Hot Take

I miss the days when I didn’t know what everybody thought about everything.

Relatedly, I’m grateful for the fact that social media didn’t exist when I was younger and would have taken the bait, posting stupid and ill-informed and probably cruel opinions for the world to see. But that’s another subject for another day.

Today, if they want us to, we can know everything that somebody thinks about, well, anything. Yes, that applies to this very Substack and my kiddie-pool-depth thoughts on U2 or 90’s rock or creative corporate careers or songwriting. And I suppose I should take that into consideration, in light of my previous paragraph’s sigh of relief that I didn’t post everything I thought. Will I regret all of this ten years from now? Again, another subject for another day.

No. What I’m talking about? Big politics. The kind of stuff Cotillion would teach you to never talk about around the dinner table. Religion. Abortion. The rights of (enter underrepresented group here). American exceptionalism. Nationalism. Jingoism. War. Borders. Covid/Fauci/masks. The supposed infallibility of the sacred Founding Fathers¹.

A guy I know and like, right around the mid-to-late 00s, started a blog. I curiosity-clicked. I would never have anticipated the degree and volume of vitriolic spewing that awaited me on his blog. The way he wrote about the politics he was for (and, more tellingly, against) was at odds with the guy I had family-style shared Indian food with. That guy was unrecognizable, now derisively looking down on anyone whose views differed from his. Which, surprise, mine did. I will never see him the same again. He’ll never know, of course, because 1) I am conflict-averse and 2) in-person he is funny and quick and observant. And 3) none of these topics (see Cotillion comment above) come up. And they never will, if it’s up to me.

In the same vein, one of the kindest people in my neighborhood, during the 2020 election, put a rather large TRUMP sign on his lawn. This is a guy who would lay down to let you walk across his back rather than let you muddy your shoes². This is a guy who literally shoveled my ailing father-in-law’s walks, mows their lawn, sends his kids over with treats and notes and basically does a better job of taking care of my newly widowed mother-in-law than I do. His wife and her sister came over and cleaned our house when Holly’s dad died. OUR HOUSE! Just great, great people. Anyway, his TRUMP sign kept disappearing at night. He’d put it up. The next morning it would be gone³. He’d put another one up. Within a day or so, it too would disappear. Finally, he attached one to his chimney, where it stayed until the election results were announced.

It never made sense to me. And it never will.

If I only knew him from my actual interactions, I would think one thing. The sign, though, made me wonder if there were…other things.

He’s my friend. Social media and outrage culture would position us as enemies based on the “jerseys” we wear.

It’s modern day polarization. Division. Wedges.

And I’m guilty as anyone, digging my heels deep on the things I believe, head banging to the sound of my little echo chamber. I’m as guilty as anyone of passionately hopping on the outrage train when…Ukraine was invaded or Black Lives Matter or anti-LGBTQ ignorance, etc. I can rage post with the best⁴ of them.

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My friend Scooter recommended an e-newsletter that I’ve really appreciated called Tangle, in which its author Isaac Saul does his best to provide objective news, taking in the polarity of arguments and narratives, parsing them, then offering up his best, informed shot at what’s really happening. It’s not perfect; he doesn’t claim to be. But, in a world of prepaid partisan news, it’s a relief to hear someone trying to offer up objective news. I highly recommend it. Anyway, in the days just after October 7 and the disaster exploding every day in Gaza, Saul wrote:

“…you don't have to say anything! Listening is good enough. Silence is not violence. You are not "complicit in the genocide of Palestinians" if you don't criticize Israel, nor do you need to "condemn Hamas" on behalf of your Jewish friends. You can listen and learn for as long as you'd like, perhaps indefinitely. I promise. Anyone who suggests otherwise is a charlatan or a bully — they are not interested in hearing your voice, but they are interested in hearing you conform to how they view what is happening right now. You don't have to adopt anyone's view but your own, and you do not have to speak up until you feel informed enough to do so. Or confident enough in your own conclusions. In fact, it'd be a mistake to speak up before then.”

It’s a solid distillation of what I’d been trying to articulate when I started this Substack draft way back in October.

You can not have a hot take⁵.

You can sit this one out.

I’m not saying apathy. Or disengagement from the world around us. But you can sit with something.

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I wrote that last sentence in November, I think. Then left it in my drafts. I needed to take my own advice—sit it out, sit with it. It’s been seven months.

After sitting with it and seeing the flattening carnage of Gaza and taking in the sights and sounds of war, as well as the rhetoric and justifications and political machinations, I began to feel like maybe I knew what I thought, though the words wouldn’t come. I still felt (and feel) torn between Jewish friends I admire and respect who are very passionately on the “Return The Hostages Or No Ceasefire” side, and people I admire and respect whose humanity couldn’t countenance what looked (and looks) an awful lot like one group trying to extinguish another group entirely without worrying at all about—and maybe even enjoying—blast radius and collateral damage and the utter obliteration of a people, children very much included⁶.

I read one of my favorite essayists, Zadie Smith, write about it in the New Yorker. I can’t recommend what she wrote highly enough. The best writers are able to find words for what the rest of us have felt but not known how to articulate. Maybe Smith’s take isn’t precisely mine. But it’s the closest thing I’ve found.

I don’t want to spoil Smith’s ending, which landed on me like a bucket of ice water and the summer sun all at once. I want you to experience that for yourself. But I will leave you with a lyric from a protest song that’s 60 years old and still as pertinent to our times as it ever was:

"How many deaths will it take before he knows
That too many people have died?”

1. Crap. I think I just showed my cards.

2. The polar opposite of Trump, who would ask—no, who would order—you to lay down so his shoes could stay shiny.

3. It wasn’t me. Promise.

4. worst

5. I have plenty of hot takes. Most of them (most!) tend to be something I feel like I’ve done my homework about. A small sampling:

-The Grateful Dead would’ve been more commercially successful with a more traditional bassist than the experimental Phil Lesh. I think Phil’s idiosyncratic, “creative” playing helped their longevity, but I think they might’ve had a higher commercial peak with a bassist who was more interested in the groove.

-The Sex Pistols may be historically significant but are musically meh. PiL has better songs.

-Steely Dan was AI music pre-AI. The prompt was “slick music theory soft rock.”

-LCD Soundsystem is just… fine. “All My Friends” is elite, for sure. The farewell movie was good. The un-farewell reunion was dumb. They don’t usually move me. And the main guy has serious Protagonist Syndrome (to be fair, so do most people fronting a band).

-Most rock bands shouldn’t have saxophones. Springsteen can pull it off but everyone else—post 1968—is kidding themselves. I am not talking about soul/r&b. Or ska.

-Stone Temple Pilots are one of the more underrated bands in rock history. They got off on the wrong foot and rubbed people the wrong way because the “Plush” video seemed to be shamelessly aping Pearl Jam (specifically singer Eddie Vedder)’s thing. I think they’re generally seen as second-tier alt-rock coattail riders. But, musically, they’re as good as (and more interesting than) most of the bands of their era.

-Truffle oil is the culinary emperor’s new clothes for fancy people.

-Don’t get me started on AI-generated music.

-Songs with strategically-placed lyrical references to substances (weed, whiskey) or curse words are cheating. Shortcuts. In a live setting, they work every time, no question. But it’s pandering and too easy. I suppose you could write a really good line and be both crowd-pleasing and lyrically solid. But usually it’s not that. It’s a parlor trick.

6. There are my cards again.