This Builds Character

I don’t know all the words to the theme song for Three’s Company.

I do know a few of them, because I can remember an episode of Full House where the characters were having a hard time remembering what the lyrics were.

And sometimes only that segment of the song pops into my head.

I could just look up the lyrics, and that would be that, but it doesn’t really bother me enough. And would I remember it?

Because the memory of that episode is tied to sitting in the living room of my parents’ house, watching a furniture-sized television that had more wood panelling than screen. I was watching the show in prime time, because that’s how you had to watch the show. The show wasn’t my favorite (my preferred big family show was Step-by-Step). This was before Alanis Morisette strongly implied through song that Dave Coulier was suspect, so I still got a good laugh out of Woodchuck puppet jokes.

Anything generated by an LLM wouldn’t have that stream of consciousness. It would know the Three’s Company lyrics because it scraped them from a site. Or it would hallucinate that it knew the lyrics and make some things up.

It reminds me of this monologue from Good Will Hunting:

So if I asked you about art you’d probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo? You know a lot about him. Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientation, the whole works, right? But I bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You’ve never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling. Seen that.

If I asked you about women you’d probably give me a syllabus of your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can’t tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy.

You’re a tough kid. I ask you about war, and you’d probably, uh, throw Shakespeare at me, right? “Once more into the breach, dear friends.” But you’ve never been near one. You’ve never held your best friend’s head in your lap and watched him gasp his last breath, looking to you for help.

If I asked you about love you probably quote me a sonnet. But you’ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone could level you with her eyes. Feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you…who could rescue you from the depths of hell.

And you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be her angel. To have that love for her be there forever. Through anything. Through cancer. You wouldn’t know about sleeping sitting up in a hospital room for two months holding her hand because the doctors could see in your eyes that the terms “visiting hours” don’t apply to you. You don’t know about real loss, because that only occurs when you love something more than you love yourself. I doubt you’ve ever dared to love anybody that much.

I look at you, I don’t see an intelligent, confident man. I see a cocky, scared shitless kid. But you’re a genius, Will. No one denies that. No one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine and you ripped my fuckin’ life apart. You’re an orphan right? Do you think I’d know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you?

From Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American:

The same Reuters/Ipsos poll says that 82% of Americans, including 68% of Republicans, think “the president should obey federal court rulings even if he disagrees with them.” Only 40% think he “should keep deporting people despite a court order to stop,” although 76% of Republicans think he should violate a court order.

The questions specifically about immigration are even starker. Trump promised during the campaign that he would deport undocumented immigrants who have committed violent crimes, and people like that plan by an 81-point margin. But according to Morris’s crunching of polls on the subject, U.S. adults oppose deporting undocumented immigrants who have lived more than 10 years in the U.S. by a 37-point margin. They oppose deporting undocumented immigrants who are parents of U.S. citizens by a 36-point margin. By an 18-point margin, they oppose deporting undocumented immigrants who have broken no laws in the U.S. other than immigration laws.

The more visible Abrego Garcia’s case becomes, coupled as it is with the idea that it is a precursor to sending U.S. citizens to CECOT, the less likely it is to be popular.

When it’s no longer about policy, and no longer a narrative they completely control, this administration’s lies, lack of compassion, and cruelty are nearly inescapable.

The constant references to him as a gang member and terrorist? Based on an incident where he was outside a Home Depot, looking for work, and police saw he was wearing a Chicago Bulls jacket.

And then there’s the matter of the credibility of the officer on his case who used a confidential informant to attach the gang affiliation to him:

The Maryland police officer who formally attested to Abrego Garcia’s supposed gang affiliation in 2019—when he was detained the first time—was subsequently suspended from the force for a serious transgression: giving confidential information about a case to a sex worker, The New Republic has established.

This officer—apparently a senior detective on Abrego Garcia’s case in 2019—is named Ivan Mendez, according to information provided by Abrego Garcia’s lawyer at the time, Lucia Curiel, who is also a member of his current legal team. Mendez was subsequently indicted for this offense, pleaded guilty, and received probation.

The right story at the right moment can sway a lot of people. A specific narrative holds people’s attention and creates credibility the way vague generalities can’t.

Before, Trump’s attempts to link all immigrants with criminality used named victims of crime committed by undocumented immigrants. Now he just whines a word salad about terrorists, MS-13, and enemies. They can’t use their previous tactics, because the victims in this story are Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his family. He’s married to a US citizen, a dad with three kids, a union member, and he’s been in the country for 14 years.

And the longer the administration digs their heels in, refuses to fix their unlawful deportation and incarceration of this man, the longer this story upends the narrative the administration wants people to believe.

Because if enough people believe not just that Kilmar Abrego Garcia deserves due process, but deserves to be reunited with his family, it’s going to make it a lot harder for this administration to get the public to be chill about what else it would like to do in partnership with El Salvador.

From Alan Jacobs:

It’s important to remember this: businesses that rely on constant online or televisual engagement — social media platforms, TV news channels, news websites — make bank from our rage. They have every incentive, whether they are aware of it or not, to inflame our passions. (This is why pundits who are always wrong can keep their jobs: they don’t have to be right, they just have to be skilled at stimulating the collective amygdala.)

My dog barks any time someone comes by the house. It takes her a minute to figure out if this person is a friend or a stranger. And sometimes even when it’s a friend it takes her an extra beat to understand she can come down from RUFFCON 3.

The strangers go as quickly as they appeared, and it means very little to Winter over the course of her day. But if a friend shows up, there’s pets and attention and maybe treats involved.

So maybe a good metric to think about news right now is: Is this just trying to get me to bark, or does this provide me with something I need?