Author: Bruce VanWyngarden

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At Large Opinion

ICE, ICE, Baby

(Photo: TaconGanas | Facebook)

There are about 1,200,000 children enrolled in Tennessee public schools in grades K-12. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that of that number, 10,000 are undocumented immigrant children, less than 1 percent. 

In order to deal with this horrific problem, Tennessee House Majority Leader Representative William Lamberth and state Senator Bo Watson have introduced a bill that would allow local public school boards to ban students without legal citizenship. The bill would challenge the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court Plyler v. Doe decision, which entitles all children to public education regardless of immigration status. 

Watson and Lamberth say the bill “seeks to challenge” the court decision. “The flood of illegal immigrants in our country has put an enormous drain on American tax dollars and resources. Our schools are the first to feel the impact,” Lamberth said. 

Watson added, “An influx of illegal immigration can strain LEAs [local educational agencies] and put significant pressure on their budgets. This bill empowers local governments to manage their resources more effectively and builds upon the legislative action taken during the special session to address illegal immigration at the local level.”

So, in order to save all those precious tax dollars being spent on less than 1 percent of Tennessee’s schoolchildren, these bozos intend to spend millions of dollars challenging a Supreme Court ruling that has been law for more than 40 years. This isn’t about saving money. It’s just more performative GOP cruelty wrapped up in a legislative package.

Look, every politician knows how to stop illegal immigration: arrest the employers who hire undocumented labor. Problem solved. But their money is green and their skin is white and their profits depend on cheap labor, so we’ll just continue to get this crap legislation targeting the weakest link in the chain. 

Speaking of which: Another recent GOP bill would require the parents of children without citizenship to pay tuition for public school. It’s called the Tennessee Reduction of Unlawful Migrant Placement Act. And yes, those initials spell “TRUMP” because there’s nothing more amusing than effing up the lives of innocent children. 

These same Trumpaholics also passed a bill that would fine and/or jail any local government officials who don’t cooperate fully with federal and state deportation efforts. That bill is also headed to the courts.

Which brings us to Memphis-Shelby County Schools, which, to its credit, has established a legal hotline and guidelines for school principals in response to a new federal directive allowing immigration-enforcement officials to make arrests at schools. Principals are instructed to ask for identification and the purpose of the visit, and demand to see a warrant or other documents. If there are documents, they are to scan them and send them to the central office.

From the directive: “Federal government agencies like ICE are required to follow proper legal procedures when engaging immigration enforcement activities. … It is reasonable and appropriate to request that the official wait until you have received a response from the Office of General Counsel.”

“Reasonable and appropriate” are not terms I would use to describe behavior we have seen locally by federal agents, most notably the bizarre raid conducted by masked and hooded men on a TACOnganas food truck last week. But the raid, in which three men were escorted from their jobs and reportedly sent to an immigration facility in Louisiana, had the desired effect of sending many local immigrants into hiding. 

A landscaping service in my neighborhood was working with half as many laborers as usual last week, and taking “twice as long” to do the job, according to the crew leader I spoke with. And at my favorite Mexican restaurant last Friday, the usual servers were nowhere to be seen. The manager was waiting tables, the kitchen was behind on orders, the understaffing was obvious. 

Across Memphis and across the country, untold numbers of people are staying home, avoiding work, avoiding school. There will be a cost for all of this — financially, yes, as food prices rise and restaurants and other businesses struggle to stay afloat. But there is another price we’ll all pay: a diminished sense of community and the pointless pain being caused by these laws that are passed solely to inflict suffering on the least of us. We’re all going to pay the price for that, one way or another.

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At Large Opinion

Donald. Eric. Ivanka.

A dang woke ATM. (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)

Diversity. Equity. Inclusion. 

Those three words are making a lot of people angry these days. And that’s part of the plan. Thanks to the new president and his minions, the shorthand version, “DEI,” has become one of the key weapons in the latest campaign to distract Americans from real issues by getting them angry at each other because of race and gender.

Trump was clear about it during his campaign: “I think there is a definite anti-white feeling in this country,” he said. “I think the laws are very unfair right now.” That message went straight to the heart of his core followers, those inclined to also believe that lazy, white-hating brown people were eating cats and dogs — the beloved pets of real Americans. 

Hate and ignorance are a powerful combination, and those afflicted with it are easily manipulated. “DEI” is now racist code for “smart white men are being replaced by incompetent Black, brown, female, and LGBTQ people.” DEI was blamed for the California wildfires, the mid-air collision over the Potomac River, the flooding in North Carolina, you name it.

I was moved to ponder all this yesterday, as I pulled up to my bank’s drive-through ATM and read these words: “Please select the language you wish to use. Por favor, seleccione el idioma que desea usar.” The ATM screen has offered that option for years, maybe even decades, but now I guess it’s become offensive to some folks. A dang woke ATM. 

But take a moment to think about why that option is there. It’s not because it was mandated by the government. It’s there because a bank — not exactly a woke institution — decided to put it there. And they did it because it was good for business to offer customers the opportunity to use a language that might make it easier for them to do their banking. It was a business decision.

There have been many studies on DEI and its influence on corporate and institutional America. Some findings: Corporations identified as more diverse and inclusive are 35 percent more likely to outperform their competitors. Diverse companies are 70 percent more likely to capture new markets. Diverse teams are 87 percent better at making decisions. Diverse management teams lead to 19 percent higher revenue. Companies employing an equal number of men and women manage to produce up to 41 percent higher revenue. The GDP could increase 26 percent by equally diversifying the workforce. Gender-diverse companies are 15 percent more likely to notice higher financial returns. I could cite references for all of the above, but you know how to google. Bottom line: DEI is good for the bottom line.

Also consider: It was not until 1959 that the then-named Memphis State University allowed Black students to attend. It wasn’t until 1969 that the Ivy League schools began accepting women. (Harvard held off until 1975.) It wasn’t until the 1960s that many Black Americans were able to get into a voting booth in the South.

And it wasn’t until 1974, when the Equal Credit Opportunity Act came into effect, that women in the U.S. could get a credit card or a bank account. The ECOA made it illegal for financial institutions to discriminate based on sex, and later extended that right to anyone, regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, age, or receipt of public assistance. In 2011, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was created to ensure banks and lending companies complied with the ECOA and didn’t defraud their customers. 

On Sunday, Russell Vought, the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget, directed the CFPB to stop any investigative work and not begin any new investigations. Consumer protection from business scams is now “woke,” apparently. 

Legislative protections against discrimination toward minority groups have proven to be an essential tool for leveling the playing field in business, education, and other elements of American life. Getting rid of DEI is just another variation of the GOP’s grievance-based politics, another sop for those who think white people are getting screwed. And they are, just not in the way they think they are. Maybe it would help if they took a second to think about those three words — diversity, equity, inclusion — and decide which ones they’re opposed to, and why. 

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At Large Opinion

Cold Play

Greenland: We “need” it. Apparently. (Photo: Rokas Tenys | Dreamstime.com)

If you had Greenland being invaded by the United States on your 2025 bingo card, congratulations! You may be a winner. The Financial Times reported last Friday on a 45-minute phone call made by Donald Trump, the newly elected president of the U.S., to Mette Frederiksen, the premier of Denmark, a longtime NATO ally. The results weren’t encouraging.

According to the Financial Times, Frederiksen “emphasized” to Trump that the world’s largest island — a self-governing territory of the kingdom of Denmark — was not for sale. That apparently went about as well as you would expect, given the intellectual maturity of our current commander in chief.

The FT spoke to “five current and former senior European officials” who had been briefed on the call, each of whom said the conversation had gone badly. Trump was “aggressive and confrontational,” said one of the officials. “He was very firm. Before, it was hard to take it seriously. But I do think it is serious, and potentially very dangerous.”

You have to forgive the Danes for being a bit shocked. They have had dibs on Greenland for a long time — since 986 A.D., to be semi-exact. That’s 1,039 years, certainly long enough to have gotten a little attached to the place. Now, out of the blue, comes a call from the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth and his message is, basically, “Gimme your biggest piece of land.”

To quote The Don more precisely: “People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it, but if they do, they should give it up because we need it for national security.” Simple as that. Give it to us because we “need” it. It’s a geopolitical version of The Godfather. “It’d be a shame if something were to happen to your cute little kingdom, Mette. So hand over the island, capiche?” She’s lucky she wasn’t in the same room with him. No telling what he would have grabbed.

The truth is, “people” actually do know if Denmark has a right to Greenland. And the answer is yes, they do — and have for over a millenium. Equally true is the fact that the United States has absolutely no claim to the place. Zero. Yet Trump is on record as saying he wouldn’t rule out military action to seize Greenland, which is an act of war. Forcibly taking the territory of one of our NATO allies is such a bonkers concept that some pundits are writing that Trump is just posturing — playing three-dimensional chess — in order to distract us from his horrible cabinet appointees and batshit presidential orders by making these outlandish (Ha-ha!) feints at taking sovereign territory from our allies.

Nope. He’s not that clever. Yes. He really does appear to be that delusional.

According to the NATO treaty, an act of aggression toward one NATO member is seen as an attack on all members. So what Trump is dancing around by threatening Denmark is a circumstance that could put the U.S. in a military stare-down against Great Britain, France, Germany, and all the other NATO powers. Like World War II, only this time we’re the bad guys. 

Trump seems to see Greenland, like Canada (who he’s pitched as a “51st state”), and the Panama Canal (“We’re taking it back.”), as nice additions to his North American Monopoly collection. Oh, and we’ve renamed the Gulf of Mexico because why not? (No word yet on whether my hometown of Mexico, Missouri, will become America, Missouri.)

If it weren’t so insane, all of this would be comedy gold, ripe material for a wacky Broadway farce: The Emperor Has No Clues. But imagine how terrifying all this is to the rest of the world. Imagine how we’d feel if China or Russia or some other nuclear power was suddenly being led by an erratic buffoon who was calling Australia and demanding they hand over New Zealand.

To most of the other civilized countries on planet Earth, the United States appears to have lost its freaking mind. How do you begin to comprehend a country that elects Barack Obama, then Donald Trump, then Joe Biden, and then Trump again? It’s not normal. None of this is normal. We’re all in Greenland now.

Categories
At Large Opinion

Keepers of the Flame

Photo: Evgeniya Leonova | Dreamstime.com

The presidential inauguration in the Capitol rotunda on Monday marked the return to power of the most controversial and scandal-plagued president in American history. It felt a little like when the second plane hit the tower on 9/11 — the moment when we knew it wasn’t an accident.

Monday was also Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and here in Memphis — the city where Dr. King was assassinated in 1968 — the celebration of his life takes on a special significance. The NBA’s annual MLK Day celebration featured the Memphis Grizzlies hosting the Minnesota Timberwolves, and the National Civil Rights Museum held a day of events called “Community Over Chaos,” which seemed a most fitting theme.

But before it fades into history, buried by the noisy deluge of Trump drama, I want to take note of former President Biden’s farewell address of last week. As might be expected, he cited the achievements of his administration — the record job-creation numbers, the long-desired ceasefire in the Middle East, the strengthening of NATO, and the ongoing resistance to the Russian invasion of Ukraine — but his real purpose in his speech seemed to be to deliver a warning, to address, as he said, “some things that give me great concern.”

Citing President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation, in which he warned the country about the dangers posed by the “military industrial complex,” Biden decried the rise of a new threat, one he called the “tech industrial complex.”

“Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power,” Biden warned. “The free press is crumbling. Errors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit.” No errors detected.

The tech industrial complex was on full display in the Rotunda on Monday, including Sundar Pichai (Google), Tim Cook (Apple), Jeff Bezos (Amazon, The Washington Post), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta, Facebook, Instagram, Threads), and Elon Musk (X, Tesla, Starlink, xAI).

Never have so few had so much unbridled power to influence public opinion and so much money to invest in doing so. And it doesn’t help that they’re supplicating themselves (and giving millions of dollars) to the new president to curry his favor. It’s called obeying in advance, and it’s worrisome stuff. Journalism is in danger of being put out of business by “content providers” that have no ethical qualms about ignoring the truth in favor of whatever makes a profit — or makes the president happy.

CNN, ABC, and even MSNBC have also made at least token moves to ameliorate relations with the new administration. CNN buried Trump critic Jim Acosta in a late-night slot. ABC settled a libel lawsuit with Trump that it easily would have won in court. Facebook eliminated fact-checkers. Companies are getting rid of diversity hiring programs. Macho (“masculine energy”) is all the rage among the tech bros. Women’s healthcare rights continue to be eroded in red states.

Biden called it “a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people,” and cited the consequences “if their abuse of power is left unchecked.” What Biden was describing is an oligarchy. Merriam-Webster (remember dictionaries?) defines it as “a government in which a small group exercises control, especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.”

Can there be any doubt that an oligarchy of extreme wealth, power, and influence is moving into power in the United States, one that threatens our democracy and our basic rights and freedoms?

Democracy depends upon the will of the people, and if the people are misinformed, disinformed, or uninformed, they can be manipulated. As we well know, public opinion — and elections — can turn on well-funded, broadly circulated lies and propaganda.

Our social media platforms are already permeated by disinformation, mostly via bots that skillfully imitate real people and overwhelm legitimate content by their sheer numbers. Artificial intelligence is now upping that deception to previously unknown heights. Biden called AI “the most consequential technology of our time, perhaps of all time.”

The former president concluded by saying to his fellow Americans, “It’s your turn to stand guard. May you all be the keepers of the flame.” That doesn’t feel like malarkey, folks. 

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At Large Opinion

L.A. Hot Takes

Entire neighborhoods have been reduced to ashes. (Photo: MMPhoto21 | stock.adobe.com )

And the lights of L.A. County
They look like diamonds in the sky … 
— Lyle Lovett

As I write this, devastating wind-fed fires have killed at least 25 people and swept through 40,000 acres in the greater Los Angeles area. If you’re looking for a size comparison, that’s equal to a fourth of the acreage of the city of Memphis burned to the ground — an area equal to Downtown, Uptown, and everything inside the beltway. Thousands of people have lost their homes. Hundreds of schools, churches, businesses, studios, and iconic architectural structures are gone. Entire neighborhoods are reduced to ashes.

Los Angeles County officials characterized the fires as a “perfect storm” event in which hurricane-force gusts of up to 100 miles per hour prevented them from deploying aircraft that could have dropped water and fire retardant on the drought-ravaged neighborhoods when the fires first broke out. The combination of the winds, unseasonably dry conditions, and multiple fires breaking out one after another led to the widespread destruction.

But as L.A. firefighters battled the flames, disinformation was spreading like, well, wildfire: One theory pushed by right-wing media was that the blazes were raging because fire-fighting personnel were led by a lesbian fire chief and the department utilized DEI hiring criteria. X account Libs of TikTok, known for spreading anti-LBGTQ rhetoric posted: “DEI will get people k*lled. DEI MUST DIE.” Donald Trump Jr. said that donations the Los Angeles Fire Department sent to Ukraine in 2022 were somehow related to its response to the current fires.

Not to be outdone, the president-elect himself posted a deluge of misinformation on Truth Social, including this: “Governor Gavin Newscum [sic] refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snowmelt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way.” 

And what’s a good tragedy without a trash take from Alex Jones, who posted that President Biden had grounded firefighters and that the fires were being spread as part of a “globalist plot to wage economic warfare”? First Buddy Elon Musk responded to Jones’ tweet in a now-deleted post with one word: “True.” 

None of it was true. The level of diversity in L.A. Fire Department personnel is typical of most urban fire departments in the U.S. The Southern California reservoirs were full, above historic levels. Water intended for the city was not diverted to save a fish called the smelt. Some hydrants went dry because they were intended for use against urban fires — houses, buildings in a self-contained area for a limited time — not wild-blown wildfires spreading over many acres for many days. 

Janisse Quiñones, chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said, “We are fighting a wildfire with urban water systems, and that is an unprecedented kind of event.” Quiñones added that experts have seen wildland fires move into urban areas only in the last 10 to 15 years and that they’re still figuring out how to address it.

“The way that firefighting has traditionally been, there are wildland firefighters and agencies, and then there are urban firefighters and agencies,” she said. “Are we having wildland firefighters fighting fires in urban areas or the reverse? Sometimes the approaches are really different.”

All this brings to mind an interview with Denzel Washington I saw last week. When asked about today’s media, he said: “If you don’t read the newspapers, you’re uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you’re misinformed.” 

He went on: “What is the long-term effect of too much information? One thing is the need to be first. … We live in a society where it’s just, get it out there, be first! It doesn’t matter if it’s true, who it hurts, who it destroys, just be first. So what a responsibility [the media] have — to tell the truth!” 

To which, I would add: What a responsibility you and I have — to seek out the truth, and to learn not to blindly swallow the first piece of information offered, no matter who offers it, no matter how it tickles your confirmation biases. A hot take is seldom the best take. 

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At Large Opinion

New Year, New Ewe

Don’t ew my ewe. (Photo: Timothy Large | Dreamstime.com)

So, the editor said at our last staff meeting that we all needed to come up with something to write about for our annual “New Year, New You” issue. Basically, it’s anything to do with reinventing yourself without actually saying “New Year’s resolution.” Most of the time, it comes down to writing about self-improvement projects, like taking up hot yoga, quitting drinking, getting a Peloton, or buying those puffy new running shoes that somehow make jogging in Overton Park at the crack of dawn appealing. The advertising folks will be selling to local businesses who specialize in such services, so it all tracks. 

I have threatened for years to write about adopting a sheep for this issue, because, well, not using the headline “New Year, New Ewe” just seems like a wasted opportunity. And since 2025 is looming like the open cellar door to the end-times, I figured it was now or never. 

I did a bit of research and read that a ewe is a female sheep, which I already knew. And I quickly learned that my word processing program unhelpfully corrects “a ewe” to “an ewe.” It’s ewes-less to try to reprogram it, I discover, so I move on. After all, I’ve still got to figure out how to get a new ewe in the new year.

Here are some other sheep terms I became familiar with: A male sheep used for breeding is a ram or a buck. A male that has been castrated and that will be used for meat is a wether. And, of course, the little cute ones are called lambs. Whether a lamb grows up to be a wether, a ram, or a ewe (or a chop) is all in the roll of the sheep dice. But for purposes of this story (and maintaining a commitment to the pun), I’m only thinking of ewe, dear. 

A mature ewe weighs 200 to 225 pounds, which seems like a big-ass sheep. So once I get my new ewe (on Amazon?) I’m going to need to figure out a way to keep it fed. It should be able to graze off my yard for much of the year, I’d think, but I don’t have a big lawn, so I might have to supplement it with a couple of hay bales or something. Plus, I could probably walk it around the neighborhood and let it graze in my neighbors’ lawns as we stroll along. I don’t think they’ll mind. In fact, I suspect that my ewe and I would soon become a legend on nextdoor.com — not to mention, the talk of the Memphis Reddit community. Once my sheepish girl has gotten her fill of yummy Midtown zoysia, we’ll just make a ewe-turn and head back home. And, of course, I’ll carry a sheepy-bag for the ewe-doo, just in case. I know the rules. I’m not a savage.

And here are some of the lifestyle improvements attendant with getting a New Ewe in the New Year: Exercise — walking around the neighborhood every day, hefting the occasional bale of hay, not to mention carrying the 12-pound bags of ewe-doo home from your daily walk. You’ll be fit and buff in no time. Free Wool — You just shear your ewe once a year and voila, a big bag of premium wool, ready to be spun into yarn and turned into a sweater by your dear old Aunt Nedra. 

And I’m sure that there are other benefits of ewe-ownership besides exercise and free wool but they’re not coming to me right now. Let me think … Nope. In fact, it’s beginning to become obvious that I’ve written this entire column just to justify using a stupid pun that I’ve resisted using every Flyer New Year’s issue for years. And that’s not fair to you, the reader, or to Ewe, my sheep, who’s been caught up in this awkward transition to urban living through no fault of her own. 

I had another option, too, which makes this all the more tragic. If I had gone with the alternative plan, it would have been easier for all of us. Get a shrub. Plant it. Keep your head down and hope for the best. New Year, New Yew. 

Categories
At Large Opinion

2024 in Review

Tracy Chapman (Photo: Fabio Diena | Dreamstime.com)

As is customary at this time of year, we Flyer columnists take a look back at the preceding 12 months. And oof, it was hard, especially November, when just under 50 percent of American voters cast their ballots for an idiot, enough to put said idiot back in office for four years. Argh.

In early January, having no idea of what was to come, I mused genially about how age was an invisibility cloak because no one cares what clothes you wear, what kind of car you drive, or how your hair looks. Cute. Then January dropped the hammer with the Iowa caucuses, ending the brief fantasy that someone — DeSantis? Haley? — in the GOP could derail the Trump train. 

We got a brief respite in February with the gorgeous performance of Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs singing Chapman’s “Fast Car” at the Grammys. The lyrics transcend the categories that too often put Americans in separate silos, unable to see what we have in common with one another. A queer Black woman and a white country boy singing in perfect harmony was maybe the best three minutes 2024 had to give us. 

Shortly after that moment of kumbaya, America was treated to the viral video of 30 white men demonstrating on the grounds of the state capitol in Nashville. They carried Nazi flags, wore face masks and red T-shirts proclaiming that they were members of a group called “Blood Tribe.” According to the Anti-Defamation League, Blood Tribe members exalt Hitler as a deity. So yeah.

April brought us the most hyped event of the year, which is really saying something. I’m talking about the eclipse, but you knew that, right? Seriously, I am hard-pressed to remember any news event that generated so much social media content, so much blathering punditry, so many hours of preview television coverage as did the Big E. It was the most ballyhooed three and a half minutes since Donald Trump had sex with Stormy Daniels. Then it was over and everybody went, “huh?”

In May, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem revealed that she’d shot and killed her 14-month-old dog, Cricket, because the dog was “untrainable.” As a reward, Trump later appointed Noem head of the Department of Homeland Security.

In June, the Greater Memphis Chamber announced a deal with Elon Musk, “the world’s richest man,” to build the “world’s largest supercomputer” in Memphis. Selling points included our city’s ample water supply, cheap land costs, and the chamber’s willingness to “work fast.” Whether this will be the salvation of Memphis or the “world’s biggest boondoggle” is yet to be determined.

In July, the media wrote 47 million stories about President Biden’s senility after he floundered in a debate with Trump. “Come on, man. I’m the guy who turned this economy around and created 11 million new jobs,” Biden responded. “Sorry, Kamala Harris is now the nominee,” said the Democrat Party hierarchy. As we all know now, that worked out really well.

August brought the scandal of the year! I’m speaking, of course, about the Paris Olympics opening ceremony — which wasn’t actually a mockery of da Vinci’s The Last Supper but still provided several days of fodder for the Evangelical outrage machine.

My personal 2024 probably peaked in September, when I went to Las Cruces, New Mexico, to help celebrate my mother’s 100th birthday. We all had a wonderful time, including my feisty mom, who is now well on her way to 101, Lord willing.

Climate change paid us a visit in October as Hurricane Helene ravaged parts of six Southern states, including Tennessee. The governors of five of those states declared states of emergency in advance of the storm and quickly got federal assistance. The governor of the sixth state, our own idiot, Bill Lee, asked Tennesseans to participate in a “day of prayer and fasting.”

Speaking of idiots, I already mentioned what happened in November and I shall not speak of it again. Sorry.

In December, I continued my self-imposed ban on writing about politics and wrote about giving a guy a ride to Walgreens and back, about creating an AI picture of the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, and about the pleasures of Mexican restaurants and drinking margaritas. Anything to avoid thinking about politics and the coming 2025 hellscape. Oh, and, uh, happy new year. 

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At Large Opinion

Margaritaville

Who’s to blame? (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)

There’s a Mexican restaurant near me where I go for dinner every week or so. The hostess and the waitresses know me. I’m the guy who always orders the fish (or camarones) tacos, a side of queso dip, and a house margarita — and tips nicely. They even know the booth I like. 

The place is usually populated with diners of all ethnicities. The background music is some kind of Ameri-Mexican blend with bright pop hooks and a beat you could dance to if you had more than one house margarita. There’s usually a soccer game on the television. It’s a clean, lively, friendly place. I can eat, look at my phone, and sip my margarita in peace.

The hostess and waitresses speak English better than most of their customers. They’re smart and engaging and easy to chat with. The busboys, not so much. Sometimes, I’ll stop one and ask for something — a fresh napkin, a straw — and they just shake their heads and smile, and go get a waitress. They don’t understand English very well, I assume. They could have crossed the border legally and are waiting for a work visa or a disposition on their application for asylum, but it’s also quite possible they are here without papers, working hard and laying low, hoping to avoid the coming storm. 

From my seat, I can hear the busboys and kitchen staff chattering in a Spanish spoken so quickly and colloquially that it would baffle Duo the Lingo Owl. It makes me wonder what’s going to happen in a month or so if the new president and his minions follow through on their campaign pledge to institute “mass deportations.” 

Will sheriff’s deputies, U.S. Marshals, or even the National Guard barge through the front door of my favorite little haunt at dinner time and march off with half the staff in handcuffs? Will they then sweep their way down Summer Avenue, stopping at all the Hispanic-owned businesses, demanding, “Papers, please”?

Will the same law-enforcement brigades start hitting up the construction sites around town, taking away the crews who build our homes and office buildings? Will they begin visiting the massive farming operations across the South and West that rely on millions of immigrants to harvest the nation’s crops? Will they raid the packing plants where immigrants prepare the beef, poultry, and pork for our grocery stores? 

If it happens, it’s going to be another of those moments when ideology meets reality and it’s not going to be pretty. When fulfilling a campaign promise leads to a major disruption of the economy, when ensuing worker shortages lead to abrupt price increases, when oranges, tomatoes, and all our other produce lie rotting in our fields and orchards, will Trump and the GOP hard-liners blink? Will they really risk an economic meltdown to own the libs? Will the Americans who voted for this madness finally figure out how effed-up it is?

When millions of families are separated from loved ones, when there are mass camps of “illegal” humans of all ages across the country, when the real costs and the enormous cruelty of trying to deport 10 million people become obvious, will the politicians who ran on this xenophobic bullshit back down? Who knows?

Reporters around the country are already asking governors whether they will cooperate with federal deportation plans. Such cooperation might well involve authorizing state National Guard troops to help with rounding up suspects. In red states, including Tennessee, governors have mostly spouted the GOP party line when questioned, saying that they would do whatever the president asked them to do. In blue states, the opposite reaction has mostly occurred, with governors, mayors, and other regional officials saying they would not use local resources to help with mass deportation. 

Look, if Republicans really wanted to fix immigration, they would start at the top and start prosecuting employers who hire undocumented laborers. Problem solved. But that’s never going to happen. Employers are the wrong color and they have money to grease political palms. And since the polarization game plan just won an election, I suspect it will be in play for the next four years. My advice is to speak out for justice when and where it’s possible. Then go have a margarita, if you can find one.

Categories
At Large Opinion

The Easter Bunny

Meta AI image generated by Bruce VanWyngarden

“What if what we’re seeing today isn’t a glimpse of the future, but the new terms of the present? What if artificial intelligence isn’t actually capable of doing much more than what we’re seeing today, and what if there’s no clear timeline when it’ll be able to do more? What if this entire hype cycle has been goosed by a compliant media, ready and willing to take career-embellishers at their word?”

The quote is from a tech analyst named Edward Zitron, who’s been making the case that AI is a giant corporate Ponzi grift for several months. And he’s not alone. The essential question that AI doubters raise is this: What if enabling us to make fanciful pictures, replicate online search engines, and edit writing projects (and emails) is the highest-level payoff we’re going to get from AI? Was building out and maintaining all the ecologically destructive hardware of AI really worth it?

The Greater Memphis Chamber announced last week it was answering that question with a resounding “Yes.” Readers will recall that months ago, President-elect Trump’s First Buddy, Elon Musk, settled a deal with the Chamber to locate his xAI, powered by the “world’s largest computer,” in Memphis. Then a couple weeks ago, xAI entered a 21-year lease for 522 additional acres of land in southwest Memphis — purpose to be determined.

We still don’t know what’s going to happen with that acreage, but Chamber CEO Ted Townsend announced that three more super-computer firms would be coming to town. “We’re excited to welcome Nvidia, Dell, and Supermicro to the ‘Digital Delta,’” said Townsend. We’re living in the Digital Delta!

Similar scenarios have been happening around the globe, as tech corporations create more facilities to store and retrieve digital content. But there can be problems. In Spain, Barcelona has had to limit water usage for its residents due to the burgeoning data centers it has welcomed. Citizens took to the streets in protest.

Journalist Kasia Tarczynska of GoodJobsFirst.org, writes, “Internet companies have embraced Old Economy habits of playing states and localities against each other … causing governments to grossly overspend for trophy deals. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon Web Services have been awarded more than $2 billion in subsidies. The average cost of their 11 ‘megadeals’ is astronomical: $1.95 million per job created.”

Now, the Memphis deal may be as wonderful as the Chamber claims it is, but transparency on this liaison is essential: How many jobs will be created, and what’s the payout for Memphis taxpayers? How much water and electricity will be used? What kind of revenues will be generated? What are the penalties for breaking contract terms or polluting our environment?

It would take a hella big fine to get Musk’s attention. Tesla’s Austin gigafactory has been accused of discharging hazardous wastewater into city sewers, emitting pollutants from a faulty furnace, and using a chemical waste pond where dead wildlife has been found. The company’s Fremont, California, facility has recorded more than 180 air quality violations since 2019. 

To that end, three local environmental groups — Memphis Community Against Pollution, Protect Our Aquifer, and Young, Gifted & Green — are asking Memphians to take part in an xAI Community Impact Survey that “aims to gauge community perspectives on the new xAI supercomputer in Memphis and the recent 522-acre expansion. The questions focus on your perceptions of the facility and ideas for Memphians to actually benefit from the project.” You can find the survey on the groups’ Facebook sites.

But eventually, it all comes back to the question raised by Zitron: What is the real end game for AI? Billions of dollars are being spent in a race to see which company’s mega-computer can scrape enough human-created content from the world’s computers to … what? Write a novel as good as The Sun Also Rises? Paint a picture to rival the Mona Lisa? Make an album as good as Songs in the Key of Life?

Or is the crest of AI’s wave my being able to create an image of “the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus eating Easter eggs,” like the one I did for my granddaughter last week? It would be nice (and would shut me up) if AI could somehow come up with a solution for global climate change. That would indeed be a win. At this point, anything is possible. And nothing is also possible. 

Categories
At Large Opinion

Driving Mr. A

Photo: Andreblais | Dreamstime.com

It was a sunny, mild November Saturday. I was on South Idlewild Street, stopped at the corner where it intersects Madison, waiting for traffic to clear so I could pull out and turn left. I was headed to Home Depot to get a couple of keys made and pick up some paper towels. A big day, no doubt. 

Madison was busy, and I’d been idling there a bit before I noticed the man in the red jacket and khaki pants sitting on a low wall by the intersection. It appeared he was trying to pull himself upright using the nearby wrought-iron fence and was having no luck at it. 

After watching for a moment, I lowered my window and said, “Do you need some help?”

“Yes, I do,” he said. 

There was no one behind me, so I backed up a little, parked at the curb opposite from him, and crossed the quiet street. He had a stout wooden walking stick in his right hand, and I took his left hand in both of mine and pulled him to a standing position. 

“I got to be careful. It’s my knee,” he said. “It gives out after a while and I have to sit down. But then, getting up can be a problem.” 

“Where are you going?”

“Walgreens. I need to pick up my prescriptions.”

“Well, let me give you a ride.”

“Thank you. I’d appreciate it.” 

As we made the short drive to the pharmacy, he told me his name was John A ___ and spelled it out for me, and that he lived at St. Peter Manor, a few blocks away. He said he’d been to the doctor the day before and had been prescribed some new meds. 

As I dropped him off at Walgreens, I said, “I’ve got to run to Home Depot but I’ll swing back by here in 20 minutes or so, and if you’re here I’ll take you home.”

“That’s kind of you. I’ll keep an eye out for you.” 

I got to Home Depot, went in, and grabbed a jumbo package of paper towels. They were on sale, stacked right by the front door. But when I got to the key-making machine, there was a line and it took a while. Afterward, I drove back to Walgreens and cruised the lot but saw no sign of Mr. A. On a hunch, I turned off of Union onto South Idlewild, and there he was, slowly limping along by the Goodwill store, not too far from where I’d picked him up earlier. I stopped next to him, lowered the passenger-side window, and said, “You want a lift, John?”

“Boy, I sure do,” he said. “Can you come around and open the door for me?” 

“No problem. I got you.”

On the short trip back to St. Peter Manor, John asked me if I’d ever been inside the place. “It’s pretty nice,” he said. 

I told him I had and that at one point several years ago, I’d looked into getting my mother a place there, but that she’d decided she wanted to stay in New Mexico, where one of my brothers lives.  

“Oh, she’s smart. New Mexico is beautiful,” John said. “I remember the sun and the desert … and the mountains and sky. Everything is so big. I loved New Mexico. And I like the West a lot. Plenty of room to move around out there.” 

“It really is beautiful,” I said.

“Well, thank you again for the ride,” John said, as we pulled up to his home base. “I really appreciate it.”

“No problem. Glad to do it,” I said. And I was. I got out and went around to the passenger side and helped him get to a standing position. 

“Hey,” he said. “Let me give you my phone number, in case you want to get ahold of me.” So he told me his seven digits (I assumed the “901” was a given), and I entered them into my phone as he headed toward the glass doors of St. Peter Manor.

I don’t know that I’ll call him, but I texted him my number, and you never know. We didn’t get into how or why John lived out West, but I suspect he might have some good stories. Meanwhile, happy Thanksgiving, y’all. Count your blessings.