The Awkward Phases

I started this piece a few days ago on what would have been my father’s 90^th birthday. He’s been gone too long, so long now that even though I remember his lessons, I struggle to remember the actual sound of his voice. Isn’t that awful? He was an amazing father who passed before having a chance to be an amazing grandfather. I won’t spend pages describing him. Instead, I’ll give you some quick homework. Read the prose poem called Desiderata by Max Ehrmann. Better yet, do as Dad did…hang a copy of it in your home or office and randomly quote lines from it to your loved ones. I can picture him walking down the hall toward his bedroom, trying not to spill coffee on the pale green carpet, quoting, “Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.”

But, back to work. We find ourselves in the awkward phases on so many things in our national life. We are stuck in the awkward transition years in the awkward middle between what was and what will be. Whether in technological advancement or public policy, things are just clunky.

Our new cars are awkward. They aren’t completely self-driving yet, but they have safety systems that give people just enough confidence to feel they can watch a podcast while driving. They have collision sensors that jerk them to a near stop when not necessary and active lane-keeping assist that is just clumsy enough to make them overreact at the wrong time. They have adaptive cruise control that causes traffic jams as every car now slows down to keep an unnecessary five car lengths between them and the car in front of them.

AI is awkward. It is increasingly being used in place of human effort, but it learns from everything out there, including inaccurate information. No doubt it will make us more productive in the end, but we are losing real artists and gaining ChatGPT Hemingways.

Even our television viewing is clunky. We are in the awkward phase between cable and streaming, still paying too much for cable but having to buy streaming subscriptions because Amazon and others have secured the rights to things we used to just flip between using our remotes. And God forbid I try to stream a network station from outside my home cable area!

But it isn’t just our tech that has us in an awkward phase. Our identity is awkward as well. We are losing the generations that knew hardship and gaining the ones that all got trophies. We are losing generations that were grateful just to have a job and gaining ones that feel entitled to stay in their pajamas and to “take a moment” when things get difficult. We are losing the ability to look one another in the eye and gaining the bravado to sling awfulness at one another over our devices. We are losing a sense of shared responsibility and placing too much emphasis on our individuality. We are demonizing capitalism and shooting flirting glances across the room at socialism. We can’t agree if we want the government to provide more or for our taxes to be lower, so we continue to add government services while melting our nation’s credit card. And instead of paying the bill when due, we wait until the eleventh hour and ask for an increase in our credit limit. We’ve gone from the greatest generation’s sacrifice to “Don’t worry, our kids and grandkids can pay for it.”

This week saw a return to 6-3 Supreme Court rulings. It saw a self-described democratic socialist win the mayoral primary in New York on a platform of rent freezes, city-owned grocery stores, $30 minimum wage, and free transportation. It saw continued argument over whether the bombings of Iranian nuclear sites were an unparalleled success or a bug bite that will heal in three days. It saw more haggling over the “Big, Beautiful Bill”, or is it the “most immoral piece of legislation in history”? Depends on who you ask.

This week saw a United States Senator who could have been the vote to defeat that bill she viewed as imperfect instead vote to pass it. Then she walked out of the chamber to tell reporters she hopes the House will not pass it as is. And so a bill supposedly so beautiful required the tie-breaking vote of the Vice President. This week saw the announced retirements of yet more moderates in the House and Senate, one of whom did so as to be able to vote his conscience for the remainder of his term. Well sir, what the hell were you down there for in the first place?

We have two parties, one that claims to represent the working class and the other that got many of their votes by becoming more populist and more pro-union by the day. The Republicans will paint Zohran Mamdani as the face of the Democratic Party and the Democrats will paint every Republican in the image and likeness of President Donald Trump. Both parties will be wrong about that but raise a ton of money on their wrongness. Worse yet the average American voter, fueled by the echo chamber he or she is in, will believe all Democrats are socialists or all Republicans are oligarchs. Fundraising will be good; the damage will be permanent. And all the while, that average American will pay more attention to Jeff Bezos’ wedding or Sean Combs’ trial than all of this.

The awkward phase is the place where the Constitution is seen as a nuisance standing in the way of progress. A 24/7 news cycle and seven-second TikTok clips don’t have the time for constitutional process or nuance or for the lessons of history. We don’t even have the time for consistency or fealty to belief. Last year Republicans were opposed to EV mandates and Democrats lined up for Teslas. Three months ago, Republicans were doing free ads for Tesla and Democrats were burning them. This week, Democrats are praising Elon Musk for his comments on the Big, Beautiful Bill and Republicans are threatening him with investigation. In the awkward phases, consistency and predictability are apparently character flaws!

This week also brought us the Supreme Court decision on Trump v. Casa. Both political factions have used litigation to fight public policy with which they disagree. And both have forum-shopped for the court whose makeup was more likely to render a verdict in their favor. The hope was that the court chosen would then grant a nationwide injunction to block implementation of that policy. In Casa, a case framed around the issue of birthright citizenship, the 6-3 decision of the Court limited district courts’ abilities to make nationwide injunctions. Right or wrong, this ruling will not help get us out of the awkward phases. It may actually create more awkwardness as districts decide solely for their area what policies can and cannot be implemented. And so until an issue is taken up by the Supreme Court, we could have instances where a law or executive order proceeds in some districts and not in others.

If forum-shopping and nationwide injunctions are wrong, so too is an Executive that charges full steam ahead knowing that the damage of an ill-conceived or illegal executive order will already be done by the time the courts can stop it. So too is Congress putting out huge pieces of legislation in the wee hours of the morning using Reconciliation instead of proper order. So too is a Supreme Court using the emergency shadow docket with increasing and alarming frequency. So too is tax payer money being wasted to litigate things that are so clearly unconstitutional. It is clear the 14^th Amendment, for right or for wrong, plainly protects birthright citizenship. Should birthright citizenship be the law of the land any longer? We should debate that. And if it no longer should, then a constitutional amendment should be proffered. Until then the Executive’s only recourse is to enforce the laws on the books.

“The rule of law is not a given in this Nation, nor any other. It is a precept of our democracy that will endure only if those brave enough in every branch fight for its survival.”  These are the words of one of our Supreme Court justices from her opinion in Casa. These words are wise; they are properly admonitory. But I wonder, because of the divisive times in which we find ourselves, because we are in the awkward phases, whether readers will first need to know if they are the words of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, for the majority, or Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in dissent, before deciding whether or not to agree with them? They are Justice Sotomayor’s. But that shouldn’t matter.

Anyway, as we navigate the awkward phases, let’s remember the closing words of the Desiderata, “…whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.”