing strictly by the rules?
I like to think I’m not alone in all this agita. So tell me: Are you a grammar geek who takes occasional guilty pleasure in splitting infinitives? Do you dare to dangle prepositions? Are your serial commas (however you feel about them) selectively enforced? Send your copy confessions my way: hello@theatlantic.com.
A West Virginia delegate wears a Trump sticker on his hard hat during the second day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, on July 19, 2016.Aaron P. Bernstein / Reuters
(Editor’s note: Alana Semuels joined the TAD discussion group of Atlantic readers for an “Ask Me Anything,” and a lightly edited version of that Q&A is below. Reader questions are in bold, followed by replies from Semuels.)
Hi Alana. Welcome to TAD and thank you for being here. I live in the heart of the Rust Belt—Pittsburgh—and I was wondering what you see as the best hope for river towns like Aliquippa and Beaver Falls that were founded on steel but now barely scrape by. We are losing young people at a rate of 30 percent, I think. A couple towns have found a niche and have become viable, but I just don’t see many of these places recovering. Do you think they will inevitably eventually disappear like so many other towns in the Midwest?
I started my journalism career in Pittsburgh, at the Post-Gazette, so I have a special alliance to the region (except to the Steelers. Go Pats!). There are towns—like Goshen, Indiana—that have survived the rural exodus, mostly by specializing in a few niche industries. My article “America Is Still Making Things” talks a little more about this. But only a few towns are going to be able to pull this off. I think the rest are going to keep losing population and young people. There’s hope for them to become retirement communities, but that’s not necessarily the most dynamic economic engine.
As someone who really went around and talked to a lot of people from all corners of America, did you think Trump might win the election? Or were you as surprised as the rest of us?
No, I was surprised, too. I wish I had talked to more people about this before the election, but I, like many other journalists, was focused on other things.
What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about the average Trump voter?
Democrats seem to think Trump voters are dumb; they aren’t. They just really don’t like Democrats, especially Hillary. A lot of the people I talked to said they were more anti-Hillary than they were pro-Trump. A friend who is a pollster said people in his groups thought Hillary was a liar and Trump an a-hole, and they’d rather vote for an a-hole than a liar.
I think a lot of people were long-time Republicans, and are as unlikely to change parties as urban Democrats are. But there was one woman who said to me she didn’t know who she was voting for until she got into the voting booth, and then she thought about the FBI and Hillary, and then voted for Trump. I think she is fairly representative.
It irritates me when Democrats criticize Rust Belt voters for supporting Trump. That’s the point of voting—everyone gets to choose who they want. Alexander Hamilton would have liked only the educated people to choose who was in charge, but that’s not a democracy.
Do you think sexism was a big factor in Midwest voters’ hate for Hillary?
No, I actually don’t. But I’m a business reporter, not a politics reporter, so I could be wrong.
Anne Kitzman / zhu difeng / Shutterstock / Katie Martin / The Atlantic
Well the most surprising thing was when I was sitting at a pizza parlor talking to two young guys who said some really racist stuff (they didn’t like cities because they had too many black people, etc), which they knew was on the record. I think it really illuminated for me how different the two worlds are: What they were saying was perfectly fine to say in the world they lived in. In the world I live in, it was shocking.
Where is somewhere you’ve traveled that has really surprised you and changed how you think, either in a good way or a bad way?
Beaumont, Texas, was a fascinating place for me to visit. I had written a lot about segregation at that point, but it is often hard to articulate why segregation is so problematic (beyond general issues of equality and fairness). But I talked to a mother whose daughter had been succeeding in a good school in a white neighborhood, and then had to move to a bad school in a poor neighborhood. In the first school, her daughter had access to a computer, books, and an engaged teacher. In the second one, many of the kids in her class didn’t know how to read.
Based on what you’ve seen of America, do you consider it likely or unlikely that large-scale violent conflict breaks out between factions of Americans?
Hmm, I don’t think widespread violence is likely. One interesting thing I’ve noticed in trips since the election is how everyone is just going about their daily lives as before. Guys, the world has not ended (!!). If anything, people seem more politically engaged than ever.
One of the things I was most curious about after the election was who was going to be impacted first and soonest (apparently, the answer was immigrants from seven countries). But people live locally, and act locally, and will see little changed in their lives for now, I think.
What do you think is the limit at which Trump’s support among rural voters collapses, if there even is one?
I have thought about this a lot, and I think that the limit is a lot higher than Democrats would hope. I was in rural North Carolina last week talking to voters, and I was surprised how many of them—poor, rich, white, black—said they thought Trump was doing a good job. (This was in the midst of the immigration furor.) They said they thought he had a big mouth, and said things that he shouldn’t, but they wanted to give him a shot to turn the country around.
Trump speaks during a campaign stop at Alumisource, a metals recycling facility in Monessen, Pennsylvania, on June 28, 2016. (Keith Srakocic / AP)
I enjoyed your story “President Trump, Job Creator?” Do you think that Trump either knows or cares that companies are playing him by letting him claim credit for things that they were going to do anyway?
I think he loves this. Announcements like Intel’s recent one about the chip factory in Arizona make him look good, even though he did nothing to make them happen. Intel, like most companies that make these announcements, had planned to do this long ago. By announcing it Trump’s way, though, they might be able to curry favor with him. I don’t think they’re playing him; I think he’s playing them.
What do you think will be the long-term ramifications of Trump’s economic policies? Do you think these ramifications could have a major impact on how rural areas vote, or do you think values and religious concerns will still be supreme?
This is a good question, but unfortunately I don’t have a great answer. It’s possible that Trump will convince more companies to manufacture here. The voters I talked to certainly think he is doing a good job so far. He is really good at making independent business decisions sound like they were because of him. If he does this, I think he’s going to keep a strong contingent of happy voters in the Rust Belt.
But a lot of these manufacturing jobs are going to be automated, and so that’s not going to help these voters in the long term. The automation could take a decade or so, though, so it may not be relevant for 2020.
However, as I wrote in my piece from Elkhart [“It’s Not About the Economy”], economic progress doesn’t necessarily mean voters will support the president. People live in bubbles of their own making, and they often don’t let facts disrupt their narrative of what is going on. (Liberals too!)
I really liked your article last November about the Democrats not having an easy answer for the Rust Belt. So my question is: Is there actually a pitch the Democrats can make that will work? Trump is promising the moon, and while I don’t think he can deliver, it seems like an impossible promise to compete against.
I think the pitch that will work is not the most sensible one, which is training and education. Rather, I think if somehow Democrats can go more progressive, towards a “growth-that-includes everyone” type of message, that could be more appealing, especially to one-time union voters. That might mean talking more about employee-owned companies, or about the importance of unions, or of making business share more profits.
I liked your piece about the TPP and its real impact on the American worker, but it’s interesting how few people in the Rust Belt seem to understand these concepts. Where do you think the disconnect in communication and understanding is? Is there a better way for to get these topics across?
That’s a really good question. I think that’s another thing I’ve really learned while talking to people across the country: People often believe the version of economics that’s simplest. So, “your job is being outsourced to Mexico” is easier to get angry about than “TPP would have raised wages overseas, which in turn could have driven companies to relocate to the U.S., which in turn would have created jobs here.” People in the Rust Belt really hate NAFTA and it’s going to be hard to change their mind about trade.
Seeing that the Trump administration has so far been rather, let’s say, incompetent, do you think he’ll actually be able to impose the trade restrictions he wants? And how do you think they’ll play out if they do indeed happen?
I think that for the next two years, if past is prologue, Trump is going to do pretty much whatever he wants. He already killed TPP. Renegotiating NAFTA is going to be harder, but I think the administration is very serious about this border adjustment tax. The good thing for Democrats, I think, is that most of these trade policies are going to be an absolute disaster for the economy. It’s worrying that Trump does not seem to want to listen to economists, but this will be an interesting experiment in what happens when a country does not follow widely-accepted economic principles.
Do you think the extremely polarizing nature of Trump will make the communities you visited more insular and defensive, and only deepen the divide in America? If so, if there anything that could be done to mitigate this? Is there anything the media could do on this front?
Yes, I do think the divide is going to deepen. People have beliefs about the country and the president and they are going to seek out news sources that confirm those beliefs. So people who like Trump are going to read things saying he’s doing a good job, and those that don’t are going to consume things saying he’s terrible.
I think local newspapers are important here. People care about what’s happening in their communities and still consume local news. So the degree that those papers can burst through those bubbles and share facts, that’s pretty important.
I was recently reading a New Yorker article about how a man from rural America who said he hated black people started up a discussion on C-SPAN with the head of Demos, who is black.
They’re now friends, and McGhee recommended that the man read up on black history and get to know more black people, which he did. I think the more people read up on people very different from them, and make contacts with those people, the better (yes, I realize this sounds very Kumbaya). I am trying to read Hillbilly Elegy right now (though I am not making much progress), and I want to read more about people in rural areas, even as I do more reporting there.
Something I’m always curious about, particularly from writers such as yourself: Do you think online commenting provides an opportunity to bridge some of these economic/educational/cultural divides or does it just widen the gulf? TAD was founded as an escape from the usual fracas of online comment boards, but I’m curious what role you think open online comments plays in today’s America.
If you mean commenting on sites like The Atlantic, I’m not sure that it can bridge the gulf. Many of the Republicans I talk to in the Rust Belt have never heard of The Atlantic and certainly would never read it. They have their news sources; Democrats have theirs.
I’ve thought a lot about how to bridge the divide I wrote about in “America’s Great Divergence,” and I just don’t have an idea. I do know that the opinions and input of people different from me are really important in my reporting, but I usually get those inputs by visiting somewhere really far away and talking to random people. I’d love to have more of those people in my Facebook feed, but I just don’t.
“I’d love to have more of those people in my Facebook feed, but I just don’t.”
I think that’s a really great point. Elsewhere on TAD today it was mentioned that Vox was reporting only 9 percent of Republicans disapprove of Trump right now. Which isn’t surprising in and of itself, but it did strike me how everything I’ve seen lately, through social media and through the news sources I regularly read, has been so negative about Trump that you’d think the entire country turned on him. It’s an important reminder that there really is another world out there that is easy to completely miss.
What do you think will be the most underreported, yet necessary economic/business reporting of the coming year?
I think the middle class is going to continue to hollow out, no matter what Trump does. People at the high-skill, educated end of the spectrum are going to do great, everyone else is going to continue to scrimp. Especially with GOP control in the nation and in many states, there’s going to be little appetite for raising the minimum wage in many places, and there’s likely to be more rollback of union protections. (I believe Iowa is considering scrapping collective bargaining.)
I also think that Trump’s changes to the tax codes, whatever they end up being, are going to be a big deal. So many economists I talk to say the way to lessen income inequality is to raise taxes on the rich. That is definitely not going to happen now.
Is there anything you can share about any big (or little, or anything in between) stories you’ve got coming up? Do you see your writing taking a specific shape under the Trump administration that maybe you wouldn’t have expected last October?
Yea, for better or worse, Trump dominates the news cycle, and he is what people are interested in reading about. I’m interested in what will happen if Trump dismantles regulations to make things easier for business, especially in the environmental arena. I think a lot of journalists are wary of writing stories for four years that are basically “Trump just announced a policy that is dumb. Here is why,” but on the other hand, you can’t ignore when he puts forth things that fly in the face of decades of economic thinking.
I am always open to story ideas about the new world we live in, so if you have any things you’d like to see us cover, shoot!
The poet Thomas Lux died on February 5. It seems fitting to honor him and his decades of Atlantic contributions with a brief history, but also with his own words in his own voice.
Speaking about his craft in an Atlantic interview from 2004, Lux is both magpie of unusual facts (“Without the dung beetle we’d all be up to our clavicles in cow pies. They deserve an ode!”) and defender of poetry’s essential weirdness:
I love mystery, strangeness, nuttiness, wildness, leaps across chasms, irreverence, all the crazy stuff we love about poetry. We don’t usually love poems because they are well made, or smart, or deep. We love them for their crazy hearts.
In the nine poems Lux published in our pages, you’ll find wry humor—1984’s “Snake Lake” begins:
My friends, I hope you will not swim here:
this lake isn’t named for what it lacks.
And you’ll find startling echoes of the present in “Henry Clay’s Mouth” (1999):
He said: “Kissing is like the presidency,
it is not to be sought and not to be declined.”
…
It was written, if women had the vote,
he would have been President,
kissing everyone in sight,
dancing on tables (“a grand Terpsichorean
performance ...”), kissing everyone,
sometimes two at once, kissing everyone,
the almost-President
of our people.
Years ago, as part of a series for poetry month, we gathered a selection of old Atlantic audio recordings of poets reading their works. My part was to convert the files from an obsolete, unplayable format to mp3. Among them was Lux’s reading of “Virgule,” an ode to “/” that begins:
What I love about this little leaning mark
is how it divides
without divisiveness. The left
or bottom side prying that choice up or out,
the right or top side pressing down upon
its choice: either/or,
his/her.
Listen to him read the entire poem:
Far more qualified people can speak to his particular brilliance—I’m just someone who tried to rescue his voice, or a minute and 38 seconds of it, from the online abyss and deliver him to you.
I asked my colleague David Barber, the Atlantic’s poetry editor, for his memories of the magazine’s long history with Lux. He writes:
Tom Lux’s quirky, wily, incorrigibly uncanny poems left their mark far and wide from way back, but The Atlantic could be said to have a special claim on him.
For one thing, he was a local boy made good: Born and raised in Northampton, Mass., where his father ran a dairy farm, he was a fixture for many years in Boston and its environs, home base to the august bewhiskered poets who founded the magazine in 1857. His editor at Boston’s Houghton Mifflin for several of his celebrated collections was Peter Davison, the Atlantic’s late longtime poetry editor and literary lion of parts. His work appeared early and often in these pages over those years, immediately recognizable for its mordant wit, offbeat verve, and matchless knack for musing beguilingly on just about anything. The only predictable trait of a Lux poem was that it would be the one and only thing of its kind.
It’s the weariest of clichés to say that a certain poet sounds like none other. Lux was the real McCoy. It’s there in the deadpan delivery, the sure comic timing, the live-wire ear for oddball lingo and kooky hearsay, the slyboots way of spinning tall tales out of small talk. His bittersweet satirical bent belongs to no school or tribe; his smarts and chops were his and his alone. Is there another American poet since Stevens who conjured up so many humdinger titles? Could anyone else have composed an ode to the secret life-force of a punctuation mark? Was there ever a laconic elegy for long-gone summertimes quite as definitively disarming as “The Man Into Whose Yard You Should Not Hit Your Ball”?
Sarah Zhang recently looked at a pathbreaking effort by James Feeney to expand the use of medical marijuana in the U.S. He’s surgeon in Connecticut conducting a clinical trial to compare the use of marijuana and opioids when it comes to treating acute pain, rather than chronic pain. Here’s Sarah:
That distinction—acute pain from an injury—[is] an important one. A small body of evidence suggests that medical marijuana is effective for chronic pain, which persists even after an injury should have healed and for which opioids are already not a great treatment. But now Feeney wants to try medical marijuana for acute pain, where opioids have long been a go-to drug.
That tendency to prescribe pills has fueled the opioid addiction crisis in the U.S., thus increasing the need for non-addictive alternatives like marijuana—now legal for medical use in 28 states and for recreational use in eight (plus D.C. for both). The rules for when doctors can prescribe pot to their patients vary state to state, but those rules rarely apply to acute, short-term pain. That’s exactly what the following reader experienced, and cannabis was a godsend for her:
I had a bilateral mastectomy, then chemo, then radiation on both sides, since I had cancer in both breasts. It was a huge radiation field and a little over a third of the way through my skin was so badly burned that the two old soft-cotton tee shirts I wore to bed were stuck to my skin and bloody when I woke up in the morning. It was so bad that I had to stand in a warm shower for a long time to loosen the connection between my flesh and shirt to get it off.
A friend brought me some THC-laced cookies and that solved the problem. No pain, as well as no anxiety. I nibbled on them for about three weeks. They were very strong and each cookie got me through several days. I stopped eating them when the pain went away, and I had a few left over that I didn’t use.
This next reader, in contrast, has chronic pain, but he only uses cannabis for the short-term bursts of peak pain:
I am a 53-year-old, college-educated white male working as a software engineer in the Silicon Valley since high school. I have been a recreational user of cannabis for most of my adult life, as I prefer it over alcohol—which I drink only when I can’t get cannabis.
I have a chronic foot condition for which my doctor has prescribed OxyContin, as well as hydrocodone for peak pain. My use of Oxy has been consistent, but I was using the hydrocodone more than my doctor was happy with. Of course, once I was put on the opioids, I could no longer use alcohol.
Two years ago I obtained a recommendation for medical cannabis and have been able to significantly reduce/eliminate my hydrocodone use by relying on cannabis for peak pain. I have no negative side effects and no longer have to worry about running out of pills.
There are several things that surprised me about using cannabis as medicine:
My insurance doesn’t cover cannabis, which can be quite expensive.
I have to travel to a dispensary, since my local county has banned them.
Taking a pill is much easier than finding the time/place to smoke cannabis. I was hoping to be able to use edibles, but that turned out to be less effective and hard to control dosage/effects.
I began to resent having to use it because it took away from my enjoyment of cannabis recreationally. To be effective for pain, I need to use more of it than I would recreationally, and it changed from something I chose to do into something I had to do.
But overall I’m much happier and safer using cannabis to reduce my opioid usage. Ideally I would get off the Oxy, but that will take time, and I’m too busy at work to get sick from withdrawals. I also don’t think cannabis can provide the base level of pain control that the Oxy provides. TBD.
This next reader opted for CBD—cannabidiol, the part of cannabis that doesn’t get you high but still has medical benefits—and it helped him fight his opioid dependency:
I had hip and back surgery in 2014 and ‘15, respectively. I was in severe pain for three years, and after one of my surgeries I was prescribed Oxycontin and Oxycodone for over six months. My prescriptions went from 12 pills a day immediately after surgery to “As needed,” but I couldn’t sleep without the pills. I lost 15-20 lbs during this time and eventually could not sleep more than one hour a night without the opioids.
I had never traditionally used marijuana, but thankfully, one of my friends gave me a week’s worth of CBD. The first night I slept 16 hours, after three nights I got my appetite back, and after seven days I had zero “cravings” for a pill. The experience was night and day for me, somewhat literally. I went from being a zombie to being a contributing member of society.
CBD also worked for this reader:
For over 20 years, whenever I got phantom pains, I took handfuls of gabapentin to go with an analgesic. Essentially, I would end up stoned out my mind on gabapentin, which (I guess) allowed the analgesic to work. Gabapentin is not an opioid, but it definitely had a negative impact on my life.
Recently I was talked into going to a local pot store to try out a cannabinoid, and the results have been astounding. I don’t get stoned—I’m able to think clearly and can work—and the pains are treated. I have concerns about the lack of evidence regarding dose limits and the long-term effects, but I am very happy to be off the gabapentin.
This final reader testifies to the pros and cons of both opioids and cannabis but ultimately opted for the latter—and he’s willing to break the law for it:
I have a lower-back condition, where the nerves that run through the lowest part of my spine do so a bit too close to the bone and tend to rub against it. Over time this causes a degree of inflammation which is rather painful and often reaches a 6 or 7 at its worst. It’s sharp, pulsating, dull, and a variety of other pain descriptors all at once. Long story short, it hurts!
I discovered that marijuana worked for my back pain after coming home from Washington state. One evening laying on the couch, my back was in full flare-up mode. Shifting, bending, stretching ... nothing helped. I decided to try an edible I had brought back from the PNW [Pacific Northwest].
One hour in, ALL of my back pain was gone. Obviously I was also experiencing significant psychoactive effects, but my pain was GONE. I found this fascinating.
However, because of how stoned I was, I realized that this was not a medical option for the daytime. As the stash of edibles ran out, I resorted to going to the spinal intervention pain management clinic, where I get Selective Nerve Root Block injections every few months. This took care of 90 percent of the pain. Only when I’m seated for long periods of time, or when I have an odd occurrence of some sort, does the pain flare up. I’m prescribed 60 Norcos (hydrocodone) to be used once to twice per day (one pill at a time). In addition, I’ve been given Zanaflex (tizanidine) as well as Soma (carisoprodol) as muscle relaxers.
I will be the first to acknowledge that all of these do help—tremendously. However, because my condition is chronic, I have to take them every day. This leads to many issues related to my digestive system—constipation when taking the pills, diarrhea when not—as well as a mild physical dependency.
After the last time experiencing physical withdrawal from opioid use (about two months ago), I decided that enough was enough: Cannabis was going to be my go-to for consistent evening pain mitigation. Since I live in a non-medicinal/non-recreational state, I have no legal access to marijuana. However, I’m willing to risk it for the sake of virtually no gastrointestinal side effects or the possibility of physical dependency.
(Editor’s note: David Frum dropped in on the TAD discussion group of Atlantic readers for an “Ask Me Anything,” and a lightly-edited version of that Q&A is below. Reader questions are in bold, followed by Frum’s replies.)
This reader community was founded as a refuge from the chaos of modern-day comment sections. Here at TAD, we really value honest, good-faith discussion from both sides, and not just cheap potshots. Something I’m always curious about, particularly from writers such as yourself: Do you think online commenting adds to civic discourse or detracts from it?
I’ve made friends through online comments ... and on Twitter and other social media platforms. On the other hand, there’s no denying there’s something inherently prone to trouble about anonymous discussion severed from in-person contact. As information becomes ever more abundant, personal contact becomes ever more rare and therefore precious.
Would you feel comfortable discussing the issues that caused you to leave National Review?
That’s easy: The parting was completely amicable. I had a vision for a forum to discuss the ideas of what we didn’t yet call the Reformicons, that didn’t carry the institutional conservative DNA of National Review. I contributed to that magazine through the election of 2008, wrote a farewell piece endorsing McCain over Obama, then launched my own site in 2009. Or are you thinking of AEI? That was a less amicable story; they fired me in March 2010. Here’s the piece that got me fired.
The question we must ask all TAD visitors: Cake or pie?
Not crazy about either, but if I must: open-faced French tartes. I never pretended to be anything other than a Beltway elitist.
Five years ago in an interview on Morning Joe, you coined the term “conservative entertainment complex” to describe how the conservative media and donors had fleeced the Republican base:
Looking back on that now, 2012 almost seems like the good old days. How do you think the conservative base can evaluate politics and the world accurately when it seems as if this conservative media complex has only become stronger and more isolated from objectivity?
Trump is like some divine wrath on conservative media. He makes clear every day his utter contempt for the principles they claim to have. He endlessly wrong-foots them.
“It’s not a ban!”
“Right, as the president said, it’s not a ban.”
“It is a ban.”
“Exactly, just as the president said.”
And Trump is accelerating the alienation and cultural isolation of his supporters from the national cultural mainstream.
I just read Ezra Klein’s “How to Stop an Autocracy”—a response to your “How to Build an Autocracy” cover story—and Ezra argues that the real problem is that the GOP Congress won’t stop Trump. I saw you RTed the article. What do you think of it?
Ezra makes sharp points, but I’d grant more agency to Trump himself. Ezra emphasizes Congressional Republicans ideological agenda as the main driver of their subordination to him. But political fear works too—and the fear exists because of Trump’s own connection with the party base and his willingness to ruthlessly exercise power to punish enemies, even when it seems self-destructive in the longer term to do so.
Do you think references to fascism help or hurt the cause of those who oppose Trump?
Hurt. As one of my favorite teachers used to say: “History never repeats itself. It only appears to do so to those who don’t pay attention to details.”
Seems lately everyone has a prescription for what the Democrats can do to right the ship. So, uh, out of curiosity, what’s your hot take?
Challenging question, because what’s good for the Democrats (mobilize their base, which is potentially significantly larger than the GOP base) is bad for the anti-Trump coalition. The base-mobilizing issues for Democrats are precisely those where Trump has acted most like a traditional Republican: the DeVos nomination, e.g. The issues that hold together an anti-Trump coalition are those in which he has showed himself most aberrant.
To my mind, everything turns on voting. Protest all you want, but if you don’t vote, then nothing can change. So with that said, I am increasing worried about the concerted effort to disenfranchise various groups. What do you see as an effective strategy to combat this?
What happened in 2016 was demobilization much more than disenfranchisement, in my opinion.
Your recent article “How to Beat Trump” offered advice from the political right to the political left. Is there a reason why you didn’t offer such advice to Americans across the political spectrum, including those within the GOP, on how they should participate in protests or start their own movement to curb the excesses of the Trump administration? What would you recommend Republicans do to organize in opposition? (I’m asking as a center-left independent who wants to support his GOP family in their opposition, and one who might even get radical enough to join the GOP if there was any organized and vocal opposition to Trump and his movement.)
Anti-Trump Republicans need to exercise voice and deploy the threat of exit. Demand that Republican elected officials defend the country against Russian interference. Complain when they protect Trump’s self-enriching and lawless actions. And make clear that your support, vote, and money (if you are in a position to give) should not be taken for granted.
Trump is shrewd but not strategic. He makes enemies. If he wobbles, they will try to pounce—if they feel that their own constituencies permit it. The permitting is the key variable!
I sympathize with elements of the Trump program. I’d like to see GOP commit itself to a universal health guarantee (paid for by a NON progressive form of taxation, so it is as insurance-like as possible); and to reductions in immigration flows. But Trump himself has no way to make himself acceptable to those repelled by his kleptocracy and autocracy. I hope we’ll see the rise of a Mugwump-style independent GOP bloc in the Congress.
What’s your explanation as to why so many of your conservative intellectual colleagues seem to be less visibly upset than you about the Trump presidency (Reihan Salam, David French, etc.)? Is it your stronger familiarity with the recent history of Eastern Europe? Or perhaps your Canadian background?
Probably my hawkishness on foreign policy. I signed up for conservatism as the politics I believed most determined to hold together the Western alliance. Trump’s subversion of that alliance (and the trade connections that sustain it) alarms me.
It appears that President Trump is not interested in the rules-based international order the United States has spent the last seven decades building and defending. If you were advising the EU Commission, what would be your advice in terms of positioning for future political, trade, and economic policies?
This question rends my heart. From the point of view of the larger democratic community, it is essential that the EU, UK, and U.S. be as tightly bound as possible. But in its own interest, the EU must now start thinking about independent guarantees of its own security. That’s one of the most terrible costs of the Trump presidency.
Where do you see the relationship with Canada going? Do you think Trudeau and his government will stand firm if Trump tries to seriously undermine the relationship by, say, forcing a renegotiation of NAFTA and refusing to compromise? Follow-up question: Do you think there is any chance at all of Kevin O’Leary riding a similar wave and beating Trudeau in the next federal?
Canada has very few options. It will have to accommodate the Trumpist agenda. Kevin O’Leary is very poorly suited to a parliamentary system, and his attempt to campaign for the Conservative leadership from Boston will be seen as arrogant and offensive.
Thanks for joining us, Mr. Frum. Do you think it is more likely that history will view this period as a step in the decline of the United States on the world stage, or as an aberration that was followed by another period of U.S. leadership (if not dominance) in the world?
The key thing to stress: This is up to us, to a great extent. The objective indicators for U.S. power do point downward. America’s share of world GDP is declining; its most important allies in Europe and Asia are losing share even faster. Here at home, key institutions are under stress; social cohesion visibly weakening. Yet the residual resources remain enormous. Intelligent leadership can make a difference. It’s up to us to insist on better.
It’s been a year since we ran this reader series, which included a wide range of first encounters with guns—from fond memories of family bonding and summer camp to dark memories of domestic violence, burglary, and rape. A reader discovered the series this morning and shares a traumatic story from her childhood:
While sitting on the floor playing Monopoly with my older brother and younger sister, the game dragged on and on, and my sister and I wanted to call it quits. But my brother was winning, and wanted to win more, so he insisted we keep playing.
We didn’t hear our dad enter the house (because we automatically froze whenever he came home because no matter what we were doing, we pissed him off). He grabbed a rifle from the gun rack, held it to my sister’s head and screamed: “You want her dead? Will that make you happy?” We screamed for him to put the rifle down, but he wouldn’t stop until he shoved it up against all our heads, repeating his same lines, while our mother begged him to put the gun away.
“You damn kids!” he screamed. “Your mom is dying of cancer and you sit here fighting over a damn game!” Then he kicked my brother, slammed the rifle back in the rack, and drove back to the bar.
Another reader’s stepfather actually shot at his kids while drinking. This next reader, Josh, also had a father with a “truly frightening” approach to guns—though Josh wasn’t nearly as abused as the other two readers:
My earliest memory with guns left me feeling rather ambivalent towards them. My dad was a trophy-winning rifle marksman. He decided one day to introduce me to duck hunting, when I was 13. Without any training, he stuck me out in a swamp with a 12-gauge Winchester pump and laughed as I tried to figure out what I was supposed to do.
Near the end of his life, I had to encourage the removal of guns from my parents’ home as my dad slipped into mental illness and poor health (brain cancer). His attitudes around guns were truly frightening, as he still kept a loaded handgun in the house, and a shotty was in easy reach for anyone.
Years later, I became an avid bird and big game hunter—but not because of him or any bonding experience.
Update from another reader with a traumatic childhood:
My father physically and emotionally abused my mother, my brother, and me. At his worst, when I was in my early teens, during an argument with my mother, he walked away, returned with a handgun and held it to her head. He told her to shut up and forced her outside into our backyard where he had her sit outside in silence, I think, until nightfall. I remember my mother trembling in silence. I remember the look on her face. I remember my father standing with the gun to her head. I have no idea if that gun was loaded. I just remember thinking that she was going to die, that we were all going to die.
A few years later, we were on a family vacation, and I watched as my father casually used the air rifle at the carnie game to shoot out the center of the target, even adjusting for the weakness in the toy. I suppose it truly hit me at that moment that he knew exactly what he was doing anytime he touched a gun. My father had previously served in the Taiwanese military.
I can never forget that a gun’s purpose is a first and foremost is to kill. But by the grace of god, a person with a gun in hand chooses not to harm someone with it. Our gun laws should be focused on keeping weapons out out of the hands of people who are shown to be incapable of responsible use—abusers, the mentally ill, children. Our gun laws should be focused on common-sense safety and educational measures. I don’t understand the desire underlying the feeling that a background check or a waiting period somehow violates a constitutional right. What’s the true irreparable harm? A brief delay in their desire to kill something more quickly? Self-defense is such a stupid argument.
As an attorney and as an officer in the U.S. Navy, you’ll forgive me for having little faith in Joe Schmoe with his concealed carry and his ability to protect me. I know the training and education that our own military personnel receive, and the fact that in many states, any idiot with a pulse can purchase, possess, and use a weapon with none of the stringent requirements that we have in the military is insane to me.
A reader, Mimi Lee, introduces a new and rare experience to our ongoing series:
Ten days before my wedding, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. As a doctor, I naturally freaked out and quickly arranged my own lumpectomy within 48 hours of the diagnosis. I celebrated my new marriage surrounded by friends and family, wrapped in surgical dressings.
We returned from the honeymoon and embarked on a single round of artificial reproductive technology (ART) to preserve my fertility and our chances to build a future family. Meanwhile, I learned from a pathologist colleague that my cancer had not been completely removed, so after multiple consultations and opinions, I prepared for a mastectomy.
Amidst this whirlwind of uncertainty over the big C, I carefully emptied vials, mixed drugs, and prepared syringes for ART—only this time, it was not for any of the thousands of patients I had cared for as an anesthesiologist who specialized, ironically enough, in fertility. The prep was for me, inspired by the hopes and dreams of my own biological motherhood once I stomped cancer out of my life.
The ART went extremely well. At age 41, I had 18 eggs harvested. Twelve were fertilized and yielded five beautiful-looking embryos—my future babies. Two weeks after the embryos were frozen, I underwent my mastectomy.
A year later, after acknowledging that pregnancy was contraindicated for my type of breast cancer, my husband and I scanned gestational profiles at a surrogate agency. A year after that, he told me he wanted a divorce. After we separated, I underwent two more years of legal proceedings, which amounted to a full-time job, leading to a courtroom battle for the custody of the frozen embryos. My future babies’ lives hung in the balance.
Devastatingly, I lost that battle, and the embryos were ordered destroyed. With that, my ambitions of biological motherhood were forever silenced.
Like many educated, career-minded women, I had postponed marriage and motherhood until it was too late. My cohort of women was instructed to wait until “the time was right.” For me, that meant waiting until my career was stable and my financial independence was established. Many women I knew had chosen either motherhood or a career. Now many of the empty-nested moms are struggling to create new identities while the career women are struggling with feeling left behind, single and childless.
I lie somewhere in between. I have landed in a new career, but I was almost a mom. What feels terrible is that I missed the chance to keep my babies safe and secure.
ART is at once incredible and terrifying. It is fraught with ethical, legal, and socioeconomic minefields. Designer babies are happening now. Gender selection, physical features, and even genetic predispositions are all options. Furthermore, given the price tag, it’s only an option for those who can pay, generating huge concerns about the morality of our society. Why should parents who aspire to parenthood equally, but lack the out of pocket cash required, be left behind?
Finally, due to the lack of legal policy to reign in the practice, women and men are getting hurt. Custody battles are on the rise. Embryos hang in limbo. In my case, rhetoric borrowed from pro-choice arguments was used against me, and my ex argued that he had a right to not become a parent. This, however, failed to acknowledge the fundamental fact that accidental unwanted pregnancies differ vastly from the deliberate, invasive, expensive and time-consuming journey of ART.
Mimi is writing a memoir about her experience, and you can read more on her website, BabyEmbryos.com. The legal details of her story are here.
Another very public battle over embryos took place in 2010, when Jennifer McLaughlin, after giving birth to twins derived from embryos donated by a couple, sought custody of the two remaining embryos because they were genetic siblings to the twins—but the couple wanted to donate the embryos to another woman. McLaughlin appeared with her lawyer on The Early Show:
Perhaps the most high-profile custody battle over embryos involves the actress Sofia Vergara, whose ex-fiance, Nick Loeb, tried to gain custody of the couple’s two frozen embryos after she wanted to keep them “frozen indefinitely.” In 2015, he took to the op-ed pages of The New York Times and appeared on The Today Show to make his case:
From Loeb’s op-ed:
A woman is entitled to bring a pregnancy to term even if the man objects. Shouldn’t a man who is willing to take on all parental responsibilities be similarly entitled to bring his embryos to term even if the woman objects? These are issues that, unlike abortion, have nothing to do with the rights over one’s own body, and everything to do with a parent’s right to protect the life of his or her unborn child.
In January, Melissa Cook, a 47-year-old California surrogate currently pregnant with triplets, sued the commissioning father, a single 50-year-old Georgia postal worker, who wanted her to abort one of the fetuses. (The egg used to create the three embryos implanted in Cook was sourced from an anonymous, 20-something donor.) Cook, who is pro-life, filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court, claiming California’s surrogacy law violates due process, as well as equal-protection rights guaranteed in the Constitution.
Cook says she wants to take all three fetuses to term, adopt the unwanted third, and collect her full surrogacy fee. She also wants the court to rule that her surrogacy contract is unenforceable, which would protect her from the consequences of breaching her contract and possibly allow her to keep the multi-thousand-dollar fee stipulated in her gestational carrier agreement.
“She’s trying to get the state of California, essentially, to not recognize the contract she signed,” explains Elura Nanos, a fertility attorney based in New York.
Ultimately all the triplets were born and went into the custody of the father, and the surrogate lost her legal effort to gain custody herself.
If you happen to have your own personal story of a legal battle over embryos, please send us a note.
A reader, Janis, shares her family’s courageous “coming to America” story:
It’s the little details of being “other” that creep up unexpectedly. Late last night I read Julia Ioffe’s own refugee story in The Atlantic and was brought to tears by her mention of the mineral collection in a blue cardboard box. I also had one, as a child in the 1960s, and I know it meant something to my grandparents, but I don’t know what. (It was likely some nationalistic and chauvinistic collection of natural resources; Russia has the best quartz, bauxite, etc.)
My grandparents escaped from the Soviet Union in 1921, masqueraded as a klezmer band on the way to a gig in Bessyrabia. My father was an infant hidden in their coats. Once they got to the other side of the river, they kept going. They were able to get a visa from their interim residence in Bucharest. They arrived at Ellis Island in 1923, on the sister ship to The Titanic.
My grandmother’s brother also left the USSR, but the rest of the family stayed. They survived the war by going east into the Caucasus and hiding. After WWII and during the Cold War, communication was limited and cryptic between my grandparents and their siblings. In 1960, my grandparents went back to the USSR to visit family and returned with a blue box of minerals for me. The whereabouts of that box is unknown, after many moves.
Thank you to Julia for sharing her story. It is monstrous the way that respect for others has morphed into intolerance and abuse [under the new Trump administration]. It’s not my America.
Janis also provided the following image of an American stamp that “reminds me so much of my father’s immigration photo” (seen above, posted with permission):
From the U.S. Postal Service’s Stamp Subject Selection criteria: “The Postal Service will honor extraordinary and enduring contributions to American society, history, culture, or environment. The stamp program commemorates positive contributions to American life, history, culture, and environment; therefore, negative occurrences and disasters will not be commemorated on U.S. postage stamps.”
After I posted the old family photo on my Facebook page, I was charmed that my nephews shared the post with a proud and full-throated defense of immigrants. We need more of that. They and their friends saw my nephews’ faces in my grandfather’s, and my son’s face in my grandmother’s, which was a lovely connection for them.
The infant in the photo is my aunt, who died two weeks ago. The little boy (age 3) is my father, Boris Tuchinsky, who changed his name to Traven to avoid the quotas imposed on Jews applying for admission to medical school. Boris Tuchinsky graduated 1st in his class at NYU and was rejected for medical school. Boris Traven was admitted.
Speaking of medical schools, reader Renie is worried that they’ll suffer under the Trump administration:
I just got off the phone with one of my children—an administrator for a fellowship program at the medical school of a major state university. The story she told me was of tremendous fear and upheaval.
American citizens, legal residents with green cards, people on student visas—some from the seven banned countries; some from other countries—all are terrified of what is going on. (There’s even fear from American citizens with parents in the banned countries.) Will they be able to stay? Will they be allowed in when the new group of fellows start in the summer? Will they be allowed to finish their programs. Can they visit family—often elderly family?
Her phone is ringing off the hook trying to find answers to very reasonable fears. The idea that the rules on visas can change from one day to the next with no warning and no consultation with people who understand the chaos being created is simply terrifying to people here on visas or green cards and those awaiting them. These are accomplished people who are here to learn about the best we have to offer in medicine. In some cases these are researchers in an area where there is tremendous need for research and a reluctance on the part of American doctors to work in it because it isn’t a lucrative field. Some go home to share that knowledge in their home countries and are often the best ambassadors we have. Some will stay here and will often work in underserved urban and rural communities or in the less lucrative specialties where American doctors often don’t want to work.
We will pay a high price for this ignorant demagogue and the white nationalist on his security team.
Another reader, Eric, grasps for a long-term solution to the immigration challenges faced by 21st century America:
Before the not-really-a-Muslim-ban Executive Order, I’d let my imagination get away from itself believing that we might finally see some sort of truce in the immigration wars. The GOP was finally going to pass their restrictionist immigration agenda, which would cause a firestorm that would likely energize the Democratic base even further. When Democrats were finally back in power, they’d find themselves either unable to move towards a less restrictionist policy—say, because they still were facing a President Trump—or would be unwilling to spend their political capital refighting the last war.
Finding themselves in a situation where they would need to do something to prevent a revolt by the base that elected them, Democrats would have to get creative. One solution would be to develop some sort of economic development program, where wealthy nations would “loan” money to developing nations—with strong oversight—for infrastructure, schools, and housing. Perhaps there could be certain benchmarks built into these “loans” that would allow for forgiveness of significant portions for hitting certain democratic benchmarks and environmental or labor standards. The benchmarks could be stretched out over the entire period of the loan—say, 30 years—so that the aspects of civil culture necessary to build and sustain a democratic society would have time to take hold and become the norm. If a country hit all the benchmarks, they could end up paying very little, if any, of the loans back.
A system like this—while more than a little utopian—could go a long way towards mollifying the concerns of those who would like the United States to expand immigration. For example, better infrastructure in developing nations could lead to higher GDP growth in those countries, which would benefit all of those living there, not just those with the intelligence, resources, or luck to be able to make their way to the United States. Stronger domestic growth in those countries would mean that fewer people would feel the need to immigrate in order to have better economic opportunities. And more democratic—and accountable—governance is a good unto itself, as is cleaner air, cleaner water, or stronger environmental standards. It would also go a long way towards repairing America’s image in a lot of the developing world, particularly in light of the GOP-passed restrictionist immigration policy.
There would be some on the left who would find it a bit too “neo-imperialist,” but I’d expect that to be the fringe. Less immigration would likely hurt U.S. growth, and this would likely fall short of the “trillion dollar bill on the sidewalk,” but it would be better than the angry and xenophobic status quo that helps no one. Alas, it does not seem like the direction we’ll be headed, but a guy can dream, right?
Daniel, a reader who describes himself as “a current football fan and an ex football player,” offers a nuanced defense of the sport:
I played in high school, where I sustained a separated shoulder and concussion that kept me out of athletic activity for five months. I walked onto my college football team, where I sustained a second concussion. While I have successfully healed from these injuries, I continue to deal with their aftereffects in various ways.
Even so, it breaks my heart to see the way many concerned citizens are responding to the game today. Much has been made of the way the NCAA and the NFL exploit their athletes—a claim I find valid, to a degree. In the case of the NCAA, I find it abhorrent that athletes receive nothing in return for their service to the universities they enrich.
The NFL is a slightly different animal, in that more effort is made to support ex-players economically, and players make salaries that allow them to live comfortably. (A caveat here: I recognize that lots of ex-NFL players have not been treated well after their playing days. This is something the league is moving to remedy. Today, it is possible for a player to be cut or retire and transition smoothly into sustainable employment.)
But is it exploitation if the players love to play the game? We are so quick to decry the game as brutal and violent that we never ask why the players allow themselves to experience such things. Could they have agency of their own, who freely chose to come back to take the punishment year after year because the game is a joyful experience?
This is what my experience suggests. If I could do it all over again, knowing how it would end, I would not change a thing. I am sure there are many collegiate and NFL players who would say the same thing because they love the game they play.
I want it to be clear: It is beyond dispute that the NFL and the NCAA have failed to educate their players on the dangers of repeated concussions and injuries, and both organizations need to take the dangers of injury more seriously. But in my mind, it is just as important to understand why so many young men feel they must return to the game year after year even when they do not enjoy the game and know that their bodies are breaking down.
Maybe, instead of taking down the game of football, we need to have a conversation about race and poverty—forces the opportunities of would-be football players for advancement outside of sports. I knew I had other options, and though I loved the game of football, I found other areas of work that brought me joy. But I could afford an excellent education, and had many opportunities for advancement. Maybe, in addition to the NFL and the NCAA, we are failing our athletes as a society. And maybe, if we as a society were to change, we could help our athletes avoid the suffering of permanent injury.
This next reader is less sympathetic when it comes to low-income football players because they often get athletic scholarships and a free college education:
My brother played professionally for a couple years. He was outstanding enough to earn a paycheck, but not fabulously talented enough to make a career. I’m 13 years younger than he is, so my childhood was spent driving to college football games. I tracked the NFL standings on my bulletin board. To be like the men in my family (my brother and dad), I dutifully watched the games every weekend from age 6 to 14.
For all the talk of college athletes being exploited as non-employees, there’s another side to it: My brother had a full ride in college. Yet after four years, he was a few credits short and never finished. Although I was an A student, I had to toil my way through school, working part-time to self-fund my education. So I refuse to join the “scholar-athletes’” pity party.
In short, I’m unlike most fallen-away fans because as I matured, I realized that jock culture has nothing to do with authentic manhood, so I generally developed an anti-jock / pro-scholar outlook.
Regardless, this news about CTE is infuriating. How can any responsible person allow the game to continue until science somehow finds an acceptable preventive strategy?
Funny thing is, my brother now regrets ever playing and grows ever more opposed to the game. He agrees that I should prohibit my son from playing, and he’s acutely aware of his risk for CTE and related brain injuries.
“How many concussions did you suffer?” I asked. Reply: “At least six that I know of.” What’s more terrifying: the known quantity of six, or the fact that he almost certainly suffered more and played through them?
More readers defending football and the NFL are here. One of them, Noah, wrote in part:
Football players know there is great risk, but they also know they have the opportunity to live like kings, if only for a few years, and if only in their own domain. That risk is central to both the pride of playing the game and the fascination we have in watching it.
Malcolm Gladwell is largely correct to point out that such a harsh payoff structure can only appeal to people from poorer upbringings. He and other football-haters seem to forget that players of all backgrounds make a conscious and (by this point in time, at least) well-informed choice to continue playing the game. To suggest players can’t think for themselves is to patronize them, which I find rather disgusting in light of Gladwell’s hypothesis.
Ad Block Plus
Ghostery
uBlock