Our Kid's Brave New World

Saturday afternoon we took our niece and nephew, Ava and Hunter to the airport to send them back home after a 4-day stint at Chez Lancito.  Ava is 13 and Hunter is 9.  These are a couple of kids who I am guessing are typical of their age group, although I am positive they are in the highest percentile with regard to intelligence and awareness of the world around them.  Their parents are very bright and accomplished and these kids benefit from all the right things when it comes to parenting.

I was amazed by them for several reasons, but one reason prominently.  I was fascinated by the amount of time they spent involved with their ‘screens’.  I don’t hang out with kids this age very often, but I am astounded to say that Hunter spent about 75% of his awake hours either looking at his phone screen or the television, sometimes both simultaneously.  Ava is an avid reader, so most of her unengaged time with us was spent reading, but she also spent her 50% of her remaining time engaged with her phone.   Hunter was always playing one of perhaps 50-100 computer games stored on his phone; texting to his parents; talking with his parents, or watching animated television.

It occurred to me that we have a population of young people that most likely experience 50% of their lives or more with their attention riveted to fantasy spaces and environments.  That means they spend 50% or more time NOT tuned in to the real world—reality—nature—human interaction.  What kind of people will they be as adults?  Perhaps much of what we may suffer as a society with regard to division, violence, ‘otherness’, may be due to the increasing attention these young people pay to situations of violence, competition, destruction, etc. that are the embodiment of these fantasy game environments portrayed in their gaming lives. 

And I am not sure there is any solution for it other than to simply stop our children from spending time engaged there.  We may just be evolving into a species that is going to be very different from what our parents were as children, and for me that is a society placed squarely in the 40s and 50s.  What will that mean for the concepts of empathy, community, cooperation, competition, etc.?

It also occurs to me that we may be the last generation to be able to recall that much simpler life experience, where friends would spend time talking, playing physical games, and generally messing around in our physical reality.  Not the ‘Hunters’ of our current world….they are in fantasy places for huge amounts of their day.

Anyway, we got to the airport early because they were traveling as unaccompanied minors, and there are lots of rules and procedures we had to follow to make sure they arrived safely.  So we sat down in the gate area of their flight and Hunter whipped out his phone and called up Scrabble, which we decided we would play as teams: boys against the girls.  Ava and Cecily vs. me and Hunter.    

In the ‘in between’ times while the girls were contemplating their word choices, Hunter tried to engage me in one of many games on his phone where I needed to kill the most characters in a time limit, or had to make the head explode on his character before his character could make my character’s head explode.  I was inept!  I couldn’t even begin to match his dexterity, reflexes and reactions using the electronic controls.  I consider myself pretty ‘tech’ savvy for my 71 years, but I was no match for Hunter.  I probably wouldn’t even be able to match his skill even with weeks of practice.  Hunter was frustrated by my lack of proficiency, and pretty much gave up on me after a few minutes.  Mercifully, the girls completed their turn and I was able to escape further embarrassment. 

We went first in the Scrabble game, and after about 4 or 5 rounds the score was 112 for me and Hunter and 111 for Ava and Cecily.  At that moment the gate agent called us up over the PA system for pre-boarding and check-in.  With the game only in its earliest stages, we had to abandon the play. 

So I declared the boys the winners since after 5 rounds we were 1 point ahead.  The girls objected vociferously because they claimed we had used 2 of the game’s “best choice” options when we were stumped in trying to find a word to use.  The electronic Scrabble game offers 4 uses of that ‘helper option’ to each player if they are stumped.

I countered with, “Hey those options are part of the game and we shouldn’t be penalized for using them.  You cannot claim ‘foul’ just because we used them and you didn’t.  The numbers don’t lie!  We won with the most points!”

They argued that we had played unfairly, and they should win because their effort was real effort as opposed to our use of a crutch.  I drew the analogy of the 2016 elections to their attention, which they did not appreciate at all!  I said, “Hey listen, you may think you played with the most integrity (won the popular vote), but we got the most points (won the electoral college vote), so too bad.  They threatened to appeal to the rule makers of the game(provide Congressional oversight), and I taunted them by telling them they could always impeach us!  I couldn’t believe I was trying to justify my ‘Trumpian’ position!!

We all howled!

I was impressed with their awareness of the current political milieu to the extent that they understood the analogy.

My takeaway from all this is that our young people are going to be much different from the way we are (the ‘we’ being the Baby Boomer generation).  My only hope is that somehow they will absorb enough of the ideals and aspirations of us older peeps to keep our world from becoming something out of Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’.  Hopefully our progeny will be imbued with enough of Lang’s hopeful epigram from his film:  “The mediator between the brain and the hands must be the heart!” 

Mueller Ain't What We Needed.....

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OK.  We have now heard the facts…..again.  Has it helped?  Not really.  Why?

Because the Democrats are a party without balls.  There is no way to stop Donald Trump unless the Democrats are willing to attack.  Until now they have only wrung their hands and waited hopelessly for the public to reach some sort of ‘awareness’ of what is actually going on.  That is never going to happen.

The hope of the Democrats that Mueller would be the movie star that would bring their movie version of his report to life was a myth.  We saw a Robert Mueller that was seriously diminished in his vitality, his acuity, his ability to push back and his grasp of his own report.  We now wonder if he was the right man for this job.  He is a man of the past and apparently had no awareness of the media environment that has passed him by.   Only someone with no perception of the effect of Fox News and MSNBC could be so unconcerned about how his presentation would play. His sense of duty and place in history is hampered by his timidity and quiet acquiescence to strictures placed on him by ruthless people only intent on his diminution. And more than that, he simply does not have, or will not express an opinion about anything.  Sad, because that is what we needed most.  Thanks Bob!

The Democrats simply are gutless in their avoidance of upholding their constitutional duty to provide oversight and employ the power of the instrument of impeachment, which is apparently the only way provided under our Constitution to deal with a President who is so criminally flawed. 

The Democrats have endlessly presented and repeated the facts of the Russian interference and the President’s efforts at obstruction of justice.  The facts are there.  Yesterday’s hearings, if nothing else, committed to the record and placed the facts again in the public record.  But to what end?  Pelosi is waiting for some miraculous epiphany on the part of the public before starting an impeachment inquiry. The Democrats appear scared to proceed with a formal impeachment inquiry.  What in God’s name are they afraid of at this point.

In the meantime, the Republicans completely ignore the facts.  Their fixation was on discrediting Mueller’s eligibility to conduct the investigation and to accuse him of dereliction of duty.  They are simply unconcerned about the fact that Russia massively affected our 2016 election; that they continue their interference; that the prospect for even more pervasive interference in the 2020 elections looms. Neither they, nor the President, have led any effort to protect us from further Russian attacks.  And what about the fact that Mitch McConnell blocked two efforts to bring protective election security legislation to a vote?  What can possibly be the Republican’s motive to do that?  Why would they not want increased protection against a proven fact of interference?  Are they secretly in league with our enemies, or are they just stupidly spiteful?

And as far as the President’s numerous actions of obstruction, Republicans are blind to it.  They all emphatically believe that this entire effort is simply a Democratic effort to bring down the President….a President who is so vile in so many ways, that in any other situation he would be vilified and shunned.  Republicans simply cannot see the egregious things this man is doing….or they are just protecting their own interests and are afraid of him.  A person who lies without compunction; who demeans and attacks all who oppose him; who is so grossly racist in his policies; should never have ascended to the Presidency.  Any yet, there he is….

We all should be in a state of despair.  Our country is in grave danger.  If the party of Trump, and Trump, are in control after November 2020, the United States of America will morph into a country never imagined, and certainly feared, by our founders.  The only remaining line of defense I can see at this point are the career people who are behind the lines.  They are doing all they can.  They know that Mueller’s warnings are real, and with the country’s leaders impotent or simply corrupt, we are set up for a coup by a foreign entity.  We have already experienced a soft coup with the ascendancy of Trump in 2016.  The election of 2020 will complete the takeover.  The damage, already pervasive, will be irreparable after 8 years and then it will be too late to save the United States of America.

The saddest moment for me the other day was a clip played incessantly of Trump talking to a group of young people in High School and in their first year of college.  The gathering was for the Teen Student Action Summit 2019, a conservative convention in Washington.  In a sneering, disrespectful voice he hammered yet again on the 4 Congresswomen he has been attacking for the past week and lied over and over again about how the Mueller investigation was a witch hunt and a coup attempt aimed specifically at him.  The tragedy of this is that these young people are the future of our country.  They are being programmed with this tripe over and over and will be affected by it for years to come.  This is our new normal, and it is a sad time for our country.’

The tragic reality is that our government is a fetid swamp populated by self-important liars, greedy cheats, racists and frightened pseudo-patriots who talk a good game but are incapable of anything resembling action.  They are more interested in taking their 6-week vacation/hiatus than saving our country.

To hell with them all.

Travel in these United States today--UGH!

It started on Friday July 12^th, when as we were feverishly packing to make a flight at 8:30am from Fort Myers to DC, I opened my email to see any last minute emails and there it was---“Your flight this morning has been cancelled”.  What??  There was no rain! No hail! No meteor showers!  Sorry, our crews can’t seem to make it to Fort Myers to fly your plane—so ‘f--k you customer’ says American Airlines.  You can have your choice of another flight on another day and guess what?—we won’t even charge you a change fee!  How generous!

This happens more and more frequently as the airlines become increasingly greedy and find ways to cut costs all at the expense of the traveling public.  So the best we could do was to choose a flight from Tampa, rent a car, spend a night there with our daughter (a happy coincidence) and then fly the next day.

So finally we get to DC and have to fight our way through horrible traffic to get to our destination at the beach in Delaware for a few days of respite….until our trip continues as we again fight horrible traffic to get to Brooklyn for a few days in NYC to see friends, see a couple of wonderful Broadway plays, and then set out to see family in Quogue on Long Island while we had to fight horrible traffic to get there.  Yikes. 

The easiest  travel mode during the full 10 days was The New York Subway system!  Since we have left NY almost 17 years ago, they have made incredible gains in the system’s efficiency and comfort.  All the cars are air-conditioned and run on time.  The electronic messaging in the cars is informative and helpful….what a concept!  I was impressed, since my recollection of the subway was a nightmarish sweaty experience with people packed into cars like sardines trying to just exist until the next stop when one could get a breath of air when the doors opened or mercifully exit the underground torture chambers into the light of day.

But I digress---

So, then we start back on our journey to Fort Myers yesterday.  At 6am when my eyes snapped open as I realized that the predicted extreme weather front arriving that night coincided with our flight back from Newark airport that night at 8:30.   I would attempt to beat the crowd that would inevitably try to find alternate flights to exit the New York area in advance of the weather.  I looked at my email and there was a friendly note from United Airlines (our carrier home) offering to absolve us of change fees since the predicted weather might affect our trip, and therefore we could seek alternative flights.  How nice I thought!

Until I actually tried to do it……Oh!--the ‘conditions’ before we could actually realize any help!  Because we had a ‘basic economy’ fare, we basically were considered ‘steerage class’.  Since United has very limited service to Fort Myers, and unless we were willing to first go to Chicago or Houston, there were virtually no non-stop flights available in our fare class on any day.  Choosing an alternate city within driving distance of Fort Myers was not permitted until and unless the current flight was either delayed or cancelled…neither of which were going to happen until maybe an hour before flight time.  So basically unless we were interested in paying for an ‘upgrade’ (which at this late date would have cost us about $1000 for two one way tickets) we were stuck with our current flight.  Thanks SO much, United.  Not only were the ‘agents’ who we finally were able to get on the phone (after a minimum of 30 minutes of hold time) robotic and unmovable, they were devoid of any empathy at all.  We told them we were ‘seniors’ (which I detest having to admit) and had to meet minor children at the airport coming to visit us—to no avail.   We were treated to automaton type answers that were clearly scripted and it was like talking to humans who were masquerading as machines.  In fact the answering machines had more personality!

No amount of cajoling or pleading succeeded.  In fact one of the agents actually hung up on us.  Nice.

We were forced to drive to Newark airport from eastern Long Island as we watched the gathering clouds lining up to our west, knowing in advance that United would cancel the flight.  So, we could have avoided what inevitably followed if someone at United would have helped us change our flights on the phone much earlier, but no, United preferred to nihilate its customers.

We arrived at Newark airport just as the first large drops began to fall.  Then the indignities began to multiply.  When we finally got to the terminal to check in and deliver our one bag for transport, we were directed to United’s ‘economy check-in’ area two levels down where the poor people check-in.  Half the check-in machines were not working correctly; it was crowded, dark and reminded me of the old sailing ships where the steerage passengers had limited or no amenities compared to the elite passengers.  Finally getting through this step in the process, we then faced the daunting experience of security check.  TSA precheck didn’t really help us…I had to take off my belt and shoes and go through a ‘pat down’.  I actually don’t care about this security stuff, but it was still demeaning.

Finally through security, we looked for a couple of seats where we could spend the next 3 hours until our flight, as we watched out the windows as the storm unleashed its full fury.  It was only a matter of time (actually about 30 minutes) until the feared email appeared telling us that the flight was cancelled.  Now we were faced with standing in a United Customer Assistance line with over 150 people moving at two speeds:  sloth-like and stop!  We might be eligible for a hotel voucher if we wanted to stand in line for an estimated 5 hours. 

Miraculously I was able to sign on to United’s website and secure a flight today at noon, but only to Tampa where I will have to rent a car to drive 2 and a half hours to our home.  We weren’t finished with the difficulties however.  As Cecily frantically tried to call any and all hotels near the airport for us to spend the night, she was met with “sorry no possible vacancies tonight”.  She finally found an agent at one hotel that tried to assist her find a room at other hotels.  As she sat on the phone with the agent and he called  various hotels, each one he reached would raise the price of the room while they were on the phone!  Imagine literally hundreds if not thousands of travelers trying to find a room near the airport as more than half the flights were cancelled!  The hotels were raising their prices to astronomical levels while we watched! 

We are staying at a really bare bones (borderline icky) Howard Johnsons for $300 a night!  The website standard rate for this room is $87 a night at this hotel during all other times.  Nice!  Greedy is the name of the game, apparently—soak the already wet-backed customers simply because they can, right!

So, I am writing this, and then will pack our overnight bags and head to the airport to hopefully catch our ride home….to Tampa…..and ---Oh good lord!  I just looked at our boarding passes and it says “no carry on bags”!  United apparently will attempt to provide the final indignity!  We might have to pay additional fees to carry on our overnight bags.  Nice

My final admonition to you all is this:  NEVER, EVER, EVER fly on United/Continental Airlines.  You will be demeaned, mistreated and cheated out of your hard earned money, and they are unwilling to be helpful and will offer you horrible customer amenities if for some reason your trip is interrupted.  

Here is the final horrific story from this episode:  On the ride on the Howard Johnson shuttle from the airport to our ‘accomodations’ we were jammed into a minibus.  All of us were travel refugees from the airport, most of us were United passengers.  The fellow behind us had endured the customer service lines for hours the previous day.  This was his second day having to stay in Newark waiting for a flight on United.  The customer service rep provided him with an ‘amenities kit’ with toiletries, etc.  Imagine his horror when he realized that the kit was a ‘used’ kit…..he opened the deodorant stick and it was used and even had a hair in it!  Gag!

Thanks United!  May you enjoy a well-deserved and long lasting bankruptcy—the sooner the better!