The end of a year, and a decade, tends to be a time for reflection. There’s no logical reason for it. It’s just another day, the same as any other day, but there is a sentimental division in time that makes us feel that it’s ripe for reflection. I admit to succumbing to the sentiment, just this one time.
Unlike Judge Kopf, I won’t do a reverse listicle (not that there’s anything wrong with that). They’re not my thing. Nor will I tell you my personal feelings about things that made me laugh, happy, crazy or sad. We all have our own lives, experiences, and mine are no more interesting or valuable than yours.
But a point that Judge Kopf has made many times is to ask ourselves the question, as we get older, whether we’ve reached the point of irrelevance. Have younger voices taken over? Have we lost touch with what’s happening in the world, dwelling on the past while the new world is swirling around us? Does anybody care what we think, what we have to say, anymore?
Over the past few years, I’ve asked myself this question with regularity. I’m told almost daily on the twitters by law students and baby lawyers that I’m a clueless old man whose failure to understand and appreciate progress, social justice, critical theory, has rendered anything I have to say obsolete. It’s not just that they disagree with my old man views, but that I’m terribly and dangerously wrong.
This is also the view of many of the activists in criminal law reform, who have engaged in a war of lies and half-truths to manipulate their unduly passionate fans to believe in simplistic wrongs and simplistic solutions. They are not happy when their lies are exposed, or their solutions questioned. They are on a quest toward Utopia and I’m just a bump in the road, annoying but easily surmounted.
If they don’t care, won’t listen, actively hate what an old criminal defense lawyer brings to the table, then what purpose is served? For years, I called myself a curmudgeon ironically, a kind of inside joke that was understood by those who were interested in fighting the wrongs of the system and finding real solutions that would both be embraced by all as fair and viable and provide the best fixes in an imperfect world.
There were truisms involved, such as no solution being perfect, and sometimes no solution being viable. For some, redefining problems would allow them to find answers where none existed, but this was how we lied to ourselves. People are what they are, a mix of good and bad, smart and stupid, right and wrong, honest and completely full of shit. Pretending otherwise would never solve anything. Screaming names at people who acknowledged this reality wouldn’t make the reality go away.
Yet here we are, the end of the decade of the tens and we’re as divided and dopey as ever, if not more so. Social media has managed to empower the worst impulses of humanity by reducing ideas to their most simplistic and narcissistic, giving comfort to the dolts who used to be isolated but now join together into tribes of like-minded morons or, worse, crazies. How wrong can you be when a million other people agree with you?
So what’s an old lawyer to do when all the kids, even the emboldened geniuses in law school who know more about the law, human nature and the world than an old lawyer could ever know, tell him to shut up? Or, if he lacks the humility to give them tummy rubs and uncritical (they do not appreciate negativity, because they all grew up in Lake Wobegon) support, use their clout to “ratio, “dunk, “ding, “drag,” whatever they’re calling it today, that seems to traumatize them, as if it matters to us.
We need curmudgeons. Not the cute kind, but the real kind. We need people to call bullshit on the nonsensical ideas that have floated to the top of the cesspool and been embraced by the unduly passionate, because they’re not good ideas, they’re not workable ideas and, in many instances, they’re dangerous ideas. There needs to be someone willing to suffer the slings and arrows of infantile fortune to say so.
In the beginning of the decade of the tens, there were law blogs writing about serious (and frivolous) issues that impact a great many lives and will do so for decades (at least) to come. Most are gone now. Most blawgers got tired of writing. It gets old, another dirty cop, another bad shoot, another absurd court opinion, another incomprehensible law that’s going to wreak havoc. What did they know that I did not?
At some point, there’s nothing left to say, no thought to add that hasn’t already been added. New people here always want to point out the 36 things I leave out of a post, unaware that I’ve already discussed, at great length, those things ten times over. They often leave here hurt that their insight wasn’t appreciated. I’ve waved good-bye to many such n00bs over the years. It’s always sad.
Will there be a time when we return to normalcy, to thoughtfulness instead of passion? Who knows? Has the time come to quit like my fellow blawgers, to gracefully accept that I’ve aged out of relevance and let the children do as they please? After all, they will inherit the world they make, so if it’s a disaster, let them suffer it. Or is there a reason to face the Roaring Twenties, remain a target for their cries of outrage and persist in the effort to explain why Chesterton built his fence? I needed a sign. And I got one yesterday in the mail from Guitar Dave.
As long as there’s fight left in me, as long as you, dear readers and friends, support what I try to do here, then I will not give up and head into the Twenties with renewed vigor as the curmudgeon we need, if not the curmudgeon they want. Good-bye, Tens. Welcome, Twenties. Thank you all for your support. Thank you Guitar Dave for my sign. Happy New Year.
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In my time blogging, I’ve found myself far more inspired to write when people are saying or doing something stupid. Pointing out the reality behind the naivety is right up a blogger’s alley because there really isn’t a better venue for it in my opinion.
Not that I think that you were ever really thinking of walking away from SJ, but even if you tried to, I’d imagine that an issue would pop up within 24 hours of you walking away from the keyboard that would pull you back to it faster than Michael Corleone in Godfather 3.
Happy New Year, my friend.
Eventually I’ll either walk away or die, but that’s really not where I’m heading even though people seem to think I’m on the edge of quitting. For the first decade of SJ, I wrote almost exclusively about law. Since Trump, it’s been far more about social issues which, to my mind, are the greatest threat to law we’re facing now. The authoritarian right, the “tough on crime” enemy, was always obvious. You know your adversary and can stare him in the face.
Now, it’s knife from behind, the authoritarian left, that coalesced against Trump that presents the gravest threat. My problem is that there aren’t many who care to take on our fellow PDs, criminal defense lawyers and their “allies” who are just as blind, stupid and dangerous. It’s gotten lonely in this big ol’ blawgosphere, where once there were tough people doing the hard work of thinking. A little company would be nice. And if, say, a former prosecutor had something to say about the new trend of progressive prosecutors who want to save the world but not prosecute, at least not those who aren’t at the wrong end of the social justice victim hierarchy, this might be a place to post it.
Happy New Year, Murray.
The world needs a few good curmudgeons to keep us grounded.
Happy new year.
Happy New Year, Beth. Thank you for everything.
Ahem. We’re still here. And we might not have stayed the course without your encouragement and support. As Judge Wool says, “If you’re going to be a gadfly, expect to be swatted at now and then.”
Happy New Year to you.
You are right, although I wish you would post more. Few have suffered the indignities you have in these most tolerant of times. You are my muse.
Still here, and playing outlawed tunes with outlawed Peeps.
But a point that Judge Kopf has made many times is to ask ourselves the question, as we get older, whether we’ve reached the point of irrelevance. Have younger voices taken over? Have we lost touch with what’s happening in the world, dwelling on the past while the new world is swirling around us? Does anybody care what we think, what we have to say, anymore?
You’ve got it wrong, again. A message is heard or not heard; understood or not understood; considered or ignored. The age of the messenger doesn’t make an idea more or less relevant. An idea has value or not. That some, or even most, fail to get it or see the value doesn’t demean the message or idea. The loss is on the listener or the won’t-listener.
I’ve loved this here Hotel since Brother Rich led me to the valet. I think he used breadcrumbs, so he must think I’m some kind of fucking bird. It’s a place where good thinking is done, and not only by the Innkeeper. Leave the Twits for the twits.
OK, boomer.
Skink,
You would have found Hotel California eventually. We all do.
Scott is the proprietor. Sometimes he lights the candle and shows us they way. Other times, not so much.
Don Henley was wrong. You can check out, but why would you.
All the best.
Rich
I appreciate your spirit in noting my failings here, without which I might feel special. We haven’t had that spirit here since 1969.
SHG,
Because my writing is obtuse, you misread my meaning. I forgive you but I realize, as I wrote that, I am coming dangerously close to a tummy rub. I therefore fall back in full retreat.
All the best.
RGK
When someone says something kind about me, I often feel compelled to self-flagellate, so I very much appreciate your effort to avoid the tummy rub at all cost.
It gets old even for a law student, at least lately it has for me. That’s all we get on Twitter, another and another and another. But it has been ever thus, just hidden better in the past. One cannot change all that much, but one can sometimes nudge justice a little. I hope.
Those of us who might legitimately be called old (Happy New Year, Judge!) are amused by your pretension to that status.
Thanks for what you do.
It wasn’t “ever thus.” It just seems that way now.
Happy new year Scott.
Thanks for making me think.
“When the world is crashing down
And you’re left alone on shaky ground
It seems like losing hope’s
The only way to cope
You can turn around and see
That every precious memory
Is still inside of you
Just let it shine on through”
“Don’t fade away
Nothing’s what it seems
You’re lost and in between
But you’ll find yourself again
Don’t fade away, don’t fade away,”
W. Nelson
Thank you, Scott. Happy new year to you and all the folks who make this blawg happen. I’ll raise a glass of cheap bourbon to you all this evening.
I had a vision while reading this fine reflective post. Far in the future, long after we’ve all passed on, after the apocalyptic collapse of the idiocracy , some historian will discover your work, and wonder why the fools wouldn’t listen.
Later, it will become part of the Gospel for the next Renaissance in clear thinking. They’ll have little bracelets and t-shirts with WWSHGD? on them. 🙂
I know…it won’t do much good for you now, but its fun to dream.
Thank you, GD, but there’s a much better chance they’ll be selling GD mix tapes than asking WWSHGD.
I found your blog relatively recently. While we are not in agreement on everything, I appreciate the rigor that you bring to your posts (and to the comments section . . ..) Twenty years ago, while clerking for a fed district judge, a co-clerk of mine asked me, “but don’t you place any value on emotional truth?” I did not, and I do not (and, oddly enough, I view myself as a progressive. The kids might not agree.) My worry is that “the feels” have taken over our public discourse, so I really appreciate a so-called curmudgeon. And dang, you’ve been doing it for quite a while. Keep on keepin’ on.
Why do you view yourself as progressive, as opposed to liberal?
Everyone draws the line in a different place, but I draw it between general views of equality and fairness on one side, and the extension of that into economic restructuring on the other. For example, I support moving to a single payer health care system, and would heavily subsidize public universities. One can be liberal and support neither, but I’m not sure one can be progressive without at least nodding in the direction of those two goals. Having said that, the devil is in the details – unintended consequences lurk behind every corner – and there is no way to accomplish either one without fairly massive changes in public policy and how we view taxation. My problem with the kids is that I reject the authoritarian left, and believe that old folks bring more realistic views of what is attainable and how to best achieve those goals in a world where not everyone is inclined to agree with them. The kids’ problem with me likely is that I’m a giant old white man. I clearly consume more than my fair share of resources.
Sounds a lot like saying you’re Catholic but reject the Pope. I don’t think it works that way.
Only if your view of the Papacy was formed post-Vatican 1. Not to strain the analogy, but nearly 1900 years of Catholicism preceded the modern Papacy. Besides, what’s wrong with Epicopalians? Say what you will, but Henry VIII was not a quitter.
We all succumb to the sentiment, just this one time, and every time, despite knowing that both Shelley, and later Eddington, got it right.
For reasons mundane or sublime,
Our lives’ arrows move forward in time.
We may slice time or dice it,
But none can entice it
To return to the scene of the crime!
Arrows fall to Earth we know not where.
Some aim with great hopes. Some don’t care.
Reflection’s one way
We fools hope to delay
Times when no one will know we were there!
At the very best, two legs of stone
Will remain in the desert, alone.
Who will look on our work,
And despair, even smirk,
At the great things we think we have done?!
But so what? May you and yours have the very best new year possible!
And, if you miss celebrating tonight, or just want to do it again, don’t miss Friday and Saturday, 24 and 25 January, to ring in the Year of the Rat:
How would you recommend we celebrate the Year of the Rat?
BBQed snitch?
I didn’t expect such a humanitarian reply, HG.
PS: I think you may have won the internet today.
I hate to admit this but I see myself slowly turning into a curmudgeon.
I don’t think the normalcy you want will come anytime soon. The feels is rampant. Social media has allowed extremist views to enter the mainstream conversation so long as it attracts likes and followers. The media are writing sensationalist hyperbolic columns because that’s what brings in readers and advertising dollars. Businesses are now taking sides politically willing to sacrifice one group of customers in the hopes that the other will pay more to make up for the lost revenue. The media is not going to admit this, but they are loving the Trump presidency.
There is still a need for curmudgeons. Simon Cowell is still popular for a reason.
It’s funny how you mention that blawgers are getting tired of writing because recently I have been thinking the same. I try to write something original and different but after 4.5 years, topics have been hard to come by and articulating them into a weekly column is getting harder. Hopefully the muses will return to me in the new year.
At the end of every day, I think to myself, “that’s it, I’ve got nothing more to say,” and I go to sleep. The next morning when I wake up, I look around, listen to the chirping of the birdies, and the next thing you know, I’m writing again. In your case, maybe spreading your wings a bit will allow you to let it out. I suspect you’ve still got plenty in there.
Wisdom comes from experience.
Experience comes from a lack of wisdom.
It is better to gain wisdom by observing, reading, and listening to the experiences of others, because some experiences are not always survivable.
Many experiences are survivable, and experience can provide a depth of understanding that goes beyond learning from the experiences of others.
The problem is that to many experiences in the law making and trying field come at the expense of others. If all these great ideas about “reform” and “change” only caused pain to those espousing them I would be far more open to letting them try.
Glad to hear you will keep writing for now. If writing helps the sleep and sleep keeps the mind sharp then more reason to not stop.
This selection won over Wall of Death
Thank you and Happy New Year to you and yours.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=twiYZTVdBfE
To repeat one of my father’s favorite retorts, “Quit whining and get back to work.”
Turned out to be good advice for me so I am passing it along.
Your mother wears army boots.
Ouch. . .
Why, yes she did. She was in the WACs in WW 2.
And my wife also wore Army boots, or rather Air Force boots. She was a JAG.
That’s not an insult but a compliment.
You can be a drag sometimes, HG. It’s an old joke.
Late to the party again, but one of my proudest moments was when a 20 year younger colleague told me that I made most curmudgeons seem like Pollyanna. I told him my mother always said I was a bitter old man at age 4.
Keep on keepin’ on. I learn a lot from your writing and the comments.
Am I bitter? I hope not. I certainly don’t see myself as bitter.