The beauty of getting out into the world, meeting new people and seeing new stuff, is twofold. First, you learn new information, from the new people you talk to and the new stuff you see. Learning new things is fun.
And second, you then can apply this new knowledge, making all sorts of interesting connections.
For instance, struggling to articulate the general numbness of watching President Donald Trump's State of the Union address Tuesday, I remembered a cannulated cow seen at Chicago's High School for Agriculture Sciences in Mount Greenwood (What? You didn't know about either cannulated cows or the ag high school? Well, I'm happy to be the one to tell you.)
MAGA types, who don't seem at all keen on either new people or new ideas, imagine liberals in some kind of pearl-clutching agony, or door-jamb-gnawing fury. But truly, nearly two hours of the State of the Union speech left me mostly bored. We've heard all this before, many times, from the moment candidate Trump descended that escalator in his monstrous brass and orange stone lobby.
"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best," he said. "They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists."
Tuesday was more of the same. When he wasn't lying about the economy or gaslighting — for example, declaring war on fraud — Trump was grinding over the threat of immigrants. Both criminals and bad drivers. That's where I thought of the cannulated cow. How cows digest their food is important to the dairy industry, and one way to keep tabs is to surgically implant a round window into the side of a cow. Students and scientists look through the window, into the cow's stomach, and watch the half-digested mash sloshing around.
That was the State of the Union speech. The same well-chewed slop of fear, hatred, lies, prejudice, nationalism and enormous self-regard that Trump has been spewing for years.
One of the many dangers of this moment is exhaustion. The liars lie nonstop, while those familiar with the truth get tired of repeating ourselves, bloodying our fingers scratching at that brick wall.
Yet scratch we must. So forgive me for belaboring the obvious for the benefit of — well, I'm not sure who at this point. Either you understood long ago or you never will.
The current war on immigrants is not only morally and economically wrong, but entirely based on lies — haters are cowards, and rather than just admit they're surrendering to fear (of new people and new things) they slur the object of their fixation. They don't hate immigrants because immigrants are criminals; they tar them as criminals because they hate them.
So, again: Immigrants commit less crime and have fewer traffic accidents than U.S.-born citizens. That makes sense: If you could be deported to some central American hellhole for a speeding ticket, you'd drive slower too. But let's gild the lily and turn to research: A 2014 Purdue study crunching 24 years of immigration data found that as the population of illegal immigrants in a state increases, DUIs go down.
“Undocumented persons may be less likely to drive after drinking, or drive at all, because of fear of police surveillance and deportation,” the authors wrote in the American Journal of Public Health.
Trying to wash away the sour contents of the cesspool that the president spattered all over my carpet Tuesday, I remembered the Bad Bunny show two weeks earlier.
Bad Bunny spoke to me. Well, sang, and not just to me. In Spanish, true, but I understood exactly what he was saying, about his home, Puerto Rico, his joyous, colorful world that includes old people, young people, a rainbow of colors and lifestyles, with joy and dancing. Some 128 million others watched.
Or 96 million more than endured the president's spew. Only 32 million viewers endured the all-too-familiar speech, as if parking ourselves cross-legged before a front-loading washing machine filled with barf. A spectacle that managed to both sicken and bore at the same time.
Strange that a halftime music show would offer more hope for the future of our country than a presidential address. Though never mistake hope for action. Those who do not want to spend the rest of our lives consuming enormous helpings of moral chunder are going to have to stay focused and work very hard to settle the nation's stomach. None of it will be fun or easy, and good people are going to continue to suffer and die. But better than the alternative, of mooing quietly while our nation sinks beneath the rising muck.
