Register to vote against the modern fascist.

 

Today is the absolute last opportunity to register to vote. 

I honestly believe if Trump stays in office the entire country will break down and descend into whatever the ugliest version of modern day fascism could be.

The evidence for this is as follows.
****

Forced reproductive surgeries and sterilizations by law enforcement and people "following orders." 

The threat of law enforcement becoming increasingly radicalized and looked at as the only way to maintain order, often at the expense of minority groups.

The Neo-nazis that killed a protestor by using a car to run over people who simply did not want the KKK and Neo-Nazis marching through their town.

The continued assault on the press and freedom of speech as the police attempt to intimidate and target journalists who are attempting to freely cover the social unrest.

The continued championing of a go it alone mentality, as well as a belief of an exceptionalism due to their heritage.

The criminalization and championing of violence towards political adversaries.

We can start the process of healing with Biden.

No he isn't perfect.  No president ever has been or will be.  But we need as a country to start choosing the representatives that work for all of us and not just some. 

We need to find a way to find peace and disarm not only ourselves, but the world. The goal should not be conquest via violence, but harmony and peace via diplomacy.

I know that for some, no amount or reasoning will work.

They would be the same kinds of people that existed in Germany that sat passively by, happy to reap any economic benefit and believe the lies of Hitler, a charismatic and angry individual who at the end of the day cared only about himself and his vision for a world without anyone he deemed unworthy.

Those are the little Nazi's.  The ones that sat back and may not engage in the violence, but would let the violence occur if it benefitted them.

But for some still, I think there is conflicting narrative that throws them for a loop. 

Because Biden is flawed, the argument is that he is just as flawed as Trump.

That isn't true.

Fascism is the cruel disease that under the right circumstances, will destroy a democracy.

It doesn't happen overnight, it happens over time.

Please, do if you haven't yet please register and please vote for Biden. 

Vote against the modern Nazi.

Adventures In Quarentine: Natural Instinct

As I sit at my kitchen table and watch out the window, I see my newest friends. 

There's Baxter and Mr. BunBun, laying outstretched by the patio swing, Backpack is at the picnic table scarfing down everything in sight, Junior and J.R. battle over a picked over cob of corn.  Jacques, the late night rascal that he is, has just gone to bed maybe an hour before I got up.  Sadly, Lucy and Early haven't returned in over a month.

These are the assorted little creatures that make up my backyard wildlife.

I watch them, and I can't help but feel my mouth curl upwards into a smile and my heart feels warm. 

In these moments, with these brief and fleeting moments with nature, I have found an oasis of peace and insulation from a world that seems to filled with conflict.

I know full well that these animals do not need me.  There is plenty of food available within the community if they would be willing to risk going outside the confines of the surrounding yard.  Yet for me, I feel like a strange alien governor, feeding my citizens in hopes of encouraging a more peaceful union.  It feels good to give.

This little event started naturally out of boredom and looking for things to do.  We named the squirrels, bunnies, and even a skunk that has decided to come by for a bit, although the skunk development has led to a bit of friction between my wife and I.  She is decidedly less 'pro' skunk than I am.

Quarantine, has altered life drastically for most of us, and most definitely me.  So to spend a few minutes each morning just watching these little lives roam and enjoy their environment gives a certain sense of normalcy in times that are absolutely not normal.

I spend most of my free time in front of screens these day and I have found that the digital environment can be one fraught with anxiety.  To unplug from the stream of information that is constantly pitting one side against another is to give your mind a break from attempting to decipher right and wrong things with the world.


 

How The Big Ten and Pac-12 Accidentally Saved Their Players and Made Them Money.

The Big Ten and Pac 12 don't care as much as the SEC, Big 12, and ACC does about its players, its fans, and about football.

That is the narrative being talked about right now by many in the college football media sphere.

The Big Ten messed up, and they need to fire people, etc.

Perhaps.

But maybe, begrudgingly, they not only did the right thing, but they put their football programs and players in a far better place to succeed.

Because the NFL, or any other company isn't going to pass on players and talent for a lack of tape due to a pandemic and subsequent conference decision.

The NFL and its scouts are in business of stockpiling human capital.  The college season only helps serve the scouts in helping determine who MIGHT be better for their team.  It is not even close to the only metric, and maybe not even the most important one, depending on the position.

The New York Giants aren't going to pass on the physical freaks being trained here at Penn State, or Ohio State, or USC, or whatever players Nebraska has that have a chance to make it to the league.

While game reps matter, they are not necessarily the most important aspect to a prospect.  Size, speed, strength, and an understanding of the game are all more important to a coach and general manager.  The tape is used to help, but it's not everything.

There is also some evidence that playing may actually HURT your opportunity in the NFL.  The position of running back, in particular, is now looked at with how many carries they have in a career, with more carries equating to caution as their career might be shorter.

Wear and tear matters as well, and any player who plays this season will add some experience, but will also add hits to their bodies, potentially setting them up for shorter pro careers.  The off-season is used to heal from a long grueling season, as well as to build up for the next one. 

If I ran an organization and I wanted to draft a prospect, with potentially the exception of quarterback, I would prefer the player that I think has less wear and tear on their system, and the one that had devoted the entirety of the year preparing for the NEXT season and not this current year.

Not only that, injuries and risk are far more mitigated to those players sitting out and focusing on training.

Right now, let's say Kyle Pitts and Brevin Jordan play 4 or 5 games for Florida and Miami, respectively.  They are projected as the two other top tight ends in the country.  Just because they played, while Pat Friermuth continued to work and train, will not put them ahead of Friermuth, especially if Friermuth puts up incredible combine numbers. 


Now, not all players are NFL prospects, but that doesn't mean they don't want to play.  The game is incredibly fun.  I believe if you asked them, they wouldn't care what uniform they put on, as long as they could play.  This game is addicting, and people will do almost anything to keep playing.

Players will try to hide injuries to play.

Players have cheated on tests to play.

Players have taken steroids to play.

So it doesn't shock me in the slightest that a lot of players would want to play during a pandemic, ESPECIALLY if they feel safer in their college bubble than they do at home.

That said, they are more than football players, but human beings that know full well that they will likely not become pros in the NFL, and they will not get to choose the end of their playing days. 

It is essential that those players live, grow, become healthy, and become the best versions of themselves BEYOND football.

By encouraging those players to continue their education and encouraging them to continue trusting in their values and training that they are far more likely to become more well rounded than their counter-parts in the SEC, who will have so much of their attention drawn to playing a meaningless season for the boosters of the their schools.

For example, if I were a bank hiring a finance major from Clemson or Penn State, would I take the student-athlete who was completely focused on football, or one that had a balanced approach?  I'd like to think the latter.

As the schools of the South appear dead set on attempting to exploit America's football addiction for profit, the schools of the Big Ten and Pac-12 have decided to mitigate the damage of the virus to best of their abilities (which was still poorly executed and done with such little transparency everyone was left appalled).

In the end, while I think the SEC has won a short-term image battle in public sphere, it will be the athletes of the Big Ten and Pac-12 who will benefit the most from their leaders decision to postpone the season.

To Play or Pandemic? Feelings Towards an Unknown Season.

When I was 18, and a Freshman with Penn State football, I would have done just about anything to be out on the field.  

Not even to play, just to dress.

As a walk-on, and a late one that made it via try-out, I had an incredible uphill battle.  

If I were to put myself in my 18 year old self, I would absolutely want to stay involved, and play a season.  I would sign a waiver.

I imagine, for those upperclassmen who may have waited years for this opportunity, they would do nearly anything to play.

I imagine that pretty much anyone who truly loves the game and has a near fanatical passion for it, would want to play.

The question becomes "Under what circumstances?"  

As long as the approaches and measures taken are what the players, the coaches, and support staff are comfortable with, then I can in good conscience support an attempt at a season.

HOWEVER,

I recognize we are in a pandemic state.

Over 160k have tragically passed in America to this novel Coronavirus.  

The only way any nation has been able to control the virus has been widespread adherence to social distancing and mask wearing combined with vigorous testing and contact tracing.

It appears to most in our academic and health care communities agree that having large crowds and doing nearly anything together over time greatly increases the risk.

If Penn State does value the opinions of doctors and academics, then I believe any kind of season will not have fans.

As a former letterman, mine (as well as others) have had their sideline privileges taken away (I have zero problems with this).

The players, coaches, and support staff must always feel safe and supported as well as their families.  If for this season, it is recommended there are no fans in seats then fine.

I honestly think they could play the games, tape them and play them later and all of America would still watch while knowing the results. Thats how starved I feel some people are for new athletic content.

Now, I also think people should also accept and be open to the idea that a season may start, stop and not have a clear champion.

We need to be OK with these potential scenarios as our collective health and well being are more important than one specific sport or game or thing.

If no one is sick, or getting sick, and things are improving, fantastic. 

If we move into November and an outbreak hits the offensive or defensive lineman rooms?

If the the support staff aren't properly equipped and they pass the disease to a loved one?

These are difficult times, and we need to be patient and support one another through everything.  I want those young guys to have fun.  To be able to show how hard they worked, not just this year, but for their whole life.

I love the guys out there asking to have a season just as much as I love Micah for deciding not to play and train in a more comfortable environment.  Both things can be true.

I think we can try to have some football on the players terms, but I think we as fans and as people, need to recognize that this is difficult and turn to our better angels of support and empathy at this time.

The Need To Teach America About The Evolution Of White Supremacy.

When I was in fifth grade, we were watching the series Roots in what became a startling show of the terror inflicted by white people upon the Black population they had kidnapped and forced into slavery. 

In the middle of the unit, our school day was interrupted as news spread about the Oklahoma City bombing. 

Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people, including 19 children.

At age ten, I had a hard time understanding what happened.  It seemed that everyone around me calmed me down by saying it was just the work of a crazy person.  He was just imbalanced, and just like that, I didn't really think about McVeigh again. 

I turned back to Roots, horrified at both the actions and inactions of people of history.  Believing and hoping we had moved on.

In 1999, I was a freshman in high school, when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 13 people.

Again, the reasoning given was about the imbalance, about bullying and about the media.  There was considerably less importance placed on the obsessions about Hitler and far right ideas.

In 2015 Dylan Roof killed 9 people in a church after first praying with them, in an effort to start a race war. 

I thought it was just the act of a loner.

There was no talk about white supremacy anymore because, while all these events were happening around us, we were taught that essentially Martin Luther King Jr, along with Rosa Parks, solved racism in America. 

We were taught that racists were now only a very small minority; that they existed only in the past and that we had moved on. 

The idea of the KKK, of Neo-Nazis, and the idea of the far-right existing within America was simply not brought up as a realistic thing in my education. We were taught that they were simply a relic of the past and not worth our time.

I remember thinking American History X was just that.  A movie.

At no point, was I taught the name George Lincoln Rockwell, a former Navy man, and the founder of the American Nazi party, whose influence and ideas can be seen all over the far right and a person whose influence is still wreaking havoc long past his death. 

Louis Beam, likewise, was absent from my history books, even though he was a former member of the US military in Vietnam where he served as a helicopter door gunner, would come home to not only become a domestic terrorist as a member of the KKK, but then also built his own organized militia to promote racist military style trainings in kids as young as 8.  He is also credited with being one of the first proponents to a leaderless resistance strategy that is employed in many different factions.

This has done us all an incredible disservice from understanding where some ideas and thoughts come from.

The "free speech on college campus" idea isn't new.  But it's important to understand that Rockwell wanted to exploit that idea and was the first to do so.  It's also important to understand how Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as well as others, did not play into his hand so as to diminish the power of the propagandist.

It's important to realize that both the El Paso shooter, and the Christchurch shooter both believed in a variation of the original lie of white genocide that Rockwell espoused.  They believed that the Jews are behind everything and that they are using blacks to carry out that will.

To this day, I'm guessing the great majority of Americans have no idea that the El Paso shooter, the Christchurch shooter, Louis Beam, Eric Harris, Dylan Roof and Timothy McVeigh all read the same book written by a Neo-Nazi named William Luther Pierce who was a direct associate of Rockwell. 

I believe we need to address this shortfall, as white supremacy is a real threat to democracy.  I believe the best tool is education.  We need to have the hard conversations, especially with our friends and family about where this hate has come from, what this hate sounds like, and why this hate has been so difficult to extinguish.

Easily the best source of information for me researching the bulk of this material has been the journalist Robert Evans.  While he had previously covered the Ukrainian Revolution of 2014 as well as the war in Iraq, he has spent the last few years reporting domestically and starting his own podcast called Behind The Bastards.

However it is his other Podcast, The War On Everyone that really spells out the role White Supremacy and Fascism has played in American Culture.

Evans absolutely has a bit of Hunter S. Thompson to his reporting, however he is great at citing sources, and giving greater context to things that might not be as readily apparent.  He is also honest enough to say when he simply does not know because he couldn't find any sources.

His dedication to revealing detailed information about some of the worst possible topics helps to illuminate our own world in a new light, and calls attention to our own biases and flaws.

These are trying times.  Confusing times.  But if we understand our past, it can help guide us in the present, and preserve a better future.

4 Year Anniversary

As I entered the car, it became readily apparent that my best man was incredibly hung over.  He, as well as my other groomsmen had partied pretty hard at the bars we had worked at when we were younger.  Later I would find videos taken by the DJ of my best guys smashing shots and banging their heads as DJ Snake and Lil' Jon's "Turn Down For What?" blared all around.

"Dude, I'm sorry, but we gotta stop at this Minute Mart or this is not happening."

Here I was, held hostage for my own wedding, with the demands of electrolytes being the key bargaining piece.

Yet still, as the sky became more grey and the prospect of a thunderstorm occurring during our wedding became more likely, I still was calm.  I was still happy and excited.

I might be late today.  My best man might not live through the wedding. 

But I couldn't be bothered that day.

Today was my wedding day.

The ceremony was held indoors at Our Lady Of Victory, where we sheltered from the rain.  And inside, all I could think about was how special this moment was.  Where despite all the ugliness of the world, all the rain and thunder that shook outside the walls of the church; inside, there was only love and joy.

I thought about how my wife and I were kind of opposites in some ways.  She was Catholic.  I was an Atheist.  She came from a more conservative background from a smaller rural area.  I came from almost the heart of academia, with almost every family member connected to Penn State in some form or fashion.

Yet we loved each other deeply.  That for all the things that didn't seem to make sense about the world, this absolutely did.  In fact there was nothing I was more sure of in that moment.

We were surrounded in that moment with our trusted friends and family that could be there, and those that couldn't, were in our hearts.

We couldn't be hurt by the outside world.

Four years later, I'm happy that's still the case.

We are in the midst of one of the most challenging times in human history.  A pandemic.  Global political and civil unrest, and the real possibility that resources that were once plentiful, may become less so.  One could hardly be blamed for feelings of anxiety or depression.

Yet, despite all the difficulties and troubles, I'm able to find my happiness, my calm.  Because in my heart and in my home, I have my world.

I love you Allie.

Happy Anniversary. 

Love, Ben

Summer Softball During The Pandemic

I stand outside the dugout, pressed to the fence of the backstop yelling things that I think I used to yell when I was 12.  Doug takes a long stride and he nicks the ball after a loaded swing.  The ball flies up into the air for maybe half a beat, rising not much higher than Doug's own head and the catcher, a smaller, rather rotund man in his 50's catches the harmless ball. 

"Great stuff! Great stuff 1-5!" The catcher yells, as the pitcher, number 15, has delivered the exact same type of generic pitch every other slow-pitch softball pitcher has ever pitched.  A slow arcing corn hole toss landing in the general vicinity of home plate. 

Doug's head drops, but we cannot quite make out his entire expression as he has put up his face guard at home plate.  The words that seem to just make it out under his breath and his eyes show a look of sheer frustration.

It's incredibly hot out.  Somewhere in the mid 90's and humidity that seemed to have sprung out of nowhere.  I'm sweating through my jersey and taking practice swings, trying desperately to loosen enough muscles to where the swing actually feels natural and comfortable like it did when I was twelve.  I know I'll never get there.  My back feels it needs to crack but never can.  Like I can never fully unwind.

There's a few fans and families out on the side to cheer.  Most, like the players themselves, just seemingly looking for something else to do outside of the house.  They bring pets and snacks and their lawn chairs and take in a game of grown men attempting to stay young and play a child's game.

We lose the first game by ten runs, the game is over quickly.  The second game we win by ten runs.

There is such a huge mix of solid plays with unbelievably funny goofs that it becomes difficult to keep them all straight.

This is the slow pitch softball that I have come to love.

And now, twice every Monday, we get to play again.



When I was first approached about playing again this year I was hesitant at first.  I knew the pandemic wasn't over, but softball seemed like one of the few games that you could truly minimize and control contact with others.  With the exception of the batter, catcher, and umpire (the league is official enough for umps, but casual enough for gym shorts and "courtesy" runners.), the sport doesn't require any of the players to be within six feet of each other for any kind of prolonged time and is played outside.

Still, I waffled.  My wife and sister both have asthma.  My parents, as well as my in-laws are all in riskier age ranges.  At every turn when this disease has been underestimated it seems to have spread and had deadly consequences.  For me to imagine myself being partly responsible for someone else's death due to my own desire to live life as best I can was a reality I had to at least think about. 

Ultimately the deciding factor in me playing was that it seemed that my state, Pennsylvania, had done a great job with their initial lock-down phase.  New cases were declining steadily, businesses were on the brink of what seemed like a near re-open, and it felt like things were going to this new semi-open model of life.

I felt like as long as I took certain precautions,  while the risk was certainly still present, it would be so low that it'd to be worth it to have some semblance of social normalcy.  To get out of the house and into the world around me and do something both physical and pleasurable.  To get outside to feel the sun, feel the camaraderie, and feel like the planet is still the same one I remembered.

I am currently playing under my own guidance that as soon as either someone on the team gets sick or tests positive, my season will likely be over, regardless of rules imposed by either the state or the league.

I continue to moderate my habits.  As cases in PA have begun to rise again, and the new data suggesting more asymptomatic spread, I will wear a mask for the entirety of the game.

For me, it's a personal decision, but one that I think allows me to play and enjoy something else in life, while still attempting to keep those around me safe.  I also shared my decision with others who would be spending time with me so they knew where I had been previously, and I made sure the people who I shared a house with (in this case, just my wife) were OK with my choice.


Our team has not played particularly well as a group.  We are 1-5.  While I think we all have some baseball or athletics in our background, none of us would be confused for what I would call a "ringer".

At times, it's hard to stay motivated as I fail to bend over at the waist far enough to pick up a ground ball or when the other team has a couple of players just crushing the ball all over.

But I still want to play.  Because at the moment it offers my life a sense of spontaneity that is positive.  If during my at bat, I can hit the ball hard, and maybe, if I happened to have actually stretched before the game, I can open up my gate enough to re-live just a moment of youthful energy, it'll be worth it. 

If we can pull together and string just enough hits and defensive plays to win one more game, it'll be worth it.

If we can just smile and live in the moment, it will be worth it.

I get a text on my phone from the Captain.  "Game on Monday vs the Labbat Blues.  Field 4.  Whose in?"


I don't hesitate.

I'm in.